Two recent meetings illustrate the simple, routine workings of government in the city: the 9.10.12 Planning Commission meeting, and the 9.11.12 Common Council session. I have embedded both below. You’ll find, I’d say, nothing extraordinary in either. Instead, it’s just the routine business of city planning, and the preparations for interviewing candidates to be Whitewater’s next city manager.
All cities have planning meetings, and all cites eventually replace hired managers with new ones. It’s sensible that this should be matter-of-fact. Most municipal government events are, and should be treated as, routine. Years of the supposedly grand and the visionary have left us only smaller and short-sighted.
We’re much better off with a politics of the ordinary. If we should develop that routine, we’ll have found the extraordinary in the practice of routine, ordinary government.
Here are recordings of those recent meetings:
Plan Commission Meeting 09/10/2012 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo.
Common Council Meeting 09/11/2012 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo.