Whitewater’s administration proposes renovating the area on the east side of the city, through which commuters and visitors arrive in Whitewater. I’ve posted on the project before. (See, About that story on Whitewater’s East Gateway Proposal: What’s Missing?)
A few remarks:
1. The design is undeniably beautiful.
2. It would have been better to include the price prominently and initially in documents about the project. As for anyone outside the city, publicizing the project without asking and publishing an answer about the price is grossly negligent. Why bother reporting about municipal government if one simply acts as an agent of that government? (I well understand that’s the effectual truth, sadly.)
3. I’ve estimated the cost, based on the design, as well above a million dollars, and likely an appreciable multiple of a million. I’m confident that I’m right.
4. Whitewater will never get a measurable return on the East Gate investment. One may simply declare that the beautifcation was worth the cost of millions, but no one – no one in all the city – can show that millions for beautifcation paid for itself.
“If you build it, they will come” is a fine line from a baseball fantasy, but it has failed this city each time it’s been tried: Tax Incremental Districts, an Innovation Center, a Generac Bus, or WEDC grants.
They’ve all been gross wastes of money, and not one of them has performed as touted.
In fact, the actual fiscal condition of both our Tax Incremental Districts and Innovation Center is far worse than anyone in the city administration or among their reflexive boosters cares to admit. Concealing the truth is bad policy, and treats the public as trespassers to their own government.
5. If big projects have failed us (and they have), there’s still a better approach available to Whitewater: an improvement of relations between government and residents and government and businesses.
Latisha Birkeland, Director of Neighborhood Services, is the contact for the East Gate project. Someone was bound to have that role, and this project has been kicked around for years, long before Ms. Birkeland’s arrival.
We’ve not met, and it’s probably an understatement to say that she’s lost nothing by not having met me. (Truly, the substitution of personality for independent policy critiques of Whitewater’s municipal affairs has done us enormous harm.)
This city’s big-ticket investments have failed because they’ve been too big, ill-considered, and often simply grant grabs with the only real produce from them being grand headlines.
But I’d venture this claim: the modernization of Neighborhood Services that Ms. Birkeland’s achieved since her arrival has been genuine, and of more value to this city than the big-ticket items I’ve listed above.
Our success depends not on more of the same, but on something different: a change in the city government’s relation to others.
East Gate’s an attractive proposal, but we’ll not gain meaningfully from it, and certainly not at the price.
