LOOKING ON THE BRIGHT SIDE
The disappearance of rental buoys in Fontana. The gentrification of the Village of Fontana lake shore continues. Last year they got rid of twenty buoys of the twenty-seven that existed. Those buoys were inexpensive compared to renting pier space for your boat. Guess what? This year the Fontana city management, in concert with the village board, has decided to get rid of the last seven. The buoys rented for $929.00 a season. A slot at the soon to be extended piers is $2760 a season. So what is happening at the lake? More and more the lake is returning to what it once was, for the rich.
The Village of Fontana is dead set upon making sure that it can ‘accommodate’ all the boat owners who are losing their buoys, if the buoy parker’s (read ‘poor losers”) can measure up. Lake Geneva can be, in so many ways, a most wonderful place to visit but living around the lake can prove to be quite exclusionary for so many. Will this trend roll right around the lake? What is to stop it, other than clear-thinking visionaries who might be willing to risk not making a buck in order to have real people mixed in among those others. In Williams Bay, they don’t have buoys. The village there only leases out pier space. The cost doesn’t matter because the waiting list is between twelve and twenty years, depending upon what pier location is being applied for.
One wonders if the people who have reached the point where they can have such expensive boats and pay truly outrageous rental fees have the time left to wait. Lake Geneva charges $719.00 a season with a two year wait and $1671.00 for a pier slot with a five to seven year wait.
Looks like Lake Geneva’s, once again, the better deal.
You Gotta Be Kidding Department
A photo was taken of a car out near Oshkosh last weekend. The car was purportedly under the ownership and control of Homeland Security. The interesting and weird notation on the side of the car had to give pause to anyone seeing it. Zombie’s. Are you kidding us?
