Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 49. Sunrise is 6:54 and sunset is 5:24 for 10 hours 30 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 14.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
It was political philosopher Thomas Hobbes who observed in 1651 that reason is a spy for the passions (“the Thoughts, are to the Desires, as Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired”), where reason is used (however poorly) in service of dark or selfish desires.
Still true in many places, these 375 years later, including too often in Whitewater.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:56 and sunset is 5:22 for 10 hours 26 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 22.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On February 2, the Whitewater Common Council approved in a first reading changes to zoning for a development project along Bluff Road. See from FREE WHITEWATER, More Housing for Whitewater.
There’s a solid story in the Royal Purple reporting on the unsubstantiated allegations made at the meeting. Eric Arguelles, Community News Editor, reports on that issue in Common Council considers rezoning for housing development:
[Speaker during public comment Andrea] Svec alleged that city manager John Weidl has an existing relationship with Stonehaven and Legacy Realty Group, a real estate service owned by Vandeville. However, Weidl said this same concern had been previously raised, and that repeating it was intended to discredit city staff and obstruct the project.
Weidl denied the allegation, saying he has no undisclosed or improper relationship with Stonehaven, and has no interest in the project beyond his role as city manager.
“Separately, and several years ago, during a transition period between municipal positions, I obtained a Wisconsin real estate license and temporarily affiliated it with Legacy Realty Group, as required by state law,” Weidl said. “During that limited period, I provided high-level economic development guidance related to municipal processes and community planning in the region. I did not act as a broker, agent, or transaction participant in Whitewater while serving as a municipal administrator.”
Weidl also commented that after his return to municipal employment, the license was no longer needed for his duties.
I’ll write about this, too, and I should have done so sooner. For today, I will consider Ms. Svec’s wholly unsubstantiated claim of ethical concerns about the development. The video recording and transcript of her particular claim appears below, followed by an assessment. Video of the full meeting is also available online.
CLAIM:
And then finally, and I know this is going to ruffle some feathers, but my question is, are you aware of, or has it been disclosed that there is a relationship between Stonehaven and Legacy Realty and Mr. Weidl and previous employment relationship? And if so, has that been disclosed? And if not, why not?
ASSESSMENT:
There’s nothing here, nothing at all, except ill-crafted insinuation. One hears two claims about Whitewater’s city manager and this private developer, divided by present and past. First, one hears a question of the present asking if “there is a relationship between Mr. Weidl and Stonehaven and Legacy Realty” (spoken of in the present tense — is a relationship.)
This immediate question means too little and implies too much. At its weakest, anyone has a relationship with many others, including his tailor or barber. That’s not untoward. That’s ordinary life.
But that’s not what’s crudely insinuated here, is it? A relationship is alleged in a way that suggests the Whitewater Common Council and residents living with the City of Whitewater should have concerns. These public comments don’t explain why there should be concerns. There’s nothing to show a material matter.
Second, there’s an accusatory question about the past: “and previous employment relationship?”
Previous, but not present, and so not active or ongoing or existing now. A previous employment relationship is one that is by definition inactive, over, and dead. Anyone who has had any vocational success, who has made anything of himself or herself in Wisconsin or beyond, has had previous employment or business relationships. That’s common in many industries and it does not imply or suggest untoward conduct in the present.
There was a question in the Town of Whitewater resident’s remarks that this libertarian blogger can answer. She asks “And if so, has that [a previous relationship between Whitewater’s city manager and the developer] been disclosed?”
I’ll answer: Yes, this question was asked of, and answered by, Tim Vandeville of Legacy at a public meeting of the Whitewater Community Development Authority on September 21, 2023.
(The Whitewater city manager was not in attendance, but Tim Vandeville of Legacy spoke. Jeffery P. Knight, a publicly-licensed lobbyist and once a member of the CDA, heard Vandeville’s description on that night on September 21, 2023 — and expressed no concerns whatever. Knight was also in the room on 2.3.26 when Svec spoke critically of a past connection, but was himself silent that evening on the issue. Knight sometimes returns to the Common Council lectern more than once to offer information or comments during a meeting, but remained curiously mute on this point on 2.3.2026. It was Svec who did the talking.)
These are unfounded allegations delivered in a careless, sloppy manner. An assertion should come with concrete terms and substantial proof. This includes assertions crafted as questions in a puerile attempt to evade a burden of proof or standard of credibility. There’s an empty justification these days that one can say whatever one wants if one is ‘just asking questions.’ The Whitewater Common Council should seek a higher standard for itself than cable television or TMZ.
One should also see — if one is to see clearly about this matter — that this is not simply an empty insinuation about one municipal official, but an accusation about the conduct of an official and a private developer. If that relationship (that is a connection between two parties) should be improper on one side (and I don’t believe it is), then it’s improper on both.
Here, one out-of-town commenter asks this city’s Common Council to accept stale and empty claims against a city manager and a private developer. This city should not — indeed must not — discard or impugn private development or developers on these specious pretexts.
This looks yet again like one tiny faction’s desire to say anything about anyone to get its way. All the rest is shallow pretense.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 37. Sunrise is 6:57 and sunset is 5:20 for 10 hours 21 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 30.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Comprehensive Plan Work Group meets at 4 PM and the Equal Opportunity Commission at 5 PM.
On this day in 1970, Japan launches Ohsumi, becoming the fourth nation to put an object into orbit using its own booster.
At a public hearing held by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission Tuesday, dozens of Wisconsin residents decried the effects massive data centers could have on the state’s electricity rates and ability to adopt renewable energy sources.
The three-member PSC is considering a proposal from the Wisconsin Electric Power Company to establish a tariff system for providing electricity to massive data centers. Under the proposal, “very large” customers that would be subject to the tariff would have a combined energy load of 500 megawatts — the equivalent of powering about 400,000 homes.
The first phase of Microsoft’s $13.3 billion data center project in Mount Pleasant is projected to require 450 megawatts.
Critics of the proposal say that under this system, regular consumers will still be on the hook for 25% of the infrastructure costs associated with increasing the state’s energy load.
Over the past year, the growth of data center development in Wisconsin has spurred an increasingly tense debate. Local governments have been tempted to allow their construction as a source of property tax revenue while local residents raise concerns over energy and water use, the conversion of historical farmland, the ethics of artificial intelligence and long-term environmental impacts.
The massive energy needs of data centers have become the central issue in the debate, with people in Wisconsin and around the country questioning how to manage the demands of giant corporations seeking to use orders of magnitude more energy than is currently being produced.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:58 and sunset is 5:20 for 10 hours 22 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 39.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5:15 PM and there is a Whitewater Forward Community Round Table at 6 PM.
On this day in 1763, the Treaty of Paris, also known as the Treaty of 1763, was signed on 10 February 1763 following Great Britain and Prussia’s victory over France and Spain during the Seven Years’ War. The treaty’s provisions included the ceding of what is now Wisconsin (among many other places) from France to Britain.
How odd, though, to hear a longtime resident, local landlord, former Community Development Authority member, former Community Development Authority chairman, former school board member, and former school board president warning of Whitewater’s supposed demographic decline.
(Every resident should and must have a right to speak at public comment. That right includes speaking bleakly about Whitewater’s future, speaking bleakly about Whitewater’s future on flimsy grounds, and even speaking bleakly about Whitewater’s future on flimsy grounds while ignoring one’s own below-average record of policymaking in this town.)
Let’s assume this gentleman believes, far too credulously, that a future of decline awaits the city.
If so, then what was he doing all those years on the Community Development Authority and school board? All those meetings, all those plans, and indeed all those controversies, only to lead to decline? Why did he bother?
One possibility is that he and others spent the last decade accomplishing nothing that would last. In this possibility, they were wasting others’ time and futures while live-action role playing at interminable meetings.
I’ll not say that our future is so bleak as that gentleman claims, but I do think he was wasting public opportunity after public opportunity. See from 2018 A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA (‘This new EOZ program allows for private investments to be made, with significant tax benefits, in lower income communities like ours that need a boost to their economy,” said Larry Kachel, Chair of the Whitewater Community Development Authority’). (Emphasis added.)
A lower-income community for many residents over many years, but likely not a lower income for that former chairman of the Community Development Authority. (Perhaps, just perhaps, I’ve been misreading all these years. When I see the title of that public body, it says Community Development not Chairman Development.)
It’s also possible that he simply wants to disparage the work of those now in office who will not bend to his will.1
And so, and so, in this man’s telling, it’s a slope of decline on the way to 2040. Well, if so, in his public roles he played a part in placing us on that supposed path. Of those who told the community time and again in the last decade that they were paramount — can’t they see that if Whitewater will have a bleak future, then they are culpable in that sad fate?
And yet, and yet, as I am a free-market man, and not a self-interested incumbent landlord, I do not share his pessimism (whether real or feigned, whether genuine or spiteful). Although I’m a tragic optimist, optimism is the noun, modified only by an awareness of human loss even in good times.
And look, and look — this is a city of many thousands, interacting freely every day. From those many come myriad possibilities in a spontaneous order. This community is not the possession of one man, whether landlord, city official, or libertarian blogger2. This community’s finest work has happened and will happen apart from any of those roles.
How sad, truly, that this isn’t obvious to everyone.
_____
Of this second possibility I have no assessment to make, being neither a psychiatrist nor a priest; this libertarian blogger neither takes patients nor hears confessions. My role is much smaller. ↩︎
Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:00 and sunset is 5:18 for 10 hours 18 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 49.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board holds a Legislative Breakfast at 8:30 AM. Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.
On January 20, during public comment at a Whitewater Common Council session, a resident1 spoke about a population projection that he saw for Whitewater in 2040. His claim and an assessment of that claim appear below.
CLAIM:
Your report that you did for fire departments and EMS in Walworth County, which I believe came out in October of 2025, had some DOA numbers in them, from the Department of Administration, and they are projecting that Whitewater will lose 3,000 people in its population between now and 2040. They originally did it in 2020 and then updated it in 24, and that’s in the report that was done for the Walworth County Fire and EMS, breaking it down by individual communities.
See Whitewater Common Council, January 20, 2026 Video @ 46:54.
The population projection that the study cites comes from Wisconsin’s Department of Administration (DOA), through the Demographic Services Center (DSC), as part of Wisconsin’s latest municipal projection series. SeeWis. Dep’t of Admin., Demographic Servs. Ctr., Population Projections. Anyone who is serious about public policy should mark the difference between a projection and an inevitable outcome.
Any figures like these are hard for anyone not in the field to assess. There’s a huge risk of misunderstanding. There are a few things one can say confidently, however. DOA’s projections are statewide and standardized. That’s to be expected: the DOA does not have the resources to build a specific, boutique model for every municipality. It uses a method that can be applied across the map, so to speak, in a way that places local communities in larger totals.
DOA’s own methodology explains its approach: it uses recent annualized change (including a comparison that runs from 2010 to 2020 and another that incorporates 2020 to a recent estimate period), projects forward, and then adjusts smaller-area projections so they align with the totals implied by county projections.
That approach does produce a baseline across Wisconsin. But every method has a flaw: the method also produces a projection that can be highly sensitive to short-run disruption — especially in places that are unusual in ways for which the model does not account.
Whitewater is one of those places.
The City of Whitewater’s own housing report flags the reality that the pandemic era and enrollment shifts create unusual conditions for interpreting population patterns, and it explains why it preferred a different approach for its own local projection work. See City of Whitewater, City of Whitewater Housing Report (Feb. 2022), prepared with assistance from Vandewalle & Assocs.
If the years one uses for a trendline are abnormal years, then the projection isn’t destiny but rather short-run disturbances extrapolated to 2040. A more recent report that doesn’t account for local fluctuations is less useful than one prepared a bit earlier that does account for those fluctuations.
If one wants the most reliable way to think about Whitewater in 2040, one wouldn’t choose any single projection:
13,091 is a state scenario produced by a standardized statewide method (DOA).
16,016 is a local moderate-growth scenario offered in a housing planning context. (Housing Report).
19,250 is an older plan-era high-growth assumption used for long-range planning (Comprehensive Plan).
Anyone who tells you that one of these numbers for 2040 is a ‘fact’ is simply wrong. The only fact is that there are several published projections.
Solid, rational planning for 2040 beats picking — cherry-picking, really — one estimate in remarks to the Whitewater Common Council.
_____
Longtime resident, local landlord, former Community Development Authority member, former Community Development Authority chairman, former school board member, former school board president. ↩︎
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 30. Sunrise is 7:01 and sunset is 5:17 for 10 hours 16 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 58.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1950, the Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, is established.
On January 21, this libertarian blogger contended that the City of Madison Argues Wrongly on Absentee Ballots by contending that those ballots were a privilege, not a right. From that post: “This is an occasion when a lawyer, representing a public client, undermines the rights of those that the public client is, itself, obligated to represent. Always a mistake, always a serious mistake, and always a mistake requiring a genuine remedy. An immediate remedy would be for the City of Madison to withdraw its line of defense. A later remedy would be for a court to reject that defense if it is not withdrawn.”
The Wisconsin Elections Commission, filing its first ever friend-of-the-court brief, challenged Madison’s controversial legal argument that it should not be financially liable for 193 uncounted ballots in the 2024 presidential election because of a state law that calls absentee voting a privilege, not a right.
The argument presented by city officials misunderstands what “privilege” means in the context of absentee voting and “enjoys no support in the constitution or case law,” the commission wrote in its filing Tuesday, echoing a similar rebuke by Gov. Tony Evers last month.
“Once an elector has complied with the statutory process, whether absentee or in-person, she has a constitutional right to have her vote counted,” the commission said.
That both the commission and the governor felt it was necessary to intervene in the case should underscore “both the wrongness and the dangerousness of such a claim,” commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, told Votebeat.
[…]
Meanwhile, Rick Esenberg, the founder of the conservative group Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty — which cited the same 1985 law in its 2021 effort to ban ballot drop boxes — said on social media that Madison’s legal argument was likely going too far.
“Madison is correct in noting that absentee voting is a privilege and not a right in the sense that the legislature has no obligation to permit it at all,” Esenberg said. “BUT if it does and people choose to cast their ballot in the way specified by law, it doesn’t seem crazy to say that Madison has a constitutional obligation to count their legally cast vote.”
This is a clear legal issue (the law can and has created a right) but muddy legal representation. The City of Madison’s position was too quick in its effort to shield the city from damages in a voters’ lawsuit without considering the implications of that position.
Legal representation that doesn’t show foresight of implications and counter-arguments is weak (in this case, embarrassingly weak) representation.
Researchers have found telltale clues for how to revitalise skin by looking at curious structures known as rete ridges. Rete ridges are a hard-to-study feature of the skin that could harbour the stem cells needed to allow it to regenerate. There aren’t many animal models available to study them in detail, so these researchers scoured the animal kingdom to find the skin that most resembled humans’. Now they’ve found hints as to how these ridges form, which they hope could one day enable us to reverse ageing in skin.
Wednesday, February 11th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Classical Musical/ Romance/ Drama Rated G
1 hour 31 minutes (1964)
Our early Valentine to you is this French classic romance film. In this tale of reciprocated love, a young woman (Catherine Deneuve) separated from her lover by war, faces a life–altering decision. This is a love story told entirely in song (no dialogue). It will be shown in its original French language with English subtitles. The musical score by Michel Legrand is most memorable. (Bring your Kleenex.)
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 21. Sunrise is 7:02 and sunset is 5:16 for 10 hours 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 68.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1964, The Beatles land in the United States for the first time, at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 35. Sunrise is 7:03 and sunset is 5:14 for 10 hours 11 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 76.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1919, in Paris the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and France signaling official recognition of the new republic.
In Whitewater, a university town, one often hears that a large percentage of residences are, understandably, apartments. A large number of these apartments are student apartments. The university is large in proportion to the whole city, and so no one should be surprised by this.
This environment produces a claim from landlords and a few other special-interest men that is closer to a mantra than an ordinary economic claim: 71% of Whitewater’s residences are apartments, and so there should be no more apartments. To people who are captivated more easily by a number than the economic realities that underlie the number, the 71%-but-no-more assertion must seem powerful, almost indubitably true.
It’s not. It’s not no matter how often repeated.
Here is the sensible, economically rational question Whitewater faces:
Will current and projected households be adequately housed — at reasonable costs — without leaving many residents paying too much while a few reap high rents or mortgage receipts?
That’s it: from where we are, what makes the city’s residents more able to live within the city without exorbitant amounts of their income going to rent or housing costs?
Student housing, and that’s what most of the apartments in Whitewater are, can inflate the apartment share without telling you much about whether non-students can find places to live.
Student and non-student apartments are not the same, and no one not self-deluding thinks they are. We do not have a fungible, universal type of apartment in this city designed generically for anyone. There are landlords who have built student apartments, and some who have built a few apartments for elderly residents dependent on federal assistance, but far fewer residences of any kind for a middle class resident who might want an apartment or a house.
That’s why any given percentage — even 71% — means far less than what people wielding the figure think it means. Consider: If 71% of the coats in a store are size Small, the store still fails if most customers wear something else. A percentage tells us what’s on the shelf but doesn’t tell us whether the shelf matches demand.
Part of the problem of large-scale home construction in Whitewater is that one or two large landlords think any smaller home that is similar in square footage to a middle class apartment might also be a threat and should be opposed.
A few landlords come close to a residential oligopoly over apartments in Whitewater, and they assert an anti-growth, anti-market agenda to preserve the first-mover advantage they have inherited from an earlier generation. They insist that the easier first-mover conditions of a generation (or more) ago should apply today to anyone building in the city in today’s more difficult conditions of affordability.
These are like men who were admitted to school when standards were easier, and now insist that all current students should meet standards they themselves did not, and probably could not, ever meet.
This maintains their near-oligopoly on existing student-rental apartments directly, but also denies the city middle-class, non-student options of rentals or home ownership.
This is also why vacancy rates in conditions of a near-oligopoly of student-rental landlords are deceptive vacancy rates: part of that vacancy rate comes because those student-rental apartments are not desirable (or even suitable) for middle-class rentals.
That’s not what a middle-class market wants. These student-rental landlords built for only one segment (when they thought that was the only market that mattered). Now they want to keep anyone else who would supply a middle-class market from building (either by outright prohibition or by imposing limitations not suited to suppliers’ and consumers’ present-day conditions.)
Whitewater’s solution should include more missing middle housing (apartments, duplexes, townhomes) to broaden the non-student market with flexible standards in parking and design rather than a blunt rejection of anything.
That’s the difference between a self-intested incumbent landlord and a free-market advocate. The self-interested incumbent will fight for his profits (student-rentals, senior-citizen apartments) even if the rest of the community gets little or nothing for itself.
The free-market advocate will advance proposals that uplift the general good, acknowledging that today’s proposals are more difficult to achieve than the first-mover conditions of fifty years ago.
Check out my latest project! A subway train and station in mini-scale! #minisubway #miniaturerailway #minirail Hi, I’m Xing, I spent two years making a mini home for my pets. Please subscribe to see all the cool miniatures and DIY projects I come up with to enjoy with my family and our pet dogs, cats, and hamsters!
Tuesday, February 10th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of One Battle After Another @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Action/ Dark Comedy/ Political Thriller/ Drama Rated R
2 hour, 41 minutes (2025)
Washed–up Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) exists in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off the grid with his spirited, self reliant daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti). When his evil nemesis, Colonel Stephen J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) resurfaces after 16 years, and Willa goes missing, Bob, the former radical, scrambles to find her, now father and daughter both battling the consequences of his past. The film also stars Regina Hall and Benito del Toro.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:04 and sunset is 5:13 for 10 hours 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 84.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On a first reading, the Whitewater Common Council unanimously approved a change to the city’s comprehensive plan for future land use and a zoning change for a possible residential development along Bluff Road. A video of the discussion appears above, and excerpts from the Whitewater Common Council packet appear below.
PROPOSAL:
Stonehaven Development, LLC seeks a Comprehensive Plan Future Land Use Map change from Highway Commercial to Single Family Residential. The requested amendment would allow for the development of 14 new single-family homes, providing much-needed housing within an established residential corridor.
This proposed rezoning aligns with existing land-use of the immediate area. All properties along East Bluff Road are currently developed with low-density housing. This land use change would provide improved compatibility with the nearby area, as compared to potential commercial developments. Overall, this proposed change is consistent with the city’s comprehensive plan, supports sustainable growth, and preserves the residential character of the neighborhood.
[…]
Stonehaven Development, LLC seeks to rezone multiple parcels on Bluff Road from Highway Commercial to One-Family Residence-Small Lots. The requested amendment would allow for the development of 14 new single-family homes, providing much-needed housing within an established residential corridor.
This proposed rezoning aligns with existing land-use of the immediate area. All properties along East Bluff Road are currently zoned Single-Family Residence and are currently developed with low-density housing. This rezone would provide improved compatibility with the nearby area, as compared to potential commercial developments. Overall, this proposed rezoning is consistent with the city’s comprehensive plan, supports sustainable growth, and preserves the residential character of the neighborhood.
The community has a choice on whether there will, practically, be more single-family homes in the city. Supporters of a project like this — and this libertarian blogger would be among those supporters — offer, by their support, a genuine and concrete option for the community.
Opponents, however, cannot expect that opposing each new proposal without offering a real and practical alternative will fulfill the community’s desire for more single-family homes. Merely objecting (not here, not now, etc.) doesn’t offer a useful (or compelling) alternative.
That’s the problem opponents of every housing project that comes along face. It’s not enough for them to say that they support programs in the abstract, with sometime and somewhere yet to be determined. They’ve not managed to get past the point of being mere opponents, so to speak.
Because the desire in this community for additional non-student residences is so strong, opponents’ efforts need to include agreement with at least some significant actual proposals and projects.
Always opposing, supporting only conceptually, or supporting only seldom simply doesn’t meet community desire and demand.
