Living Here
What’s going on at Pacific Southwest at 112 Broad Street?
The summer season is almost over and they have still not opened. The merchandise and window displays are as they were when they closed for winter last year. The dust is collecting, and mannequins with water stained beachwear are now what everyone sees when they walk past this dark store front with the big huge windows. The City of Lake Geneva is looking into the situation, according to Lake Geneva’s terrific new building inspector. Expect a report soon. Will the owners appear and reopen or will they leave everything exactly as it was at the moment they left. The place might become the mini Chernobyl of Lake Geneva.
Pacific Southwest is out of here. Where did they go? Why did they leave their stuff?
Who do you trust to make decisions for you when you cannot or will not make them yourself?
That question applies to the leader that one selects. In regular life, it can be the person who one gives a power of attorney, but in public life it is the public officials get elected to represent us. Both make decisions for us. With a power of attorney one can select any person that one wants, but not so with the city officials. When it comes to selecting a city official to represent the public is limited to those that apply and sign up to run for the particular position, even a write-in cannot win unless they also sign up as a write-in candidate (that is the law in Wisconsin).
During the past three spring elections in the City of Lake Geneva, three quarters of the city officials ran unopposed, which means that 75% of the voters did not have a say in determining those who will represent them. Having the opportunity to vote for a candidate when there is only one candidate is not a choice but a public charade of democracy. Why, in the City of Lake Geneva, do most candidates for public office run unopposed? Well, being a good alderman takes a lot of work and an incredible amount of time, for negligible pay without city benefits, and many residents do not have the time to run, but that is only a small part of the problem.
It is difficult to explain in a believable way, but there is an invisible and almost impenetrable control within Lake Geneva’s city government where one is either part of it, or excluded from it. If one is excluded from it, and the position one is serving in is as an elected official, then this exclusion runs at a personal risk to one’s reputation and continued acceptance in the community. Those within the controlling group personally benefit directly and indirectly from friendships, and their political involvement in the city and the exploitation of the city, its development, expansion, tourism and spending. The controlling group is not a single party, but a conglomerate of residents of the 2nd district; those with ties to one church, have a financial or banking background with interests in development, real-estate or who benefit from the city’s expenditures, its image or the generosity of its residents.
Like medieval chain mail armor, the controlling group is loosely knit and flexible, while firmly linked in all directions so even with the departure of key personnel the structure remains intact and fills the voids. Until this changes most city candidates will continue to run unopposed in the City of Lake Geneva and the local representative form of government will remain as it has been, a façade.
Doug Skates is proving to be about the worst example of a planning committee representative of all time in Lake Geneva.
What’s he doing now, after plotting the beach wall debacle? He’s apparently planning on replacing all the buoys where boats currently float their summer’s away out in front of Flat Iron Park with slips. Yes, that means piers. The whole beach front from the Riviera all the to Baker House would be piers with boats parked at them. What view? What ambiance? What class? Skates needs an immediate appointment to the planning committee in the Dells, where he’d be real popular, living and working in the swill they’ve made of that community. Skate on out of here Doug, and do your double and triple axel performances for a more appreciative crowd. The public should weigh in on this very important issue, the real issue is (of course) why a man of seeming good judgment like Skates, would seek to do so much to deface Lake Geneva and make it a commercial mess of the Dells-like garbage? Who is this guy, anyway? Or rather, what is this guy, anyway?
