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RAGING INFERNO!

 Generally, in fire department parlance across this nation, there are five bugles of ranking when discussing fire department roles and personnel.  The first bugle is for the newest trainees and interns of the department and the fifth bugle is set aside for the chief of the department.  The bugles are supposed to stand for the communication necessities of those different positions.  The Five Bugle Institute in Florida has its name taken from this assignment of bugles and their work in doing feasibility studies and training of and for fire departments nationally.

That outfit was hired by the previous leadership (under Mayor Klein) to study the feasibility of building a new fire station on Edwards Boulevard, about halfway along the direction toward the Town of Linn’s Zenda center.  The Town of Linn and Lake Geneva recently entered into a joint protective agreement wherein the Lake Geneva Department basically took charge of the Town of Linn’s former department.  Little attention was paid to the forthcoming, and now-delivered study, which was presented at the Lake Geneva Police and Fire Commission last week.

What the study revealed was an opinion by that well thought of and august fire department analysis business.  That opinion was a go-ahead for the department’s new facility, not to be built on an already city-owned tract of 13 acres of available land but on the property to be purchased from private owners nearby.   The clincher in the deal that drew the Geneva Shore’s interest in the study was the price that the institute placed on acquiring the land and building the structure.

That price is Fifty Million Dollars, and that’s right $51,000,000.  

When the GSR staff heard this, they went ballistic.  That amount of money is more than all the annual budgets of all the communities surrounding Geneva Lake put together, by a substantial amount. It is more than even the richest township in Wisconsin, the Town of Linn, has in all of its working, saving, and investment accounts.  It’s more than the City of Lake Geneva can even currently borrow. The outrage over hearing this caused the GSR staff to reach out to Lake Geneva leadership, those serving on the police and fire commission, and those who supposedly oversee that commission.  All of those approached who would speak said the same thing.  “That was just the study, and that recommendation will never be implemented or completed.”

When asked whether this report was read and understood before it was presented all those questioned said the same thing; We don’t know.”  When asked about how this potential cost of such a structure could be presented without anyone admitting to any knowledge of what was in the report, nobody knew anything.  The final question put to the mayor of Lake Geneva, that most excellent city leader so far during his first term was “The police and fire commission seems to have become a commission where the light is on but nobody’s home, so what is to be done there?

That the entire complex of jail and courthouse for Walworth County, located three miles to the east of Elkhorn, cost $18,000,000 million in 2005 (which, with the cost of inflation calculated in would be today $29,000,000) the GSR wants to know plaintively, vitally and right away why such an outrage as this price quote was presented as some sort of sane expense and why nobody had advance warning and how to get the city’s money back for such an idiotic study result.  How much did that study cost?  Is this result because of what happened in L.A. over the past few days, and what happened in Maui with that fire occurred with such massive damages because of structures being built too close to one another (exactly like in Symphony Bay!) can be used as a motivational sales device?