Earlier this week, I posted about a closed-session agenda item of the Tech Park Board about ‘negotiations’ with Green Energy Holdings concerning a waste digester in the city. Of the scope of those negotiations I had no idea. As readers surely know, I think there are sound objections of municipal finance, community development, economic policy, environmental protection, and open & responsible government to the idea. One holds one’s views sincerely, and so a resumption of the dodgy idea – however unsound and improbable – would have justified a diligent effort in opposition.
As it turns out, that ambiguous Tech Park Board discussion item seems to have been about the collapse of the project, and its out-of-town backers’ thousands in delinquent rent for office space at the Innovation Center.
One guesses as much from an open session discussion at the 10.25.12 Community Development Authority meeting. The discussion of the waste-digester project begins at 4:20 on the video:
Community Development Authority 10/25/2012 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo.
We may all be grateful when one of the worst ideas in recent memory is entirely behind our small and beautiful community. Turning away from that bad idea was, for so many reasons, a very good thing for Whitewater.