Front Page

THE MEETING OF THE HOLE

That monthly event, formerly known as the Meeting of the Whole, wherein the city council would show up and listen to any citizens (or others) who showed up to have at them in a public forum, doesn’t really take place anymore. The council president, Hedland, cancelled the meeting again.  That means that half the meetings to be held all year have been cancelled.  Hedland doesn’t want to hear what the public has to say and, apparently, neither do the other members of the Lake Geneva Alderpersons Club.

What a shame.  This week no notice was given as to why the meeting could not be held.  Prior to this, throughout the year, Hedland would at least come up with lame excuses, like “we couldn’t get a forum together because too many alderpersons were attending parties on that night,” This council was great in getting reasonable things done for quite some time, and then it slipped and fell right through its own ‘you know what,’ following the redoing of the Riviera and the purchase of Hillmoor.  The pay raise rip-off of city funds and then the parking idiocy of increasing fines to fifty bucks and taking weekend parking up to four dollars…and now the meetings of the hole down the drain.

What happened to these people? What content in the new Meeting of the Hole, that’s not meeting anymore, is so negative so as to have Rich Hedland, president of the council, cancel it?  Well, how about the lecture they would have gotten about the new parking regulations.  They changed the parking fee on weekends to 4 bucks and hour and then the fine for being late on paying the meter 50 bucks.  The specifically voted down doubling the fine after 10 days to a 100.  Okay, that’s voted on and now a done deal.  So, what about the existing ordinance?   The existing ordinance, before the amending of it, has the fee set to two dollars an hour at all times.

That is changed.  What happens when someone runs overtime, whether on purpose or accidentally, and doesn’t pay the fifty dollars in time?  What is the charge for that since the ordinance is set at 40 bucks being that charge, or double the 20?  The ten days over charge cannot be a hundred.  Does that mean the new 50 buck charge is now the fine but it’s only 40 (as is currently written) for day days late? Who in hell is going to pay the 50 then?  If the council follows the doubling of the initial fine, then that would put the ten days over charge at 100…which by specific vote the council said no to.  The whole ordinance has to be rewritten, and if the 50 charge is to remain then something has to be done about the over ten-day amount…if there is to be any.

This kind of conundrum is why the Meeting of the Hole must once again become the Meeting of the Whole again.  There’s no place in the city council meetings for observers or attendees, not council members or staff, to say anything at all.  This subject would have been brought up at Monday night’s meeting that was cancelled.  The culvert problem just finishing construction on South Lake Shore drive would also have been brought up, and the safety hazard that might looming considered, as you will read in an article about it further inside this issue of the GSR.  The blatant (but humorous) idiocy of the rental goat solution to solving the wild growth problem on the Hillmoor property would also have come up, as well as answers to the question of what should be done with that property.  There’s no doubt that some developers, like Pollard (Symphony Bay) and Tom Hartz (from Simple), are slathering at the mouth over how they might step into that situation and offer their own forms of ‘solutions’ to the problem.  Even shifting the YMCA onto that land (it already has new land on the northeast portion of Lake Geneva) is problematic, as it brings, once more, additional traffic onto either Highway 50 or Edwards Boulevard to the forefront, plus entry and exit from the property.

The city council may not like the meeting of the whole, but they need to know how to do a better job than they are currently doing, and that meeting’s content is one way to understand what’s going on better.  The Christmas tree selected needs to be changed to the lone pine set near the corner of Main and Wrigley across from Speedo’s Harborside Grill.  Much easier to see and appreciate all those driving or walking through town.