Update, 9.22.12: Embedded below is the video of the Friday evening candidates’ community forum.
City Manager Candidates Forum 09/21/2012 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo.
Original post from 9.21.12:
Earlier this evening, Whitewater held a candidates’ forum for her open city manager position. There are five candidates, and it’s likely that Council will pick one of them by tomorrow afternoon.
Whitewater is in need of something different from her last two municipal administrations. The earlier of the two ended with a bang, the more recent with a whimper. Both were celebrated when they began; either would have done better to manage humbly and inclusively. These last four or so years, in particular, have been mostly wasted – a city in need of basic management has been littered with big schemes and tiny results.
A few observations on the community forum, held in the municipal building, and lasting a bit over an hour —
1. Traditional and Conventional. All of the candidates are professional public administrators, are committed to that work, and have studied public administration at one time or another. Most are about the same age, and from their answers, all have a (mostly) similar outlook. Four of the five are near the end of their careers, I’d guess. These are all men (and they are all men, by the way) who see the world as public officials would see it; there’s is shared a government-to-outside perspective. The similarities in the selection of finalists are almost certainly by design. It’s a group meant to be heavy on experience, of a certain type.
2. Understated. At least in these interviews, each candidate was even-spoken, steady, and almost subdued. Although this was understandably a long day for them, there’s a value in hearing candidates after a long day: some working days will be long, too. One gets a better sense of their reserves of energy and enthusiasm. No one was ebullient or powerfully expressive, but instead simply moderate in expression.
3. Inside or outside? Whitewater has a choice to make: inside or outside? Will the next city manager take a highly-visible or a low-profile role? Either approach can be successful, but only if both possibilities are grounded in true humility, fairness, and respect for honest analysis and practical accomplishments. A pyramid-builder is of no use, but much harm, to a small city. Generally, the more traditional and conventional the candidate, the better a low-profile role will be.
4. Who decides? Who will play the leading role, of policymaker, in the city? Will it be the city’s common council or her city manager and his staff? All correctly deferred to common council as the legitimate policymaker, but the proof is in the pudding. There will always be the risk of bureaucratic mission creep, a few months or a year after a new city manager is in the job. That kind of overreaching has been bad for the city; trying more of it will produce the same disappointing results.
5. Development success stories. Most of the candidates described development success stories as ones in which prospective businesses got tax breaks, federal or state grants, the buying out of homeowners to clear the way for business expansion, etc. No. Those are bad ideas, but predicable ones for men who see the world from a government-out perspective. It’s also an approach of reduced prospects: there’s less an less public money to invest (really, to waste) on big businesses that want big handouts.
The people of Whitewater don’t owe big-talking and big-scheming businesses a dime of their money, or their public obligation (as municipal debt). Public money should be , first and foremost, for public safety and care of the poor. Real capitalists use true, private capital; the rest are frauds and burdens on their less fortunate neighbors.
Those near the end of their municipal careers may look back to days when government could impose on taxpayers again and again. There’s no more to take; they won’t be able to manage that way in the decade ahead
6. A Distressed Tax Incremental District. Whitewater is one the very few communities in Wisconsin to have a distressed tax incremental district. All the candidates but one seemed to know that we are one of the unfortunate few. The fifth answered a question about TID 4 with a general reply that supposed tax incremental districts are designed to overcome an area’s distress. That’s correct, that is their intended purpose. It’s just that they’re seldom so sparingly used – it’s often a spending scheme used too often, that promises too much and delivers too little.
And so, here we are.
How to fix a distressed TID? Most of the candidates proposed refinancing (reasonable if possible) or borrowing from other TIDs that might be doing better. It’s this second idea that’s really and truly mistaken. Borrowing from other TIDs compounds a city’s troubles. (For more about TIDs in the city, here’s a search link to earlier posts.)
The only viable, longterm solution is to find the growth in private investment that the TID was designed to attract as the very reason for its creation.
7. A Chance to Do Better. In these candidates, Whitewater has a chance to do better. I wrote earlier, when posting about the finalists, that I wished them all well. These have been hard years for the city, but we can – and I believe we will — do better. Practical, matter-of-fact, day-in day-out management would do us a world of good.
I hope, as everyone here does, for the best for our city.