I’ve had a good bit of email asking about possible changes in Whitewater’s municipal administration, and whether I think her city manager will take a job elsewhere.
On Friday, I wrote an initial reply to the news of City Manager Brunner’s candidacy for a post in Fond du Lac: Qui-Gon Jinn’s Sound Advice for Whitewater.
Obscure and overly-dry, but my way of teasing about a 128-point, screaming red headline published elsewhere announcing the candidacy as though it were a schocking development.
A shocking development, by the way, would be something like MARTIANS SPLASHDOWN IN CRAVATH LAKE or WHITEWATER COW REALLY DOES JUMP OVER THE MOON.
Qui-Gon offers solid advice: no point in looking too far ahead, “at the expense of the moment.”
How this candidacy will go I cannot say. Private-sector employees switch jobs without much fuss; publicly-paid leaders do so with predictably more notice, and less certainty.
About Whitewater, though, one can be confident: whether easy or hard, Whitewater’s destination awaits, where she will be a different city from the one in which we live today. (See, along these lines, New Whitewater’s Inevitability.)
We’re part way toward that different city, and well-past the point of return. The principal questions for us are ‘how long?’ and ‘how easy or hard?’ There will surely be bumps – and perhaps obstacles — along this road.
Yet, for it all, there will be no going back.