Our Place
Captain John Peters, new Chief of Lake Geneva’s Fire Department.
What makes him exceptional, and how is it that such an outstanding fireman is promoted right down the street from Mike Rasmussen, fantastic Chief of Police in Lake Geneva? Perhaps it’s easiest to simply tell a short story founded in truth, and that the Geneva Shore Report unwittingly played a role in. A couple of weeks ago, the GSR reported that Sally Nimmow, owner of the new Thrift-Inn’ was opening her doors for business. Ken Robers, that stickler of a building inspector for the city, had stopped by for a final inspection and told Sally that she was okay to go into business. Sally thought that meant she could open her doors. The GSR reported that she was open the next day. The city staff read the GSR and sent the police. Sally was invited to the Lake Geneva Police Department at 4:25 pm to answer a complaint for operating a business without a license.
Lake Geneva Fire Chief John Peters examines the gear inside the active shooter response EMT kit that medical personnel would take into an active shooter.
It seems that the Lake Geneva Fire Department had not sent in the proper form. It was Sally’s responsibility to get the report, not the fire department’s to forward it. Sally was released by the police and raced to the fire department, but nobody there could help her. They forwarded an email to the fire inspector. Fire Chief John Peters came in on the end of the conversation. Sally left. John called Sally realizing how upset she was, and justifiably so. He told her he would get the form, and then get it over to the city himself just before they closed, personally. He did just that. Sally was open the next morning for business by 11am and no police officers showed up to enforce any violations. Nobody did anything wrong in this story, except for the business owner overlooking the fact that the form had not been filed with the city before she could open. The police were great to her. But the real class act in this whole thing was the action of an extraordinary fire chief, John Peters. Like Rasmussen, who will be out in a cruiser on the street Christmas morning, John Peters goes that extra mile. He is one of those special people that make southern Wisconsin in general, and Lake Geneva in particular, a fantastic place to live, work, play and just hang around in.
The Resort Area Tax (or the RAT) is not dead.
The issue keeps sounding like its taken its last gasp, but then, like a tattered Vampire Lestat, it returns when the sun goes down and warm bodies full of red blood pass by. The blood being, in this case, ready money. Right now Alan “Cordite” Kordus, King Rat of the Lake Geneva city council, is pushing some sort of agreement around the lake. From community to community he goes, attempting to trade, convince or merely try to pay off Town of Linn, Fontana, and Williams Bay, so they will sign on board and say that a huge amount of their revenue is taken in from resorts. What resorts? Oh shut up, Kordus is on a roll!
This supposedly conservative republican, and de facto leader of the Lake Geneva city council, is one of those special conservatives who run around shouting about how taxes are an outrage and they ought to be cut to the bone. Then he slips the dagger under the table and inserts it into the public’s wallet. He could sell Town of Linn by agreeing to sign an agreement that Lake Geneva will no longer take Town of Linn property, like it did with the dead and defunct Hummel property. That might work there. What about Fontana?
Well, Sherriff Arpaio, down in Arizona, out of work and even this new president wouldn’t hire him. Kordus might be able to swing the deal and get him to fill the Police Chief position. Everyone in violation of anything, living there or passing through, could walk around wearing pink. Arpaio did that in Arizona, why not in Fontana? That would be a fun story to cover.
