Front Page
IS THIS HOW YOU WANT IT TO BE?
The New Year is upon all of us, as January of 2024, begins to play out and spread itself on into the days, weeks, and months of this new year. Christmas and New Year both saw weather that has not been customary at this time of the year for the region, and there were mixed messages transmitted by many people in the area about that. But the weather is a function of the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, and out or up to God.
What Lake Geneva has to determine is less grand in scope but potentially just as grand in effect.
The photo on this page shows 16 cars parked in the front yard of a dedicated short-term rental that’s located on the corner of Campbell and Wells. The home just to the west of it is also a short-term rental. The rest of the homes behind and up the block are all residential, at least so far. Celebrations, the business, is located right across Campbell and there’s a bed and breakfast just west of that. It’s not like this neighborhood is exclusively residential, but what of the rest of the people living in those homes, and then what of the community as more and more of these homes sell to become short-term rentals?
Are 16 vehicles in someone’s front yard any kind of inconvenience to the rest of the people living around the area, and, after all, it was New Year’s Eve, so everyone gets to have a party? The city council attempted to form a special committee about this short-term mess that’s playing itself all over the landscape of Lake Geneva property, as well as those of the communities around the lake. That committee would have had three short-term business owners out of the six members, working to decide on new ordinances and the money to pay for inspection and police services. Fire services won’t need any additional funding because there will be no special fire requirements for these quasi-business entities. No sprinklers and no extinguishers or signs or any of the stuff that comes with normally owning a business in Lake Geneva. Let’s not even talk about how well-funded and politically powerful these short-term business owners are.
Wise city council members turned the committee’s creation down, and Mayor Mayor quite properly pouted through the rest of the council session when she wasn’t making her now normal snarky comments to her alderpeople. The citizens, voters, and regular business owners and operators have got to get together and decide where they want Lake Geneva to go. The election is coming in February. Less than forty percent of the registered voters in council and mayoral elections vote. That’s got to change, unless this beautiful and still pastoral lake community of wonder is going to become a nightmare of homes with loads of cars parked in their front yards and parties, no matter what kind, are conducted on into the nights and days of everyone’s existence.
Hillmoor is an empty overgrown lot waiting for whatever might be coming, but nobody can tell anybody else what’s coming. The YMCA got a huge stipend from the library foundation, as strange as that might be. Maybe they’re doing a whole book reading when the members use their different workout machines, but the staff of the GSR don’t think so. The YMCA isn’t a Lake Geneva thing, it’s just located in the city. Most of the board members are not from Lake Geneva and that can be said about a whole lot of the members, but the City of Lake Geneva is being positioned to support it financially, whether that’s from the Lake Geneva Library Foundation, the Tourism Commission, the lowering of property prices or the gifting of other services like roads and infrastructure.
What do people want? A lot of that has to do with what the people know, and we are trying our heart out, once again in 2024, to let everyone know. The GSR can’t dictate or provide…it can only attempt to guide.
