OUR PLACE
Lake Geneva Parks are getting some much-needed attention.
Now that the parks director’s job description has been confirmed, the 45 applications received can be reviewed. The next personnel meeting should have top applicants on the agenda for further review. Not only is the director’s position soon to be filled, but the parks are also getting some upgrades. Basketball and tennis courts in city parks are getting redone. The courts have had the asphalt removed and have sat unfinished due to more work than initially expected to the poor soil conditions. This was discovered after the removal of the surface and the cost difference to do the job right requires the job to be rebid.
The playground equipment at many of the city parks needs to be fixed or replaced. Veterans Park removed its playground and is close to getting a new one. Let’s hope this means more playground improvements continue throughout the city. Hillmoor is the newest city park and probably the most discussed. Hillmoor has no master plan for it, but the city is devoting much time to the process. The new Hillmoor Commission is devoted to the property and the planning process. The public has been frustrated with the lack of work being done, but is pleased with the transparency and participation they have been given. The public works has made the time to clean it up some making is a little more maneuverable for walking or hiking and making it more visually pleasing for those who drive by. The city has a lot of work to do with its parks, and with a new director coming and the city more focused on its parks, great changes may be soon.
They are after Williams Bay again.
This very quiet and ambient community by the side of the lake is about to be ripped into by foreign ‘surgeons’ who are intent on going right for the community’s main aorta artery. The developers want to acquire the Williams College real estate campus and put up a resort with a giant new amphitheater, supposedly to add to the ambiance of the community in general. Right?
Pay the high freight and you can be part of it too…as a renter, of course, not an owner. This building nightmare for the community would also have these ‘surgeons’ annexing more property from the community, taking over the lakefront, and putting little private ‘cabins’ all along the shore. All this stuff would pay no taxes to the community for twenty years, by agreement!
What are the city leaders thinking? They turned down developers years ago and finally got the Yerkes preserved and fully and beautifully functional once more. Now, it’s high time to stand up to these big money ‘dreamers’ who are from downtown Chicago and have about as much care for the community as the man in the moon, so easily observed crying down on the place, from the nearby Yerkes telescopes.
