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THE MEETING OF THE HOLE
The formal title for the regular meeting wherein the public is allowed to come forward at a preset city council meeting and stand at the podium to expound is the Meeting of the Whole.
What happened to the Meeting of the Whole in Lake Geneva? The Meeting of the Whole was created, brilliantly, to allow the electors and other interested people of the community (owners, residents, and visitors alike) to come into the Lake Geneva meeting room once a quarter to air whatever laundry that had accumulated over time. The last council, under Tom Hartz, normally a good guy and solid mayor, wanted to cancel the whole concept of the MOW, but the community would not allow it. You see, when the entire evening is devoted to people coming in to talk to the council and the council gets to say nothing in return, well, discomfort sets in. The kind of leaders who run for office usually are much more comfortable doing the talking while the public is doing the listening. Listening to the public is not something that’s popular with leaders and that’s evident now in Lake Geneva.
This canceled meeting is the third in a row and it’s the fault of the president of the council, Rich Hedland (who repeated in his seat a few weeks back by a margin of only six votes). The fallback guy is John Halverson. John’s been silent about picking up the slack Hedland has let out. This is a good city council, overall, but it can easily slip back into days of old and develop some of those old bad habits…one of which is failing to respect or listen to the public. Since the current sitting council is about the best assortment and selection of the citizenry going back almost twenty years, and the mayor, Charlene Klein is about the best representative of the town (she’s everywhere; at the Riviera checking it out, at the Business Improvement District attending meetings, over to Visit Lake Geneva and the Tourism Commission, etc.), Rich Hedlund and John Halverson are good attentive men, then how is it that nobody in the body of leadership (even Lana, ‘lowly’ Clerk of the city holds herself out to be a part of what she terms ‘the leadership team’) stands up to protest and say that the community not only needs to be heard but that it needs to be encouraged to be heard.
How was the Hillmoor mess receded into the background from the brutal moves made by the owners of that property to develop whatever they wanted to develop? They were stood back by the power exhibited by the voice of the community speaking out. How was the development of BigFoot Beach stopped in its tracks? Same way. At the same time, some projects were approved, those that benefit the community, again, because people came forward and expressed themselves, and the council was required to listen. Kwik Trip is the operation we all know because of the modifications that were required by outspoken members of the community. The new Kwik Trip on Wells is being ‘formed’ in the same way. Without the Meeting of the Whole, however, wherein subjects can be brought up that are not put on the agenda of the council (the public has no ability to put things on the agenda whatsoever) there is no opportunity for the sitting council or the mayor to become aware of how the community feels or what it wants. The virus has not helped because of the isolation and distancing reactions the city has been forced to take to protect itself, but as the virus is slowly beaten back and down by vaccinations it is time to let the public loose, to give as much input as it can to the leaders they elected.
The Meeting of the Hole must once again become the real Meeting of the Whole.
