Our Place
The Lake Geneva city clerk is Sabrina Waswo, and the city administrator is Blaine Oborn. When recently interviewed they both said that they have heard nothing from the Geneva Inn or their lawyers, regarding a possible Geneva Inn annexation. Oborn did indicate that he’s working with “his lawyer.” When asked who that lawyer was, he said that his name was Joe Worth, and that Joe was the outside attorney working for the city specifically with respect to the Geneva Inn annexation. This information was out in the public sector two months ago (the fact that the city would be hiring Worth), but the admission by Utah Blaine was the first time that it’s been officially confirmed that Worth has been retained.
Blaine Oborn, City of Lake Geneva City Administrator
The next question becomes; “where’s the money coming from?” Nothing about funding for Worth has come before the finance committee, or the city council. Oborn did make the request to hire an attorney, but nothing was ever presented about whether legal charges would be incurred, expenses paid, and the estimated total cost absorbed by the city, or what part of the city budget would be impacted. Normally, additional expenses like the ones that would be generated by the hiring of an outside attorney, have to be somehow retrofitted into the already existing budget. The Lake Geneva city administrator has a $5,000 discretionary fund for this purpose. However, if the Geneva Inn annexation goes to court the kinds of outside legal expenses can be expected to go well beyond such a low figure. The fact that Utah Blaine referred to Joe Worth as “his attorney” was rather revealing in and of itself, as if the hiring of this outside gun is somehow a personal matter for him. Twice Blaine has indicated publicly that he is in favor of the annexation, but has of yet remained mum on the issue of the rezoning that might have to accompany it. In the past the Lake Geneva Comprehensive Plan Maps have been gone over to try and evaluate the possible impact of an annexation. Maps from 2009, 2004, 1999 have all been looked at. Some show the potential annexation area as future commercial zoning if annexed, while others do not. Many small mysteries continue to surround the big mystery of whether this annexation will ever come to fruition.
T-Mobile has come in to fill the cell phone vacuum they finally figured out is there, and worth competing over. Up until now, U.S. Cellular is the only cell phone company to activate its local cell towers and so they consistently outperform every other cell phone company (the others all have their towers around the lake turned off to save money on electricity and maintenance!). Now, since U.S. Cellular has not only succeeded in taking over the rural market nationwide (thanks to the investigative work done by the GSR four years ago), T-Mobile has decided to come in to carve out a share. It seems that they did not have any skin in the coverage game around the lake, but they are taking care of that. Harbor Shores is going to receive the rental benefit of the building of the new T-Mobile tower on its roof. Cell phone companies typically pay between six hundred and two thousand dollars a month to rent the space for the placement of each of their many towers. Harbor Shores is going to get a boost from a T-Mobile tower. Whether the place deserves the bail out or not, the deal is done and T-Mobile is installing the mini tower on top of the Harbor Shores main building as you read this article.
New T-Mobile towers
Graffiti
Graffiti under the viaduct behind Rock Central (the old building across from Burger King). Okay there, but not if this hard-edged form of modern social art spreads.
