There’s a Police Commission meeting tonight in Whitewater, at 7 p.m. The agenda for the meeting appears below.
First the agenda, and remarks thereafter.
One standard for residents, an easier one for officials.
At the bottom of the August 4th agenda, one reads that on August 2nd it was
August 2, 2010
Emailed/mailed to PFC members
Faxed to the Whitewater Register for posting
Faxed to the Library for posting
Emailed to Channel 13 for posting
Emailed to City Clerk’s Office for posting on City Hall bulletin board
Posted on City of Whitewater Website (ci.whitewater.wi.us)
That’s two days’ notice before the meeting. For those who might need an interpreter, or access for a disability, however, the city has as a more demanding, three days’ notice requirement:
Anyone requiring special arrangements is asked to call the Office of the City Clerk, 262-473-0500, at least 72 hours prior to the meeting.
The Commission expects at least 72 hours. By their own standards, they’ve not provided enough time for entirely reasonable requests of those with special needs.
This isn’t a clerical matter. Is there no leader who reads this, and sees what it plainly means? I don’t even mean ‘is there no leader who cares’ about service to residents, but instead is there no leader who sees how embarrassing this is?
The shiver of excitement. Perhaps, every so often, officials here and elsewhere get a shiver of excitement of doing what they want, whatever they want, good policy notwithstanding. There’s probably been more than one person on this continent who’s mumbled to himself, “I’ll do what I damn well please.”
That’s predictable and unsurprising. I’ve often thought that officials gone wrong don’t get better; they get worse. They typically huddle together, supporting each other in one bad notion or another.
The history of the South from two generations ago is instructive. Those who were defiantly opposed to a better politics didn’t yield easily or become gentler.p They grew worse, for the most part.
Change came around them, and in spite of them.
In a different way, that will be true in Whitewater. A new generation will discard and hold in contempt the shoddy practices of this time. (In the interim, as some of the current group succeed each other, one can be sure that they’ll quickly turn on their immediate predecessors. They’ll prove faithless successors.)
A good point, still as useful as when first made, deserves to be made again. A few of those are in order:
About that notice. Look at how the Commission provides notice, apart from the amount of notice. It’s a lot of faxing for posting, but not much certainly that half of it gets up, and gets seen, in time.
If these men and women had a yard sale, they’d be sure to give more notice than what they give for a public commission.
The same small room. The City Manager’s Conference Room has a great sound to it (so very important), but this group belongs in a meeting room, not a conference room.