SURPRISING STUFF
In the last City Council meeting in July, Dan “Piggy Bank” Winkler said, based on his annual survey of the roads in Lake Geneva, that they have an average road rating between six and six-and-a-half on a scale of ten, with ten being the best.
What was not said is that Piggy Bank (as in “check your change”) used the city’s road rating to selectively skew the ratings to select the roads to be repaired. By artificially giving lower ratings to some roads and by falsely giving higher ratings to others, he could selectively choose and justify which roads were to be repaired.
As an example: About three years ago the city rated the roads in Edgewood; where former city administrator Dennis “I’m Still Here” Jordan lived, and George Street; were ex-alderman Terry O’Neill lived, both a 5. At that time, no city-rated road in Lake Geneva was rated lower than a 5. On paper Jordan’s rating gives the impression that Lake Geneva roadways were being well maintained, in general, whereas, the county rated George Street as a 3. This bunching of roads in the 5 category, enabled Winkler to select any 5 rated road for repair, so of course all the roads in Dennis Jordan’s subdivision were repaved that year, while the County’s repair of George Street was blocked by that very same Dennis Jordan.
This kind of smarmy junk is called “team work” by them. There is a list of every section of road in the city of Lake Geneva, and it shows the last time that every section was repaired or repaved. If you look carefully at the list, there is a five-year period from 2006 to 2011 where virtually no roads or sections of roads were repaired. Not even crack filling was done, even though the city received between $600,000 and $700,000 per year from the state’s transportation road fund to repair and maintain the city’s roads. Of course the strategy, as planned, was to let the roads deteriorate so badly that borrowing money to repair them could be justified. It was timed to dovetail with the paying down of the city’s previous loan, which was beginning to be paid off. So the city could borrow money, refinance the city’s debt, get the extra cash to fix the roads, and buy a Fire Department Bucket truck just by artificially extending the current $1,000,000 a year debt payment for an additional five years. That was tacked onto the city’s portion of everyone’s property tax.
Knowing how Dan Winkler did the road rating to “give” the city a good road rating, one can only be skeptical of the means used to obtain the city’s water and sewer ratings, especially with some of the recent sewer and water line breaks on Hwy 50 near Linda Lane, at the bend on Hillcrest, Lake Shore drive, at 104 Broad street, 567 Broad Street, etc. Was the relining of the city’s aging sewer system like painting over he termite infested wood or will it (as everyone has been told) make it good for another 100 years? Only time will tell, but by relining (and not replacing) sewer lines the applied plan did nothing to improve the aging water system or facilitate the removal of the remaining lead pipes under Lake Geneva’s city streets (24% of all water pipes in Lake Geneva are made of lead!). Was the recent 36% hike in Lake Geneva’s water bill an admission that (like with the city’s roads) some things have been purposely neglected and are going to need significant expenditures in the near future? With lead pipes involved, a scary (and dangerous) possibility, indeed.
Oakfire. Although it may appear as though the Plan Commission is micro-managing building designs, in most cases, except for cosmetic and external features, they are not micro-managing building parameters. When approved, the details supplied in an application become the specified building requirements for the building’s appearance, as well as indicating the materials and construction rules, plus any additional requirements that are added with planning approval. Specifications, or specific details that are not included or are unclear in the application, are not enforceable after the building is constructed; whereas, specified details that are not met can be used levy fines, or require new construction.
As an example, the failure of the planning commission to see and reject certain details led to the obnoxious turquois color on the roof of the Cove. Having learned from this mistake, the colors of the Oakfire building’s roof and concrete walls were specified. The applicants want the fewest restrictions so they don’t supply details unless they absolutely have to. The recent Oakfire Restaurant application, to which some 15 additional requirements were added, is a good example. Oakfire’s application set off a red flag when the artist’s rendering of the proposed Oakfire Restaurant, and the building next to it, were shown as being the same height. In its application the Oakfire’s level roof is 50% higher than the peak of the angled roof next to it. Second only to the Geneva Towers, the new Oakfire Restaurant will be the tallest building on the city’s lakefront.
The Precise Implement Plan (PIP), as submitted by the Oakfire applicants, lacked significant details that were needed to assure its appearance, and minimize construction impact on the surrounding businesses. This is especially important because the building will, at times, block traffic on Wrigley Drive and the access alley behind it. As a result, the planning commission added some fifteen extra construction requirement. Alderman Doug Skates, who has been a member of the planning commission for several years, commented about the long list of newly added requirements that the planning commission added. Paraphrasing his comments in a sentence; “although the Plan Commission has been accused of micro-managing the design of buildings, it works to assure what the building will look like; what its impact on the area will be, and to avoid comments like ‘I had no idea that the building would look that way’ in the future.” Notes from both the planning commission meetings on the Oakfire application for the General Development Plan (GDP) and the Precise Implementation Plan (PIP) made it difficult to see anything “precise” about Oakfire’s Precise Implementation Plan. It is surprising how few extra requirements were added, and when Mr. Hartz read them off in his motion for approval, (which contained the fifteen extra requirements and the newly added requirements), it was done so slickly that it appeared to have been rehearsed
Surprising Fun
Elvis was alive & well at the Belfry Theater in Elkhorn this past weekend! Great venue, great show and even better was that members of the brass and strings sections from the Lake Geneva Symphony provided backup.
