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LAKE GENEVA DECLARES WAR!
The Lake Geneva City Council met on Monday to consider a response to its request that the Town of Geneva remove the speed bumps it installed months ago going up and down Center Street just to the north (and on up that hill) of Williams Street. Basically, in a most neighborly worded letter, the Town of Geneva told the City of Lake Geneva to go to hell. It would continue to have the obnoxious and extremely punishing speed bumps taken out in October, in order to support snow plowing and then re-installed next spring. The road, you see, Center Street heading all the way up that hill, is actually owned by the Town of Geneva. It can do what it wants with it. That 180 homes, or so, have been built up on Lake Geneva city land by a developer, and those residents of those homes have no other automobile access to and from their homes, which apparently means nothing. Or at least it did until the city council in Lake Geneva finished its work on Monday night.
The residents of the Stoneridge neighborhood at the top of the hill off of Center Street have requested, asked, and on Monday night attended the council meeting to plead with the city for the bump’s removal. A survey, taken on Monday by the Geneva Shore Report, found that 17 residents of the development, met and talked to in person, want the bumps gone. On the road up to the development, the residents of Town of Geneva, located in homes along the western side of Center Street, those seven that were interviewed, only three wanted the speed bumps to be kept in place. All three interviewed live below the location of the lowest bump down the road (in other words, they don’t have to go over the bumps). The recently added speed bumps going up the hill on Center Street were implemented to help discourage speeding. The street is policed by the town of Geneva, which is not convenient for them, as the town of Geneva mostly lies well to the northwest of Lake Geneva.
The speed bumps were put in to make up for the lack of a Town of Geneva police presence and were to be used on a trial basis when they were originally installed without notice to anyone. The Stoneridge residents (which is comprised of one hundred and eighty homes, or so, compared to the seventeen Town of Geneva homeowners) use the street on a regular basis. They are Lake Geneva residents who have no choice but to use this portion of Center Street every day to enter and exit the neighborhood, and the residents of these one hundred and eighty homes are demanding action. The speed bumps chosen by the Town of Geneva are extreme when it comes to speed bumps, and they have the definite and proven potential of damaging vehicles going over them. It’s like driving over concrete bricks, many residents have stated. The potential damage to vehicles, especially those that must travel over them repeatedly, is high.
The city council acted, almost like it never has before. The city decided to be neighborly, following the ’flavor’ of the note they had gotten back, in responding by sending the Town of Geneva a written petition to get rid of the bumps. Mary Jo Fessenmeir made the motion to send a petition to have the bumps removed by the Town of Geneva, and it passed unanimously. Then Mary Jo turned her intellectual and action-oriented turrets to focus fully on the Town of Geneva, and, with a suggestion from Tim Dunn, voted unanimously to annex the portions of the Town of Linn that extend north from Williams Street, west over to the cemetery, and then east to Highway 12 into the City of Lake Geneva, and that annexation would include the entire road now covered in speed bumps. That would solve the speed bump problem, the problem of the development having no Lake Geneva Road in and out of its neighborhood, paying for policing, fire and upkeep, and then one final thing. It serves, even before being acted upon, as a glove thrown down to a neighbor that’s decided to act unlike a good neighbor at all.
The message is clear: “Here’s looking at you, Town of Geneva!”