Update: links fixed.
Whitewater’s Common Council met last night, and here are assorted observations on the meeting.
Scads of Objectives. Whitewater’s city manager lists 133 major city objectives, of which 85.7% were ‘completed or achieved.’ What should one say? It would have been better to achieve a few meaningful goals, than to list over a hundred, many of them routine.
There’s a false precision to all this, using a percentage (87.5%!) as though NASA were calculating odds on achieving a flight trajectory, or even the CIA assessing the risk of unrest in rural China.
There are a few, simple facts that matter; the rest is diversion and distraction.
The city’s poorer than it was at the beginning of City Manager Brunner’s administration — that’s one truth that really matters. (See, Whitewater’s Decade of Child Poverty.)
Whitewater’s Downtown. When I first started writing (2007), I wasn’t sure what would happen to our downtown. Even after a Great Recession, many downtown merchants (and other areas of the city with determined, plucky merchants) have survived. That’s no small thing — that’s a fine accomplishment, especially as underlying citywide conditions have been so difficult.
The presentation of the downtown’s annual report reflects a quiet confidence that comes through resilience and perseverance — clear, direct, succinct, informative. (Solid supporting materials are available in the Common Council documents posted online.)
A solid presentation doesn’t always suggest a solid product, but in this case it really does. There’s reason to be optimistic on this front.
Tourism. Tourism’s a captive of a town’s politics, culture, economy – people go to hip and fun destinations. Allow the town to grow organically, and she’ll develop a vibrant culture interesting and attractive to others. Fuss over everything, prohibit many things, inhibit many more, and we’ll not attract people. We’ll satisfy a few people who are here, at the expense of many more already here, and at the cost of newcomers so valuable to growth. (Along these lines, see How to Make Whitewater Hip and Prosperous.)
Memorandum of Understanding. There was an odd moment during the meeting when Council reviewed a memorandum of understanding between parties (including the city) on Whitewater’s Tech Park and Innovation Center. It’s odd and sad, as a play on words: there’s been no real understanding of good policy in this.
One of the leading players talked about the memorandum in response to questions from another, as though they had created something other than a wasteful shell of a project.
Millions in public funds and debt for something that only Babbitt or Gatsby could admire.
Fences, Preserves. Here in this city, there is an archaeological preserve of Native American effigy mounds, created long before European settlement. The mounds are close to a housing development, and some homeowners’ fences run across the preserve. These homeowners may not have known their fences ran across the boundaries of the preserve (especially since original fence lines were themselves older than some on the current homeowners).
Whatever the case, and despite the considerable acrimony involved, Whitewater’s city government should be able to manage the preserve and protect the mounds well enough. Whitewater’s misfortune — self-inflicted — is that even simple tasks take forever, and come with fussing and fighting along the way.
[Note, 2.10.2012: These remarks do not imply a lack of prior obligation of the city. Rather, whatever has transpired, the city should be able to handle these obligations, if it should handle anything at all. At the same time, the Landmarks Commission’s role and importance to the city remains as it was.]Lawn Grass, Prairie Grass. Connected to the discussion of the archaeological preserve was talk about the kinds of plants within it. They’ll be prairie grasses, as one might expect for a preserve.
We’re a rural community, and it’s puzzling that there’s confusion about mowing lawn grass as against prairie grass (or conventional lawns, natural lawns, and weeds, for that matter).
It’s not as though people here grew up in a concrete jungle, devoid of plants. Even people in New York (a place that actually has many plants) would be able to tell the difference between grass that needs mowing and prairie grass.
I’m sure that if New Yorker Mona Lisa Vito (a character from My Cousin Vinny) came to Whitewater, she’d be able to tell the difference between regular grass and prairie grass. (As ably, I’d guess, as she could tell a Buick Skylark from a Pontiac Tempest.)
The greatest beauty in our city is a natural beauty, followed closely only by the earliest human efforts of Native Americans and settlers. We should preserve so much of it as we can.