Front Page
INSPECTOR BAILS OUT!
The Lake Geneva city building inspector, Fred Walling, took the exit into an unknown. The Geneva Shore Report knows nothing about where he is going or what he is going to do with his career from this point. Fred came in like a gentle warming wind but by the time he was done was mired in one controversy after another. Symphony Bay’s problems with the builder Pollard, still will loom large into the city’s future as Fred and his department failed to go out and physically inspect most of the development. Elkhorn and Delavan have lost major lawsuits over the same kind of lack of physical inspection.
When confronted one day by a reporter of the GSR about measurements being wrong regarding the distance between residences not being to code the inspector stated: “We don’t have the staff or time to check everything in the field. We depend upon honorable builders.” That shocking revelation resounded around the press room but made no impression on the former leaders of Lake Geneva. It took Todd Krause coming into the office to pay attention and then quietly going after the fixing of this sad situation. Unfortunately, over time, as in Delavan and Elkhorn, when the inspector is gone, the city council retires, the builder moves on, the city residents, owners, businessmen and women, and taxpayers end up footing the bill when people start trying to sell their homes or buy homes and the title insurance companies won’t provide clear title until supposedly inspected structures are brought up to code.
It’s a little tough to deal with homes that have been built too close to one another though. What can be done, other than retroactively changing or making exceptions to the building codes? It’s very hard to raise up and then move homes a foot and a half, but that may be the situation in Lake Geneva. Who pays that money when all the ‘players’ who might have been involved are gone out into the wind? Who will take the place of this man and fill the position? An open search for a specially trained and certified individual will be made, bringing objectivity back to the job and ending all existing relationships between the builders and the city’s department.
This is going to fall under the current part-time city administrator’s portfolio under the guidance of Todd Krause. Is Dave up to it? Can Todd and Dave hold tough as the builders will be putting great pressure on having their own preferred candidate selected? The residents and voters of Lake Geneva are going to find out, with this critical selection, just how tough Dave and Todd are when it comes to serving them rather than the big money. Huge building projects are already underway out in the Symphony Bay, or Little Boxes, development, forever expanding into nowhere. The giant rebuild of Main Street and both ends of Highway 50 that feeds it, a new parking structure, and more are coming soon, just over the horizon.
These projects are all going to require intense work and attention by the person sitting in the inspector’s position. Short-term rentals also fall under the building inspector, but further down the line. Lake Geneva needs to stand tall among all the other communities surrounding Geneva Lake and it would appear, so far, that Todd Krause is indeed the leader who will spearhead the move toward evermore integrity being infused into the entire city operations and leadership culture. Jason, by the way, in the number two position is an outstanding person and super qualified. Todd will have his hands full with this decision, and the city administrator too.
