Here’s part two of a series of posts on Whitewater’s 2010 City Performance Plan. Part 1, and the document itself, appear in the preceding post.

Far worse than a ginned-up success rate is a claim so shameless that a reasonable person would never venture the proclamation.

Under City Manager Kevin Brunner’s supposed accomplishments, one finds this item:

2. Complete all TIF and CIP projects on time and within budget. All projects completed on time and within budget.

In a city with a distressed tax incremental district — a failure present in only a small minority of Wisconsin cities — Whitewater’s city manager proclaims TIF success.

This is a shamelessness and arrogance nearly unbounded. It also confirms that maxim that mediocre leaders don’t get better, they get worse.

You know, and I know, too, that there’s a way to rationalize all this. It’s all definitional; under the intended definition, the statement of success supposedly makes sense.

What nonsense that is.

A man who burns down his own house is in no position to declare himself a prudent homeowner because he habitually took out the trash on time.

In these municipal claims, one sees the descent into self-parody, and further fall into absurdity.

The residents of Whitewater deserve much, much better than this.

Next — There’s something even worse than inflated percentages and shameless declarations of success.

In the Whitewater 2010 City Performance Plan, City Manager Kevin Brunner contends that in 2010, municipal leaders accomplished 87.1% of their goals. (I have embedded the full document below.)

That sounds like an impressive success rate, until one considers that many of the goals listed are ordinary tasks that one should perform fully as part of one’s job.

As it turns out, I’ve been thinking of becoming a professional basketball player for the Miami Heat. Let’s see how far along I am toward that goal:

• Locate a sporting goods store. CHECK!
• Purchase a basketball. CHECK!
• Find a shoe store. CHECK!
• Buy some basketball shoes. CHECK!
• Make sure I save the receipts from the two stores for tax purposes — business expense! CHECK!
• Get a plane ticket to Miami. CHECK!
• Find a hotel in town. CHECK!
• Pick up some cool sunglasses in the hotel gift shop. CHECK!
• Take a cab to the arena where the Heat plays home games. CHECK!
• Actually play on the same court with LeBron and Dwayne. PENDING…

That’s 9 out of 10 — and by City Manager Brunner’s reasoning, I’m 90% of the way toward a professional sports career. That’s — ready? — actually 2.9% closer to my goal than the entire municipal government is toward its goals.

(It’s also higher than my 86.3% achievement in 2008 toward the goal of becoming a ninja, and my 88.9% achievement in 2009 toward the goal of singing at La Scala.)

The inclusion of mundane tasks stacks any supposed achievement in one’s favor.

Of the nearly 150 goals the city manager lists, countless tasks are simply the conventional work of the year. Of all the competed tasks, by my count — and yours may differ — well over half are duties one would normally expect as part of a year’s work. After one excludes the conventional tasks, a majority of tasks weren’t fully completed.

There’s nothing wrong with not reaching all of one’s goals — especially when those goals are lofty ones.

There’s something wrong — risible and refutable — about a municipal leader presenting these numbers as grand progress (up from last year!).

It should be enough to work hard each day, without a ginned up set of percentages to pretend performance is more than it is.

Next — There’s something even worse than inflated percentages.