Front Page
THE BIG FOOT DEBACLE
Every developer wants a piece of the Big Foot Beach area. Every politician or former politician still playing the game, also wants in, no matter how marginal that incidental interest may seem by the presentation.
Mr. Lazzaroni, the owner of the restaurant located right across the road from the beach (the Boathouse), has just completed a successful assault on the beach, and a massive violation of public access and rights to the rest of the people who use the lake, Big Foot Beach, or even the road that runs right by it. In this effort, to build and have approved a hundred- and thirty-foot pier, extending out to conclusively make the south end of the beach area into a private Lazzaroni Harbor, he’s had the support of the Wisconsin State DNR. The DNR, or Department of Natural Resources, since a ruling by a local judge eight years ago (Bob Kennedy, at the time in the circuit court) that the DNR had the authority over everything that happens out or under the water of Geneva Lake, is going along with this exception to what has been a universal rule (local town and city ordinances enforced) that private piers can only be built out to a distance of hundred feet and even then must have the approval of those cities and towns upon which the piers are footed or based.
Lazzaroni’s request for this exception had to be, however, approved by the town board of the Town of Linn. The attorney for the Town of Linn, mistakenly, or on purpose, told the board that they had no choice but to approve this awful extension (which under the ‘equal protection under the law’ provision of the U.S. Constitution’s fourth amendment, means that everyone else with a pier can now apply for the extra 30 feet!). The board went along, except for Jim Livingston, who somehow had an inkling of the truth, and now the Lazzaroni debacle has become real. The attorney was wrong. The board approves, disapproves, or withdraws its permission, in the name of the electorate, on conditional use permits.
The Town of Linn controls the land at the water’s edge that the pier sticks out of. The Town of Linn could very simply withdraw that approval, received years ago, from Mr. Lazzaroni. Lazzaroni’s distant long-dead relative, who was given permission to put a fish bait shack out on a very small pier in that area, never envisioned, and neither did anyone else, that Lazzaroni would be so clever as to expand this into a flock of moorings and now two piers that dovetail into one another to deny access to just about everyone else on the lake. The board could have withheld its approval based upon the fact that the board had and has the power to get rid of the whole affair. The moorings are based upon conditional receipts, as well.
Could Mr. Lazzaroni file suit? Of course, but everyone who does business with the town can do that as well. Mr. Kennedy is no longer on the court. The DNR is the steward of the lake water, not the owner. The State of Wisconsin does not own Geneva Lake either or do any of the surrounding communities. This riparian rights issue has long simmered silently at the bottom of all activities on that water.
The Geneva Lake Police (in their cute little blue and silver boats), with their boats out on that water, should only be able to arrest or stop those out there for committing felonies the officers see, not other violations, but they arrest and give citations for a whole lot more of everything all the time. The Water Safety Patrol has absolutely no authority to stop boaters or warn them about anything, except on an advisory and permitted (by the boaters) basis, but they do these ridiculously hazardous stops all the time (the kids of the WSF have no personal protection equipment or arms, lethal or non-lethal).
Mr. Lazzaroni has taken advantage of the kindness and ignorance of the citizens living around Geneva Lake and it’s about time that the citizens make moves to show him how much they don’t approve of being so ‘had’ or taken advantage of. The service at the Boathouse Restaurant is already bad, at least in the experience of GSR staff who’ve eaten there…and it’s now likely to get a whole lot worse.
