Our Place

They eat their own young, don’t they?
While a giant crowd of citizens showed up to insure the failing of the latest Hillmoor project, Utah Blaine, Lake Geneva’s gunfighter city administrator, was shooting off rounds in all the wrong directions. It’s likely he shot off his own big toe with his latest move. Not only is he responsible for Sabrina (God’s gift to city employees) leaving to work in the Town of Walworth, but he slipped in a new medical insurance package that will torture his remaining employees, probably to employment death. The council voted to follow Blaine’s recommendation to quit the city’s self-insured plan and go with the Wisconsin State Employees Plan.

What does that mean to the city employees? They can now get used to sharing the cost of their own medical insurance, which will also mean now paying money (which they didn’t before) for something that’s less than they had in the first place. They can either ‘buy’ into the plan for a hundred and fifty a month (in which case, if something happens, the nearest hospital that will take them is located at Fort Atkinson), or they can opt for the six hundred dollars a month plan that lets them use nearby Aurora facilities.

Sound fair? A police dispatcher is paid $14,000.00 a year. That dispatcher will now have to decide whether to take an $1800.00 effective decrease in pay for a crummier insurance package, or accept the $7200.00 hit. The alternative to taking either package is to leave the soon to be apocalyptic City of Lake Geneva, and find a place where city administration offices are not being run by zombies. This entire insurance plan was made on the morning of the day that a vote was asked for, so no employees would be able to appear and complain. This whole thing was pulled off as the rottenest Thanksgiving and Christmas present an entity could pawn off on its people. Utah Blaine shot himself, but the effects of that shot will be much more like that of a ‘gut shot,’ then blowing his big toe off with a Browning 12 gauge. He’s going to take a while to die and it’s going to be painful. And the citizens of Lake Geneva are going to receive a good measure of that pain when they go into city hall to try to accomplish things city employees are supposed to help them with.

The human condition is not one of open revelation, but more one of studied and deliberate duplicity, as was demonstrated by how this rotten package was slipped into the side of every employee in the city. That knife in the side will be slowly pulled out. What will become of the razor sharpened knife, honed by Utah Blaine himself? It’s going to be used to cut, quietly, silently, and diligently right back into the exposed belly of the city itself. This sneaky and lousy move on the part of city leadership will be one that comes back to haunt us all, although the effects of that haunting will be like a real haunting; ephemeral, wispy but ever so frightening over time. Humans have survived the harshness of planet earth by raging back against the pain and anguish of the elements…and the reaction by the employees to this new pain and anguish may be something to behold. The city council met in secret session to award commissions to the insurance agents who pulled off this rotten coup. Six figures will mark that commission size.

Who else is making money on this one? Someone in the city administration, and that’s a given.

Person of the Week

Maryanne Bruss Fontana Coffee Mill

Maryanne Bruss, unlike most people, can actually say she is living the dream, her dream of opening a coffee shop. Five and half years ago she did just that , opening the Coffee Mill at 441 Mill St. in Fontana, WI.. The coffee is great but it’s Maryanne’s warmth and kindness that make this coffee shop a success, and has customers coming back again and again. We are pretty sure if you look up warm hospitality in the dictionary you will see Maryanne’s photo.

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