THE BRIGHT SIDE
The Geneva Lake Museum just wrapped up its 4th Annual Parade of Trees.
For the past four years the Geneva Lake Museum has held its remarkably beautiful ‘parade of trees.’ This event has been a great way to bring the business community and residents together during the holiday season. Thirty-nine businesses and non-profit organizations participated, submitting decorated Christmas trees. The trees are all very well thought out, very unique, and very beautiful. The competition gets pretty tough, as each participant tries to do better than the year before and, of course, there is some great rivalry and friendly competition that is fun to watch and enjoy.
The Lake Geneva Police Department participated for the first time this year, hoping to place better than the return entry of the Lake Geneva Fire Department. Both departmental staff are amazing and also are great friends. The banter between departments is great fun to witness. The winners of this year’s Parade of Tree have been announced. A big congratulations goes out to 1st place winner Putz n’ Around/Pete’s Printing, 2nd place to Brick & Mortar, and 3rd place to the Lake Geneva Police Department. The Fire Department is regrouping, maybe hoping to snare Aaron Rogers as a creative ‘pass throwing’ leader when he departs from the Green Bay Packers. The Pack and “Peter’s Raiders’ will be back this coming Christmas.
The GLC, GLEA and SEWRP.
The Geneva Lake Conservancy (GLC), Geneva Lake Environmental Agency (GLEA) and Southeast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRP) are hosting a joint meeting on January 26th. There is going to be an update to the Geneva Lake Management Plan, and they would like the public’s input. Learn about issues that will be studied to help protect the future health of Geneva Lake; meet and hear from project partners; help craft a lake user questionnaire; and tell others what lake related issues are important to you. The information will be used to update the Geneva Lake Management Plan, which will be completed in 2024 and offers recommendations on how to address various issues facing the lake, including rising phosphorus levels, invasive species, changing fisheries, the impact of wake boarding and increased boat traffic.
The meeting will be held at Lake Geneva City Hall on Thursday, January 26th, and will go from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. To register, please go to https://genevalakeconservancy.org. The public is really encouraged to show up for this meeting because right this minute the future of the waters of Geneva Lake are being quietly, behind the scenes, being fought over. The lake is not owned. It has stewards, like the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) and the municipalities in a ‘sort of’ lesser role. Everyone wants to change all this and take control of the lake water, which means control of the lake as a whole.
Get educated on this. Do not, as concerned citizens of the lake’s surrounding communities, let ownership of this vital body of water be determined only by the wealthy landowners and waterfront owners. The members of all these ‘alphabet soup’ organizations, evidencing their ‘concerned’ motivations, are wealthy. There are no regular people staffing these boards. Let them all hear the people. Go there. Speak up. They might not do anything of merit in response, but they certainly must listen to you.
