OUR PLACE
The High School Burger Blues.
The 13th annual burger competition took place on Sunday, May 5, midday, with a forty-dollar premium for attendees. It was a great financial success, as the parking lot was filled and there were people all over the lobby of the Ridge Hotel waiting to buy badges and enter the fest.
Great restaurants from around the lake were offering exotic burgers they never serve at their normal places of business such as Cinco de Mayo burgers, Seoul burgers, and many more.
The take from the event must have been terrific, but what was the cost of the bad will created?
The Geneva Shore Report showed up to cover the event and were promptly kicked out and then told by the “Gorilla Troop” security men guarding the place. When the GSR crew announced that it was media there to cover the event and not partake of burgers, Jamie, the alleged head of the event and/or security was called. She was too busy to speak to the crew and informed the security gorilla-type aggressive macho men that even if we paid, we still could not cover the event, only eat the burgers served. This event benefited Badger High School Culinary ProStart program (source; the staff at the Ridge Hotel) The people at the Ridge were wonderful, one and all, as usual. The people attending the event were great, as were the presenters from the different local restaurants.
The GSR was not there to cover some Palestinian protests or any of that. It was there to endorse and support the event. Well, as was indicated to security at the time, the people running things and renting space, etc. cannot stop the media from covering the event, they can only help shape the story. This is what “Jamie’s Pit Bulls” security forces, seemingly just back from the front in Ukraine, certainly did.
We are a collection of peaceful and friendly communities surrounding Geneva Lake and the local high schools, their students and their staffs are vital integrated parts of the cultures here. We are nice, in general. We are not mean-spirited, in general. We are not what the security at this event represented, and that calls into question the judgment of the top management putting this grandly successful event on. Who was asleep at the switch? The GSR covered the event from a distant point anyway, but to what effect?
What kind of security force is going to be hired for the 14th running of this thing? If there is a 14th event? Who else attending felt the ‘lash’ of these rather obnoxious and potentially dangerous security characters? Incidentally, the Lake Lawn team won the top burger prize.
Finally, the shut off cell phone towers are coming onto the city common council agenda, maybe.
Mary Jo Fesenmaier, the city alderperson, is going to have the issue of the shut-off towers put on the council agenda so the matter can at least be discussed. It won’t be next week. One day soon the issue is finally going to appear and be considered. The cell phone broadcasting points and towers are all turned off in Lake Geneva to save the cell phone companies money on electricity. They must provide ‘adequate’ cell phone coverage since the feds paid for the towers all over the rural areas, not those companies.
Hence, Lake Geneva and all the communities around the lake are served by cell phone towers located in Hebron, Harvard, Elkhorn, and Delavan. The Lake Geneva towers, and the ones located nearby, like the Town of Linn, are all dead. The city can change that. The companies can either take their ugly sites and towers down, they can turn them on, or they can pay a couple of thousand dollars each for keeping them offline, per month. That tax is quite legal in the federal contracts the companies all signed to have the towers installed in the first place.
How do we know if a cell tower is running or not? I seen last Fall the tower behind the Linn Township Fire Department had a lot of work done on it for several weeks. There was a crane and a team of workers. What was that all for if it is not a working tower? To make sure it is not working? Just wondering. Cindy Z.
The United States Government, under its program to provide cell services to rural areas all over the country, paid nine billion to build all the rural towers and also pays to service them. We could tell if a cell phone tower was working by simply going to the tower base and seeing if the electric meter was functioning. Since those earlier days, they have fenced in most towers to prevent such access. The government pays them handsomely to do the work, so they take the money and keep these, what have become, monuments to taxpayer theft across the countryside. Local communities and private owners of land with towers, get paid about six hundred a month per tower in rental, also paid by the government so there are no complaints there. Meanwhile, most people living in rural areas get the same old crummy reception they used to get.