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CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Good Ideas, Housing, Local Government

Daily Bread for 1.5.25: At Last, the Right Economic Development Structure for Whitewater

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 21. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:35, for 9 hours, 10 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 34.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1933, construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay.

On the evening of December 19th, the Whitewater Community Development Authority held its monthly meeting. Embedded above is the full video of that meeting. Item 3 of the meeting agenda included PowerPoint slides describing the process tax incremental financing in Whitewater. (I’ll address general and particular elements of tax incremental financing tomorrow. For today, what’s of interest is the orderly & transparent process of Whitewater’s new Office of Economic Development and much-improved Community Development Authority.) Embedded below are the slides that describe Whitewater’s process:

MEET-Packet-2af5740a7b9543a49b8e60080f7b80a8 copyDownload

Methodical: an invitation to meet, a written proposal from a developer, a burden of proof on the developer, a review by the city of the plan’s feasibility, a calculation of a payback period, a legal draft agreement if the proposal meets the requirements of the city, and then a presentation to the CDA1.

What does a private man, this libertarian blogger, see in these slides? An orderly and transparent process, embodying principles of open government, visible and understandable to anyone in our city.

That orderly and transparent process offers the best chance of producing sound results through government action in support of a common prosperity. If there is to be government, and I recognize that there need be, then it should — and must — be like this.

How it should be — how it always should have been.

It hasn’t always been like this. Indeed, only four years ago, under a prior municipal administration, an effort at reform failed, and was quickly, regrettably abandoned.

On January 23, 2020, at a meeting of the Whitewater Community Development Authority, then City Manager Cameron Clapper proposed that Whitewater come into alignment with the best practices of other cities, by suggesting (as part of a longer discussion), placing the development director in our city hall to make his or her work more conventional and transparent.

His remarks begin at 2:58 on the video below, and a lengthy discussion continues thereafter:

One month later, for a February 20, 2020, the agenda for that meeting included an item for a new and more modern development structure. It was, however, pulled from the agenda and so left unrealized. At that meeting, the men who for so long dominated development in this city offered a revisionist history that cast their influence as the most productive, and self-servingly omitted their many mistakes2. See Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.

We’ve a new and transparent structure now. At last, we’ve something open, rational, reliable. Long time coming. The days under the old CDA of a distressed tax incremental district, a cease and desist order from the federal government over a conflict of interest, hundreds of thousands wasted on low-quality startups, and years without a grocery until this administration made it happen are now over.

Whitewater’s past development structure was opaque, its efforts ineffectual at best, and wasteful or conflicted at worst. How much did residents know about what was happening under the old structure? Not enough, that’s how much.

And look, and look: no one has to be a government man to see that these processes are objectively more open. (I’m not in the government, in any role, and never will be.) Open and transparent government, by the way, is a right of all private residents that benefits all private residents. It wasn’t easy to get to this point, I wouldn’t wonder. All the community benefits from it.

The fruits of that better process include a superior grasp and use of tax incremental financing3, and a high-quality set of housing proposals recently approved on 12.19.24 on a 5-1-1 (one abstention) vote at the Whitewater Community Development Authority.

Those are topics for Monday and Tuesday, respectively.

Update, evening of 1.5.24: I’ll switch the order, with discussion of high-quality set of housing proposals for Monday and various topics including tax incremental financing on Tuesday.

  1. Much better than times past when the CDA couldn’t even find its paperwork. (Those times were always blamed on someone or something else, making Whitewater’s old CDA perhaps the state’s biggest user of the dog-ate-my homework defense.) ↩︎
  2. They’ll talk about the past, if it’s their contrived version of the past. Otherwise, they’d rather move on. ↩︎
  3. I’ve been a longtime critic of how Whitewater approached tax incremental financing in the past, and rightly so. The municipal administration’s present approach is wholly different and far sounder. ↩︎

CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Housing, Local Government, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 1.4.25: Reliable Measurements of the City

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 20. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:34, for 9 hours, 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 24.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1958, Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, falls to Earth from orbit.

For today, before going further over the next three days about an upcoming proposal before the Whitewater Common Council on Tuesday, a word about reliable measurements for Whitewater. Sound argumentation rests on a trustworthy foundation.

First, and foremost, what are conditions like truly like? How do people live and carry on each day? Not how a few who have wrung profit out of the city claim Whitewater is, but how ordinary residents living each day know Whitewater is? Will you believe what they tell you, or your own experience?

Second, good data and good reasoning carry the day. A few — too many, really — people in this town have traditionally used bad metrics in bad faith to win the day at the expense of general conditions all around us. They’ll mix and match any number of inapplicable measures or standards to prevent change. Those peddling in fear, uncertainty, and doubt use those techniques to their advantage, at the expense of market opportunities for others.

Fair use. Link

Ferocious opponents of progress, no matter how edgy and agitated, no matter how long-winded, are then and there simply blocking opportunity with a puffed-up display. Even the most furious Tasmanian Devil, it turns out, is no more than a creation of Warner Bros.

Those who stick to sound observation and sound data will serve Whitewater well.

CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Housing, Local Government, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 1.3.25: The Market Barriers in Whitewater

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 22. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:33, for 9 hours, 8 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 15.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1777, after victory at the Second Battle of Trenton the day before,  American forces under Genera Washington then defeat British forces at the Battle of Princeton, helping boost Patriot morale.

There’s a story one sometimes hears, including in Whitewater, that there are only two forces shaping an economy: private and public. In this story, the private endeavors of individuals and businesses are defined as necessarily encouraging of general prosperity, and the public reach of government as necessarily restrictive of general prosperity.

While it’s a story, it’s also a false story, and sometimes no more than a self-serving lie.

Prosperity rests on the free interactions between individuals, businesses, and government. The relationship (of free action) precedes the result. That’s why libertarians (bona fide ones, who read more than superficially) are free-market men and women.

Government constrains, but not only government constrains. There are private men and private business, including those who proudly tout their ‘pro-business,’ ‘pro-growth’ outlook, but who stifle growth and inhibit the economic liberty of others.

They’re not the champions of positive change but its adversaries. They oppose competition.

How does this happen, that private men and incumbent businesses work against the economic liberty of others?

Here are a few ways (and residents of Whitewater will recognize them):

Control of government agencies and boards to favor cronies and limit alternatives. These private men don’t bother to count to 15,000, but instead stop at 4 of 7, simply enough to run a board or commission for their benefit and to the detriment rival businesses or individuals. This is regulatory or agency capture (shaping regulations their way, or controlling the whole agency and dismissing anyone who won’t go along with their selfish ambitions).

They’ll say this is what the people want, but they’ve not bothered to poll a community; they merely assert that they know the popular will. They’ll point to a few co-opted people as though a few were many. To gather these few, a special interest will rely on any claim imaginable, spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about potential rivals with better ideas and new approaches.

Control of a market by monopoly or oligopoly. We think of this approach as applicable only on a large scale, but it happens in small communities, too. One or a few private men will control an entire market and fight to keep new, rival businesses (especially ones with fresh ideas) from forming. They’ll buy resources and deny access to those who’d like to compete in a free market. Many are the one-horse towns where the old horse fights like hell to keep new horses from showing up, so to speak.

Whitewater has had both of these problems for many years. In Whitewater, specifically, It’s not government that has held people back, it’s scheming and selfish private men who think that they own the place and work to keep new enterprises from taking root.

When they talk ‘pro-business,’ they mean their businesses, their opportunities, their way. Indeed, they simply deny, at bottom, that there could be any other way than their businesses, their opportunities, their way.

Here’s a key technique: they’ll argue against any better opportunity for others in favor of an imagined perfect opportunity that they know won’t arrive. They’re like bakers who tell the hungry not to make their own bread but instead to wait for cake and caviar.

Again and again: Who owns Whitewater? Everyone and no one.

There’s no reason for residents in this town to deny themselves better opportunities for the sake of a few old men who insist that it must be their way or no way. The adversaries of free markets in Whitewater are private men who want to deny opportunity for others. No one in Whitewater lives at the pleasure of these aged schemers, no one here was born merely to deny himself or herself better life on an incumbent’s behalf.

Open the market to alternatives, and let people freely choose among them.

CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Local Government

Daily Bread for 1.2.25: The Extraordinary Ordinary

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 28. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:32, for 9 hours, 7 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1777, American forces under the command of General Washington repulse a British attack led by General Charles Cornwallis at the Second Battle of Trenton near Trenton, New Jersey:

After assaulting the American positions three times and being repulsed each time, Cornwallis decided to wait and finish the battle the next day. Washington moved his army around Cornwallis’s camp that night and  attacked [Lieutenant Colonel Charles] Mawhood at Princeton the next day.

Somewhere in America, perhaps even in Whitewater, a grammarian is pondering whether nouns or adjectives are more important as parts of speech. And so, and so, in the expression the extraordinary ordinary, that person might wonder: does the noun ordinary matter more, or might the modifier extraordinary tell the crucial tale?

The public policy of Whitewater offers an answer.

Bringing the city into an ordinary development position, like other cities, is for Whitewater an act that should be ordinary, but requires instead extraordinary effort.

It’s in this way that Whitewater’s politics (and culture) are best understood. What should be easy is often hard, and what should be embraced often meets special-interest opposition.

Whitewater’s like a community where a few people have always eaten well, but some of those few have left others with less and worse, all the while insisting falsely that less and worse is somehow more and better.

If we’d had better policies before, one could say that this city for the last generation was meeting an ordinary development standard; as we had worse policies before, Whitewater is only now overcoming below-average standards.

We’re now on a proper diet after years of missed meals and poor nutrition. It’s simply that a few would like the community to believe that the past’s poor nutrition is preferable to the present’s proper diet.

For Whitewater, it’s extraordinary to be, at long last, ordinary in policy. It’s from the ordinary — the normal, and business-standard — that we can at last take advantage of the national and state growth that other communities have enjoyed.

Whitewater has waited long for ordinary, long for normal, long for business-standard.

There’s the answer to a grammarian pondering whether the noun or adjective of extraordinary ordinary is more important. For Whitewater, it’s extraordinary to be, at long last, ordinary in policy. It’s from the ordinary — the normal and business-standard — that we can at last take advantage of the national and state growth that other communities have enjoyed.

That’s a notable accomplishment.

A methodical, patient look at recent development projects, post by post, is overdue. Not so overdue as the projects themselves, of course, but that fault lies with the past.

Looking at these projects, of the last two years, is a good way to begin this year.

That’s what this libertarian blogger will do.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.1.25: Happy New Year

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 29. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:31, for 9 hours, 6 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1836, the Wisconsin Territory is formed by an act of the Michigan Legislature. Brown County loses a portion of its original possession north of the Menominee River but gains the remainder of the eastern peninsula. Territorial officials were sworn in later in the year on July 4th.

New York rings in the 2025 New Year with famed Times Square ball drop:

What’s Up: January 2025 Skywatching Tips from NASA:

This month, four bright planets greet you in the early evening. Venus and Saturn cozy up on the 17th and 18th, while Mars is at its brightest in the past two years. The Moon occults Mars for those in the U.S. and Eastern Canada on Jan. 13. Plus, the Quadrantid meteors peak on the morning of Jan. 3 before dawn. 0:00 Intro
0:14 Four planets at once
1:02 Venus & Saturn Get Close
1:39 Mars at Opposition
2:31 Quadrantid Meteors Peak
3:07 January Moon phases

Daily Bread, Faraway Places, Food

Daily Bread for 12.31.24: Lava Bread

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with occasional snow showers, and a high of 35. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:31, for 9 hours, 5 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1999, the first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor.

Making Iceland’s Lava Bread:

Siggi Rafn Hilmarsson is an Icelandic baker with an interesting technique. He buries his dough 16 inches underground where it actually bakes from the natural heat generated by Iceland’s volcanic hot springs. Why doesn’t Siggi just use a conventional oven? Come on. His method is WAY cooler.

The Moon Phases in 2025 – Full-year time-lapse:

Watch the moon phases and libration for 2025, as seen from Earth’s Northern Hemisphere, in this time-lapsed animation that is set at hourly intervals.

Daily Bread, Dogs, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 12.30.24: Wisconsin Sled Dog EditionTM

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 42. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:30, for 9 hours, 5 minutes of daytime. The moon is new with 0.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1853, with the Gadsden Purchase, the United States agrees to buy land from Mexico to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest.

These sled dogs are undeniably cool:

Step into the town of Gleason, Wisconsin, where the serene beauty of rural life meets the exhilarating world of dog sledding. Join us as we follow Melissa Omernick, a passionate musher whose love for the sport and her beloved sled dogs is truly infectious.

New York holds a confetti test in time for New Year’s Eve:

The famous Times Square Ball drop in New York City officially signaled the start of 2021, ending a year fraught with the pandemic and social turmoil in America and around the world.

Daily Bread, Law, Legislature, Litigation, Open Government, Public Records, Speaker Vos

Daily Bread for 12.29.24: Speaker Robin Vos Tries to Shirk Responsibility (Yet Again)

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 42. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:29, for 9 hours, 4 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1845, the United States annexes the Republic of Texas and admits it as the 28th state.

When lawmakers use public funds wastefully, taxpayers bear those costs. The costs send a signal to those taxpayers that the public deserves greater frugality from lawmakers. The waste is unfortunate; the signal to taxpayers, however, acts as a call for scrutiny over those lawmakers. When lawmakers violate the law, and private parties sue successfully over those violations, the public cost of that litigation sends a message to taxpayers that their public representatives have burdened them once again (and so should be replaced).

Speaker Robin Vos, however, does not want the WISGOP Legislature’s failures to reach taxpayers. No and no again: Vos has wasted money, and the public should feel that he has; Vos’s position has lost in the courts, and the public should feel that he’s lost.

Predictably, Vos is trying to avoid the price of his own violations of the law:

A three-member Wisconsin appeals court has awarded $241,000 in legal fees and costs to the liberal group American Oversight in two open records lawsuits it brought against Assembly Speaker Robin Vos over the investigation he ordered into the 2020 presidential election.

The Waukesha-based District II Court of Appeals rejected Vos’ efforts to reverse Dane County Circuit Court decisions ordering the state to pick up $143,211 in legal fees for one American Oversight case and $98,000 for a second one. The rulings make clear the costs will ultimately be paid by taxpayers.

….

The three appellate judges reviewing the public records cases were two conservatives — Mark Gundrum and Maria Lazar — and one liberal, Lisa Neubauer.

See Daniel Bice, Appeals Court upholds $241,000 in legal fees to liberal group over Gableman records, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 27, 2024.

If the public doesn’t want to bear these costs, then the public needs a better majority, and a better speaker. Vos is a below-average steward of public funds and if the public wants Vos, well, it’s going to be more expensive than it would be with a competent Assembly speaker.

“Incredibly Safe!” By Lehnmat – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89016154

(Imagine being someone — in Whitewater, let’s say — who thought that a call from Vos was a sign of importance and influence. Honest to goodness, someone who thought that would be a ridiculous person. A call from Vos? Even the receptionist shouldn’t have to take that call, and it would be a burden merely to retrieve his message from voicemail.)

See also from FREE WHITEWATER an entire category dedicated to Robin Vos. It’s a years-long account of his serial failures. (Best not to read near mealtime.)

One eco-friendly way to recycle Christmas trees — feed them to goats:

Art, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.28.24: Murals in Snow

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 48. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:28, for 9 hours, 3 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 5.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1943, Soviet authorities launch Operation Ulussy, beginning the deportation of the Kalmyk nation to Siberia and Central Asia.

Whitewater’s recent snow, only a small accumulation, is already gone. Those of us who like snow (and, in my case, snow shoeing) will have to wait. We can be patient; winter has only begun. (Remember: big snow is good snow!)

In the meantime, here’s an artist who works in, and with, snow:

Update — NASA spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe, is safe after closest-ever approach to the sun:

Previously: NASA spacecraft attempts closest-ever approach to Sun.

Beautiful Whitewater, City, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.27.24: Christmas at Cravath’s Festive Lights

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 48. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset is 4:27, for 9 hours, 3 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 10.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1968, Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first orbital crewed mission to the Moon.

By NASA – http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a410/ap8-S68-56310.jpg
Public Domain

In Whitewater, at the Cravath Lakefront, one finds this year Christmas at Cravath’s festive lights display. It’s quite beautiful, and unlike any display in the city within memory. The lights will be up through 1.6.25.

Highly recommended.

City, Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 12.26.24: Economic Growth Remains Strong

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 43. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset is 4:27, for 9 hours, 2 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 17.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1776, at the Battle of Trenton, the Continental Army under George Washington executes a successful surprise attack and defeats a garrison of Hessian forces serving Great Britain.

A reminder, as the year ends, that American economic growth has been strong:

The US economy expanded at a faster pace in the third quarter than previously estimated, owing in part to to stronger consumer spending and exports.

Gross domestic product increased at a 3.1% annualized rate in the third quarter, the third estimate of the figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed Thursday. That compared to a previous projection of 2.8%. Consumer spending was marked up to a 3.7% pace — the fastest since early 2023 — boosted by stronger outlays on services.

Exports expanded by 9.6% in the July-to-September period, up from 7.5% in the prior estimate. That was also entirely due to services.

The numbers reinforce the notion that the economy is still powering ahead despite expectations among forecasters for an eventual slowdown. 

See Matthew Boseler, US Growth Revised to 3.1% on Stronger Consumer Spending, Exports, Bloomberg, December 19, 2024.

Of inflation, a similar good story is true: national inflation peaked two years ago, and has since fallen drastically. See Greg Iacurci, Here’s the inflation breakdown for November 2024, CNBC, December 11, 2024.

The contention that the economy has been terrible, most notably these last two years, is false. And yet, and yet, one hears each day new contentions that distort to the point of mythology the state of the economy. If the economic continues to do well, expect the populists to insist that it was only strong from January 20th onward. If the economy does poorly, expect the populists to say that the fault lies with anyone and anything other than the populists themselves.

One more point, evergreen in Whitewater: Whitewater’s old guard, its special interest faction, has never produced through its policies for this city broad economic gains for individuals and households. For themselves, of course. For others, no.

On the contrary, even in solid national conditions they found themselves bemoaning their own policies’ inability to capitalize. See Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.

In this respect, these transactional, special-interest men in Whitewater are like the populists: they don’t care about the accuracy of what they’re saying, but only that what they’re saying serves their particular political interests.

PBS Wisconsin Visits the Yerkes Observatory: