SURPRISING STUFF
Wrigley is under construction but what about the current disaster of deteriorating Main Street?
The main thoroughfare, running east and west through downtown Lake Geneva, is in great danger. The deterioration of this main road, running all the way down from Snake Road on the west side of town and to Catholic Hill on the other, is a pavement disaster of ever-deepening proportions. The holes and ruts are, in many places, no longer that…they are chasms and fully capable of damaging the suspensions or worse, and also causing accidents from redirecting vehicles.
This situation is being, and has been, put on the back burner because the state is supposed to come through the city, from one end to the other, and replace the whole highway…unless that budgeting changes, or God knows what. The City of Lake Geneva is sitting on its hands over the state’s totally authoritarian use of highway construction to basically shut the city down for half a year or more…and the city is doing nothing about that impending doom to business and everything else.
Just drive to Kenosha from Lake Geneva and go through Paddock Lake, if you want to get a feeling for what the devastating effects of this state highway robbery are likely to be for Lake Geneva. But, until that disaster is visited upon the city, because the city leadership is too cowardly or dense to go to the state and say: “no, you’re not doing jack without our approval, permission and guidance,” Meanwhile, Lake Geneva has enough money in cash or loan capability to rebuild its own roads, and also to tie the state up in the courts for at least five years or more if those officials don’t like the fact that Lake Geneva gives that entity an easement, not ownership rights, through the heart of the community.
What about going after the people who own and rent out short term rentals?
Forget about parking and scrabbling to make every more from people living here or visiting. What’s wrong with a ten or fifteen percent tax on every rental, payable by both renters and owners? What’s wrong with minimizing a rapidly growing practice that dilutes neighborhoods of ‘real’ people, creates out-of-control party ‘celebrations,’ and makes parking in neighborhoods a looming disaster?
There are also nine cell phone towers not powered up in Lake Geneva. The cell phone companies are required to provide what they consider adequate service to users, so they turn off most towers in rural areas in order to save on electrical expenses. There’s nothing in the federal cell phone tower regulating laws that control local taxation of cell phone towers. How about ten grand a month for each tower if turned off or come get it off city property or even private property located in the city? The cell phone service providers could always be given the opportunity to turn their towers on, avoiding the tax and providing Lake Geneva with the kind of cell phone service it deserves…and and certainly should demand.
