Whitewater chose a new city manager earlier this year, and now Fort Atkinson has picked a new manager. Evelyn Johnson, the city administrator of Prairie City, Iowa, will replace John Wilmet. Wilmet has been city manager of nearby Fort since ’98.
Johnson and Whitewater’s new city manager, Cameron Clapper, have at least two things in common: they’re both relatively young, and each holds a Master of Public Administration (the conventional, terminal degree for those seeking a managerial career in municipal government).
(Two longtime readers from Fort, both shrewd watchers of that city, told me they thought that Johnson – aged twenty-seven — is likely to do well. They each told me she seemed smart and hardworking, and that the politics of that city would suit her.)
Johnson and Clapper likely have some common perspectives from age and education, but the nearby cities in which they’ll be working are far apart in political culture.
We are in a transition here, from one culture to another, but Fort Atkinson is experiencing no similar metamorphosis. Our neighboring city has evolved more conventionally, these last twenty years’ time, and the next ten will be — for Fort — less profound. Johnson will be swimming in mostly placid waters.
There’s a benefit to being young, without the ossifying influence of tenure (‘in my twenty-five years of municipal experience,’ ‘in thirty-three years, we’ve always done it this way,’ etc.) The long-tenured often flatter themselves with the notion that their years of uncreative, low-quality work are something other than years of uncreative, low-quality work.
Better not to have these empty conceits to blind oneself to reality.
Of Public Administration as an academic field, though, I have mixed feelings. Advanced learning is a general good, and should be encouraged. Accomplishments of this kind are real, offer valuable knowledge, and demonstrate hard work.
Although it’s an advantage to be well-schooled, from an MPA program there can be so much emphasis on managing public matters that one would think there were no private ones. At least, one would think there were no private projects that didn’t somehow depend on public interference, and use of private residents’ money, as though a limitless public resource.
It’s not merely that I’d prefer less spent, overall. It’s even more so that I am opposed to spending on already cash-flush businesses and special interests – interests that often get preferred access to MPA-holding officials who are taught to identify stakeholders, people of influence, and leading actors.
Who lives in a city? Residents, all equal.
Public policy should be – and is, when crafted properly – more than crony capitalism and grant-chasing.
One naturally hopes for the best for these leaders, of and for both cities.
Sometimes it’s difficult to realize we live in a University community, as this town’s political mindset and culture is archaic, primitive, closed, private, inclusive, self-serving and small-town minded. Fort Atkinson is much more a free-thinking, open city. I agree, Mr. Adams, that change is coming in Whitewater, but oh, so slowly.
It will be slow, and it has been slower than it should have been, slower than this city deserves. There will be twists and turns, and some tooth-and-nail, yet ahead. Whitewater is worth that effort.
I’ve no doubt that we’ll look back a decade from now and see how far we’ve come, to a city irreversibly different, for the better.