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ROLLING THUNDER: COMPLACENCY
The Channel twenty-five fix has not been worked through whatsoever. Channel 25 is the main source of public access to the new video system bought and paid for, and then installed by the leadership of Lake Geneva. So, the city puts in a great new video system that is incompatible with the connection of Channel 25, where regular citizens can just sit back, move the remote to the channel, and then get it all with meetings and special announcements at its disposal. Why has the interface, which is going to cost some many thousands of dollars not put at the very top of the leadership agenda? Is it that the leadership does not really want the public to be listening in and then giving an opinion?
Well, that’s sure not what Todd Krause, the mayor is all about, or Dave the city administrator either. The council is sound and solid, so what the hell is holding them back? Instead of taking nearly nine thousand dollars to have another Kapur study to decide whether the speed limit on Highway 50 should be changed to 25 miles per hour instead of the current 45 miles per hour is approved. Now, just how dumb is that?
Dumb as a box of rocks, that’s how dumb. The traffic in the summer on that well-used road is almost always at a standstill now on summer days. At night and in the winter the traffic flows fine and there have been no exceptional accidents except where the truly lousy intersection at Walgreens remains not only an eyesore but unsafe at any speed. The buttons on the traffic signals have all been disconnected so the signals could be readjusted because the timing is all off on this integrated super-expensive ‘automatic’ system that was supposed to truly help traffic flow when it was put in. No adjustments have been made and none are likely to be because the coming redesign of Main Street is just ahead, like the signpost in Twilight Zone. We are all living right now, not way up ahead. The traffic light they want to install at Edwards and Townline is also in the same boat. This intersection is truly dangerous if you end up stopping there. It is best to turn around and go back to some other place to cross.
What about other ideas to make this city look better? How about trucking in sand to fill Big Foot Beach? What a thrill that would be to see more than boaters moored there to stand in the pristine water drinking gobs of beer and then putting gobs of urine back into the lake. Nothing is done there either. The running of a city the size of Lake Geneva is complicated by the influx of massive amounts of tourists during the summer months and now for special attractive events during the winter. How to plan to get money from those tourists without hurting the regular residents and taxpayers, while at the same time paying the expenses for the cost of managing and serving the influx is very difficult and complex. Parking rates have doubled on weekends in the summer and probably need to double again, as the price increase had no effect whatsoever in lessening the amount of people doing the parking.
The current leadership is up to the challenge but what will happen as that leadership is parceled out to a city council that did something as brain-damaged as paying eight thousand dollars for another study about nothing? A study was done when a new gas station wanted to come in across from Hillmoor. At that time, it was predicted that on a summer weekend day in Lake Geneva, the wait to pull out in traffic could be as long as forty-five minutes. Now what impact would a twenty-mile-per-hour speed limit have had on that basically unmoving line of cars trying to get into or out of town?
The city council, aside from Councilperson Joel Hoiland, voted to go ahead and pay the money. Thank you, Joel, for exhibiting some sense when all others about you are biting the clouds.
