Front Page
EVE OF DESTRUCTION
Barry McGuire wrote a song named the headline words of this Geneva Shore Report edition. The entire song has become a great prediction of the problems that grew from that coming time of turmoil to this coming time of turmoil. What’s going on to help ensure that nothing can be done about the monumental problems a tourist mecca and economy, growing every larger but within specifically and ever limited property for such expansion has. These ‘growing pains’ are much more than that, but they are worsened by a leadership at city hall that is proving itself deaf, deliberately making itself blind but blaring out from a dumbness that has little to do with sound waves.
The Monday night Meeting of the Whole was to be a place where different factions were coming together from a number of interested neighborhoods, the representative of a survey company with results (having driven two hours to get to Lake Geneva before being informed that there would be no meeting) and also representatives from other local areas who are having short term rental problems growing at an exponential rate. How is the City of Lake Geneva handling this kind of a problem, where local homeowners are being bought out by foreign investors to rebuild and toss local residents out on their ears so wealthy visitors can take the places for the production of every kind of party on earth.
What did the city leaders do on Monday night?
They all did a quiet version of ‘shut the hell up’ stated by their not showing up for a quorum so no meeting could be held. You see, only at the Meeting of the Whole can non-budget items be discussed before the elected and appointed leadership members, and it becomes ever more likely that short term rentals are not going to be on any agendas. The ‘shut the hell up’ cable, too cowardly to state the phrase (so we do it for them), were comprised of Joanie the Diner, Tim Dunn, Sheri Straube and Howell. Lake Geneva’s city administrator didn’t show either but then he shows for very little, maybe a haircut and a shave every once and a while.
Mayor Mayor sits at the head of this cabal and cannot be put back into her goat patch pasture until the elections of early next year. Meanwhile, she’s going to damage whatever remains of the lakeside wonderland that Lake Geneva’s become. Whom would have thought when she started her run as mayor, before she earned, and earned well, the title of Mayor Mayor…allegorically taken from the movie Catch 22. There they are, those are the people that have hauled out very well-padded cudgels to beat the public near to death, and the wonderland that Lake Geneva has become over the years. Little Chicago by the Lake might be a name change that will become more suiting as these carpet bagging visitors drag into our midst.
How can the people of Lake Geneva be shut up? You are watching and listening to it go down right now. That meeting was a direct challenge to the people living in quiet peaceful neighborhoods throughout the city, the area and around the lake region. The Sounds of Silence is a song by Simon and Garfunkel but it, like Barry McGuire’s tune, was much more than that. “The words of the poets are written in the subway walls,” is a great descriptive line about what happens when everything is slowly taken away to be distributed upward and onward to those who, for the most part, don’t deserve to own and romp around in when they come to this meaningful lake resort. These people named in this front-page article are hurting everyone who lives here and cares. Everyone who works here and cares. Every business owner and manager who cares.
Do not let these words, written here in an attempt to point out and help, become a postscript or even worse, a predictor of things to come. Sheri Ames, a noted citizen vitally interested in this community, questioned Mayor Mayor after the meeting and tacitly accused her of setting the meeting’s failure up in advance. Mayor Mayor told Sheri that she should be ashamed of herself. Mayor Mayor, however is living in shame.
