Our Place

Tom Earle, Public Works Director, and continuing snow removal conflict. “Can you hear the thunder,” was a tag line from a cable western show of some high repute a few years back (called Deadwood)?
What did that expression mean?  It meant that if you can hear the thunder, then you best seek cover from the rest of the storm that is almost certain to follow.

Speedo, the owner of the Harborside Bar and Grill, located at the corner of Wrigley Drive and Broad Street (probably the most successful prime piece of business real estate in the city), and the chairman of the board for the Business Improvement District, is hopping mad at Tom Earle and the city’s street department.  He’s mad about the fact that snow removal this year has been inadequate, the way he sees it, the way the rules about how it is to be done and is being done, and also about the city’s inability or unwillingness to hold Earle to a higher standard.  Speedo filed his second police report on Monday about Tom and his department’s shoddy snow removal work.  According to Speedo’s complaint, Tom’s department removed snow so ineptly and took so much time to do so, that the downtown business district was basically out of business for all of Sunday, generally the week’s best shopping day.  The snow was not removed from parking places, and that prevented shoppers from parking.  By Monday, Earle’s crews were all over the problem.  They even went so far as to go back on their stated intention of not piling snow in the center of the streets and then filling trucks and hauling it away.  They did that all day long on Monday.  The analogy of thunder is apropos, with respect to this story, and the occurrences it seeks to illustrate because the storm brewing between Earle and Speedo is almost exactly like that of one of these approaching winter storms.  Tom, can you hear the thunder?

Remember Sylvia, the parking czar who introduced Lake Geneva to the current technology of parking kiosks?
Well, at the time when Sylvia was still the parking manager of Lake Geneva, she shared what she considered the city’s need for upgrades in the parking department, mainly dealing with the parking kiosks themselves. City officials and council members fought her every step of the way, including some insulting and downright nasty insults from board members of the Business Improvement District, asking endlessly for any and all information on how and why the machines operated, and the ins and outs of the internal workings of the machines. Listening to her patient informative answers to their questions was like taking a college course about municipal city parking.

Sylvia finally had enough of the attitudes expressed toward her (she also had never received a single raise during her five years of outstanding work) and quit to move on to other things, leaving the parking department looking for a new manager. Seth, Sylvia’s replacement, is great at managing the department, and a true asset to the city. It is no shock then that he also agreed with Sylvia’s expressed need for new kiosks. However, the city chose, in deciding to buy new kiosks, to get less than the originally requested number.  The council acted upon councilman John Halverson’s recommendation.  There are now a few fewer kiosks around town and the city isn’t replacing the beach kiosks at all. The old kiosks did not do well last year, slowing down the lines of customers, which at times built up a line more than a block long, of people trying to get onto the beach. The need for new kiosks has become very evident, very quickly.

This week, during the Finance, Licensing, and Regulation meeting the discussion/recommendation regarding purchasing three new Cale Stealth Terminals was on the agenda. The kiosks will be placed at the Riviera beach, but they do not come cheap. If they would have been purchased when the other terminals were purchased it would have saved the city a lot of money as purchasing three is not considered discountable. The new price is budgeted for $35,127, or basically, double what the city must pay to get what Sylvia would have gotten a year ago.

Persons of the Week

Nick and Greta Hansen celebrating their ten year anniversary with their 3-year-old son Henry. Happy Anniversary!