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THE GREEN LEAVES OF SUMMER

There was a folk singing group back in the early sixties that performed a song with lyrics that have carried important feelings and critical thinking through the years.  “The Green Leaves of Summer” was written in 1961.  “…A time to be reaping, a time to be sowing…a time just for living…a place for to die. It was so good to be young then, to be close to the earth.  Now the green leaves of Summer are calling me home.”

Lake Geneva has positioned itself, if nothing is to be done about it, to suffocate everything it has grown up to be. How is this happening, and what must be done if this is true?  Chicago (and more) cannot come to Lake Geneva!  Chicago is not an entity.  It’s a composite of almost three million people.  Some of those millions can always come to Lake Geneva, but by no means nearly all.

COVID came, like a soft, deadly guitar strumming back in 2020.  Not the virus, but the people with, or running away from that virus.  Chicago discovered Lake Geneva for the second time, but this time the numbers are staggering.  What is Lake Geneva going to do with all this humanity, because there seems to be no pressure gauge set up to give the leadership much of any idea about this explosion?  The Hillmoor property was supposedly saved, but this very week, part of it is back on the market, with the best part being gently slid across the table to a non-profit operation.

What happened to the idea of a giant, beautiful park that the citizens paid so much money to buy and fought so hard to push back against commercial development operations?   There’s a new city parks manager position filled.  He will no doubt be able to park his personal vehicle in the coming YMCA parking lot if he does anything at all.  There’s a new police boat coming, plus a special place to dock it.  The other communities around the lake have the Geneva Lake Law Enforcement Association to police the lake…not to mention the Department of Natural Resources.  Lake Geneva bailed out of that and dropped its neighborly friends like dead carp in the water.

Investors and companies are buying up ever more homes to turn into short-term rentals.  How can that be seen as a good thing for the identity of Lake Geneva as a place to live?  Nobody lives full-time at Disneyland.   Geneva Lake is a wonderful home to so very many people, although most of the businesses in the city are not owned by those people.  Most of the people working in those businesses are not those people.  Cities like Hong Kong, Macau, Bangkok, Mumbai, and so many more were built around the world in this same haphazard and disconcertingly destructive way.

Is this really what the taxpayers in Lake Geneva want for the future of their city?  The citizenry of Lake Geneva is not wealthy.  Those big, many times empty or sparsely used, mansions around the lake are not full-time residents. The renters and homeowners living in and around Lake Geneva with kids going to school are on programs just to have food when there. These seemingly small items that the city is spending money on take money from those people, not the wealthy or, in many cases, from the tourists.

Now, the city administrator, so overwhelmed by a lack of work or activity, is going to get a new assistant to help with the lack of workload.  Is this going to be another six-figure position like that of himself, the comptroller, the city clerk, the head of public works, the new parks guy, and more? Oh, and a new inspector for short-term rentals that are not required to let inspectors in!

All we can do at the GSR is wait in wonder and maybe speculate on what this new assistant is going to look like.  Lake Geneva is leaking both money and common sense in so many areas, has lost its nearby friends, and apparently wants to go it alone.  Without a real plan for future growth, it is staring at, with all of us living here, a coming time in the very near future when all the green leaves of summer will be calling us home.

The city administrator of Lake Geneva does not take calls from the GSR, does not return calls made to staff here, and has never met in person with any of us.  That says a whole lot more about him than us.