LITTLE GEMS
All Five Things.
Donations are excepted and collected most of the year. Kids need five things every winter to play outdoors during school recess. Not every kid has the five needed items and schools are very strict about not letting kids off the blacktop to play on the playground if they are missing one or more of the items. Some families struggle to accommodate this list, as the items are not cheap and add up fast, especially if they have more than one kid needing these items.
No kid should be left out of the winter fun, so if you have any kids’ sizes of winter coats, snow pants, waterproof gloves or mittens, hats, and winter boots the Lake Geneva YMCA is collecting right now. On October 15th, anyone in need of these items will be welcomed to Jaycees gym at the LG YMCA between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to shop for needed items. This is a wonderful campaign inspired by a student who did not want any fellow students left out. We can all appreciate that and follow his lead.
Gasoline prices in Lake Geneva and conditional use permits for gas stations.
The oil industry had made it politically impossible for local communities to have any power over what gas stations charge for fuel. In fact, the petroleum industry has long labored to make sure that the American public knows almost nothing about who makes what in the sale of its products. Most people think that nobody in the entire chain really makes any money. Gas stations make near nothing, as do processing and transport operations and even the producers at the oil pumps.
The oil industry will manufacture and sell 135 billion gallons of gasoline this year. The oil industry will likely profit 200 billion dollars. That’s nearly a dollar and a half a gallon. The oil industry, and all the experts they hire to write reports, claim that the industry makes about five cents a gallon! Do your own math. Look it up on the Internet. Gas stations, right on down the line, all claim that they make about five cents a gallon or less on the sale of this stuff. Amazing coincidence in numbers, don’t you think?
They are all lying. Gas stations are not getting by on the sale of convenience items. The price of gasoline went up by half a dollar on Sunday night, everywhere in Lake Geneva. Some oil facility in Ohio caught fire. That didn’t change the price that these stations, one and all, paid for the gasoline in their underground tanks, but the citizens sure took it in the ear and wallet. When are small communities like Lake Geneva going to step in and start saying that they don’t want these lying mega-stations becoming the central beating hearts of their downtowns anymore?
Conditional use permits are the key. Change the permits to begin denying these proto-convenience operations into servants instead of behind the scenes commanding officers in all American communities. To stop being screwed one has to first know that one is being screwed!
