Whitewater, Wisconsin’s latest Common Council meeting was held this last Tuesday, September 16, 2008.
Whitewater recently experienced a traffic fatality along its principal roadway through town. There was an extended discussion of which changes to traffic signals might be prudent. It might seem like an easy decision, but risk-reduction of this kind is seldom easy. There are no sure decisions, and that was evident in the discussion.
Later in the meeting, there was a discussion of a proposed amendment to a current city ordinance about the screening of dumpsters. That discussion drifted into an extended discussion, and that’s about all one needs to know about the state of affairs in our small city.
There was a past Council session when Council members tried to find ways to work together more congenially. I remarked at the time, in a post entitled, “The October 16th Common Council Meeting,” that
I have never heard or seen a session like this for politicians. I’m sure Whitewater’s not the first city to try this; I’ve just never heard of it elsewhere. I wish the effort well, and the first council meeting after the on boarding seems to have gone well. There is a difference with modern business or professional life, though. In a business or professional setting, typically the team leader will be able to hold others accountable for not living up to the standards set at the session. For a legislative body, elected representatives have — rather than a single hiring-and-firing manager — different constituencies and legislative districts. Over time, they may decide that it matters more to them to please their districts and constituents than it matters to maintain the common standards of the on-boarding session.
We’ll see.
In a political environment, harmony may prove illusive, as it did during the dumpster discussion. Perhaps recurring on-boarding sessions would have been more prudent, but I doubt it.
That a dumpster debate produces discord suggests little progress has been made in the last year, and that, from one from one set of Council leaders to another, the more things change, the more they stay the same.