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Impact fees, or the lack of them, in the City of Lake Geneva, has been a problem.
Impact fees are important to any community, as they cover the cost of water, sewer, law enforcement, all service departments, parks, libraries, and so much more including anything that helps communities run safely and efficiently (not to mention parks). The issue has not always been an issue.  The city used to have these impact fee charges in the past and developers paid them by charging the new property owners they sell their structures.

That all changed one day quite a while back disguised as a non-issue benefitting only the big developers. Recently, as Lake Geneva has continued to add new developments and the population has continued to grow, the cost of maintaining and providing services in the growing community increased. The question of how is the city going to cover the cost and where are the impact fees to help with that? City officials have been discussing this and want the fees back in play.

Previous meetings have discussed just that, most recently just 2 ½ weeks before the spring election a special city council meeting was scheduled. The three big developers were there and ready to speak or defend themselves, but unfortunately (or maybe very conveniently) the city attorney erroneously or purposely decided there was not a quorum, and the city could not proceed with the meeting (even though there evidently was a quorum. One would have thought that the item would have been added to the next city council meeting that did not happen. The reasoning behind that is allegedly some felt it was better to wait until after election day.

That brings things to April 11th, Monday night’s city council meeting. and the issue of the ‘Lake Geneva public facility needs assessment and impact fee study’ was finally discussed and voted on. Back in January the Finance, Licensing, and Regulation committee recommended awarding Ruekert-Mieke Inc. the job. Yes, this topic has been a part of the conversation and on agendas long enough to get bids from different companies and narrow it down to one recommendation so close to taking action, and then nothing. Before any fees can be collected from developers a study on what is fair and what to charge needs to happen. Finally, the city council met, and the impact fees were questioned and discussed. The public comments were all in favor of the fee update and the urgency of getting it done.

City officials agreed and voted in favor of the assessment and study to get it done immediately. Alderperson Fesenmaier questioned the ‘turtle’s pace’ at which this issue is going, and the city administrator, David Nord, spoke up ready to answer that question. Fesenmaier believes that if the issue was not being held up then there would be monies available for projects that impact fees are for, like the traffic light on Edwards, for which the school is going to have to cover a majority of the cost.

Lake Geneva City Administrator, David Nord, spoke up ready to answer that question. This is out of character for Nord as usually he only speaks up if absolutely necessary, but he wanted the record to show that the council wanted a ‘nonstandard scope of work’ done, uncommon to the assessment companies’ results. After a lot of back and forth with city officials and the companies, the assessment companies were finally able to deliver a formal bid and get it accepted.

Now, apparently, unless somebody figures out that Nord’s nonstandard scope of work’ stands in the way, the work can get started.

Person of the Week

Chris Brookes is a vital part of our community, doing wonderful work preserving Lake Geneva’s history. Her current project is STORY Corps at the Lake Geneva Public Library. Make sure to stop in and share your story.