Our Place

The Rocky Horror Picture Show:
The Lake Geneva Theater project continues to proceed along small town “privately owned but publically paid for” procedural customs.  Once called the “old boy” system, it’s been upgraded to cross race and gender lines, in keeping with modern times.  The proposed new owner of the theater is this really neat guy from Burlington where he owns, and has substantially upgraded the Plaza theater there.  That’s the good part.  Will he likely do the same thing in Lake Geneva if he’s encouraged to purchase the dilapidated theater on Broad Street?  The answer to that question is unknown.  What is known?  The city is upping its ante to $950,000 if he will purchase the thing and then fix it up.  The money is for the fix up.  Maybe the secret negotiations are about the provisions of some unknown agreement wherein some measure of accountability for the money are put into place, because the increase in subsidy was discussed at an open meeting.

Little weird factoids that just appear, as if from nowhere: and don’t seem to make much sense unless one is paying very close attention.
There were some interesting facts listed in the Lake Geneva Water Department’s document that was submitted to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin for a water rate increase. Those facts listed below raise questions about the way “business” is being done inside the bowels of the deeply deceptive utility operations. Why are “single family residential” (residents) charged a surcharge on their water bills, when “multifamily Residential” (residents) are not charged a surcharge?  Why were there no metered sales for multifamily residential for 2011, 2012 & 2013, but there was a charge in 2014? Facts were found in Attachments 3B & Attachment 7 of the water department document:

Spread sheet on Attachment 3B:

“Surcharges for Residential = $7,000 whereas, Surcharges for Multifamily residential = $0.00.

Spread sheet Attachment 7: 

Total Metered sales for 2011, 2012 & 2013 

Residential = $1,412,344.  Multifamily Residential= $0.00.

But in to 2014 the Water Dept. listed Metered sales for Multifamily Residential = $72,647”

How is any rational person or untrained entity supposed to figure out the deliberately confusing mess of accounting the utility department seems to spew out like a broken water main?