PLATTEVILLE, Oct. 7 — I got to attend Monday afternoon another case of Platteville residents working together to get a big project done with government contribution but not government direction.

The new Platteville fire station is the culmination of, according to a former Common Council member, three decades of discussion and close to a decade of work. The former cramped space, which was barely able to handle modern fire trucks and wasn’t up to handling issues firefighters face today, such as hazardous materials created by fires, has now been replaced by abundant space and technology in such areas as identifying properties from whence come fire calls, or in such seemingly mundane areas as laundry equipment. And the old equipment is a nice touch.

I figured out that approximately since years that started in 1 became years that started in 2 (I’ve been here 14 years, so some of this was here when I got here), Platteville has added, in approximate chronological order, a new skate park, dog park, police station, paved and lighted recreation trails in a trail network that is being expanded, an appropriate building for what now is Southwest Health EMS, the Platteville Public Library and Holiday Inn Express, the Broske Center, pickleball courts, the Platteville Inclusive Playground in Smith Park, the school district’s Platteville Activities Complex, and, this year, the new Family Aquatic Center and fire station, plus the in-progress Grant County Humane Society’s move from Lancaster to Platteville. That’s quite a list, for which credit can be passed out in numerous directions, including Inspiring Community for showing people with interesting ideas how to get expertise and funding to turn those ideas into projects that result in events like ribbon-cuttings.

Interesting question: what’s next? (Besides oncoming infrastructure for which taxpayers pay.) Maybe more houses?

But that wasn’t the only thing going on this week …

It’s a conspiracy! On Wednesday I got two Letters with the exact same wording preceding their text: “Please include the attached letter in your next available Letters to the Editor section. I have bcc’d several editors from newspapers in Wisconsin’s 3rd congressional district, so I apologize if this is going to newspapers that are under the same media firm.”

I got another Letter last week with a similar message. It’s an old (well, as old as email) public relations trick to blind-carbon-copy multiple recipients of emails, but you don’t usually tell the recipients that’s what you’re doing. The correct PR move is to make each recipient assume it’s the only recipient so each feels the need to run this news release, or in this case letter to the editor. At least in our company each editor makes the decision of whether or not to run letters to the editor in whole or in part.

This should demonstrate to the reader of our Letters, though, an organized letter-writing campaign targeting, overwhelmingly, Republican incumbents, possibly to get readers of those Letters the impression of an oncoming blue wave. Republican-leaning readers are less likely to write letters to any editor than Democratic-leaning readers, and that’s been the case for a long time. The latter group may feel the need to, or the belief they can, persuade.

People have the right to their opinions, and your favorite weekly newspaper has a pretty liberal (in a non-political sense) Letters policy. Just be aware that Letters are not particularly predictive. (The prediction value of yard signs for candidates is also debatable.) If Letters’ presence were a bellwether, the recall of Gov. Scott Walker in 2012 would have been successful, the current president would have been voted into office neither time he won, and this area would be represented by candidates with Ds after their name instead of Rs, historically speaking since the Civil War. This state has a lot of people whose political involvement begins and ends with voting and who do not feel the need to express their political opinions in public, and maybe not in private either.

WINsonsin! I have mentioned before here my opinion that many fans of Wisconsin sports teams are spoiled because of how bad America’s Dairyland’s teams used to be. I bring this up because of something possibly unprecedented:

• On Friday, Platteville, Belmont and Iowa–Grant all won their football games.
• On Saturday, the Badgers and UW–Platteville won. (The Badgers got wins in football and volleyball, plus men’s and women’s hockey sweeps.) Potosi/Cassville also won. The Brewers won their first National League Division Series game.
• On Sunday, the Packers won. The Brewers won their second NLDS game in more dramatic fashion than Saturday’s win. (Even Da Bears won, for those who care about that.)

Given the plethora of bad history of with the Badgers and Packers and the fact most Brewers seasons haven’t ended with playoff berths, fans should appreciate and enjoy success instead of whining about insufficient (by their definition) success.