Ask yourself this question: Who is the most well-known and influential member of our Common Council? Some have been community figures for years, others more recent additions to our politics. Only one, though, has a community following — small, but dedicated, committed, assertive: Dr. Roy Nosek.
Now, I have been a critic of Nosek, but credit where credit is due — he’s stirred up more community debate about his issues than anyone else on Council for any other issues. It’s not even close — only Nosek has advanced indefatigably a clear agenda. No one else on Council has a constituency so intense as Nosek’s, and he has made more headway advancing his views than the rest of the Council put together has on theirs.
(What are the issues of some of these others? No one could even tell you. What are Nosek’s views? Everyone in the city knows.)
(For three my posts critiquing Nosek’s views and their influence, see On Nosek on Student Housing, Part 1 (Economics), On Nosek on Student Housing, Part 2 (Culture), and On Nosek on Student Housing, Part 3 (McCann’s Story in the GazetteXtra).)
Nosek’s moved in one direction, despite possible re-zoning of Tratt Street, to advance his opposition to student housing commitment to single family homes: toward the smallest number of off-campus student rental units, and the preservation or reclamation of single family homes from the depredations of student renters and (dare I speak the word?) landlords.
He’s also fought a war against dumpsters, but that’s been a sideshow, really — his signature issue to my mind has been student housing and its impact on single family homes.
It is a measure of his success that others speak in his terms — he wants preservation or reclamation of single family homes, and offers nothing about new housing growth on the periphery of the city.
(Preservation and reclamation are numerically insignificant efforts in a college town with a college so large as a proportion of the city. See, Whitewater Common Council Meeting for 9/2: Student Housing (Part 2). Only growth of new single family units on the edges of the city will meaningfully alter the proportion of single family to multi-unit homes.)
Nosek now seeks a city commitment to assure that in each case where a home becomes a multi-unit dwelling, a multi-unit dwelling elsewhere in Whitewater will be reclaimed for single-family housing stock.
Nosek’s line in the sand: “No conversions of R1, not a one” absent a comprehensive city plan, unless there is a “tit for tat” reconversion of an R2, R3 property to R1. That’s no recommendation, it’s a proposal for a mandatory requirement to be imposed throughout the city.
Ultimately, this sort of change isn’t a Planning Commission matter, it’s a Common Council matter.
Later in the evening, in an abundance of common sense, but in a nod to Nosek’s influence and insistence, the Planning Commission recommended to the Common Council the preservation of single family homes.
(One quick note — there was an extended discussion about the language of the recommendation, and at first I thought it was too much discussion. Thinking about it, though, it was the best way to achieve the greatest consensus and harmony. Sometimes the answer to intensity is diffusion and discussion, so to speak.)
It’s a recommendation — as it would have to be — but it’s all about preservation, too. Therein lies Nosek’s gain — the debate isn’t about increasing the proportion of single family homes in town through growth, it’s about preservation of existing stock. A reactionary, and not a confident and progressive, approach.
This preservation/reclamation approach won’t alter meaningfully the balance between single family and multi-unit dwellings, but it will leave the city stuck in an enforcement war that it has not a clue how to fight.
In the end, this is a challenge of the city administration, and not the Planning Commission. If anything, the administration has made work of the Planning Commission more difficult. I’ll post more about that next.