SMALL JUNK

 

The Carstensen case is delayed so Lake Geneva’s City Administrator (one of the oh so important Three Amigos) gets to stay for a few more months.  It seems that nobody can be found to do his job because the current staff looking to replace him is too busy getting ready for spring to really look.  Just how hard it is to fill a city administrator’s job, coming in at well over a hundred grand a year with full benefits in every area?  Well, if you’re looking for somebody who’s going to be a pro at pulling off secret projects, hiding every bit of questionable records and burning the rest, then it might be tough.  Don’t forget the seven-year rule.  The one that lets the Three Amigo’s burn all city records seven years old or older.  Up in smoke.  What was going on back in the beginning of 2008?

 

How about a “notice of injury” that was filed with the City of Lake Geneva on April 10 of 2008?  That was the notice that was quickly followed by the now infamous Mirbeau-Hummel lawsuit wherein this bunch of eastern game players walked away with a cool three and a half million dollars of Lake Geneva money!  The referendum denying the development (overwhelmingly), the city council actions, and the plays of the Three Amigos involved all are about to go up in smoke.  The Lake GenevaBurning City records City Administrator, with the help of the Wisconsin Attorney General’s office and many more, is making sure the ashes of Mirbeau-Hummel are ashes indeed, and nothing more.  Rome burned while Nero fiddled, but in Lake Geneva’s case, Nero is doing the burning himself.  The destruction, albeit obliteration, of any governmental records is a travesty, whether made legal by hocus pocus voting or otherwise.

 

Poor Basso.  The developer.  “High Density” Basso, the firm’s leader as he’s been alleged in this paper.  The planning commission met to take a look at the Basso plan for the development of five apartment buildings it previously pre-approved by giving over a zoning change, allowing parcels to be combined and anything else Basso wanted going in.  But Basso showed up at Monday’s meeting to a combined merry-go-round, with Flowers, Skates and Conners all aboard and whirling about.  And Basso brought the wrong architect along.  Ken Eton was deep into calculating his results for the March Madness basketball extravaganza and could not be available to get his normal blanket approval of anything he submits (except for the theater project, wherein he’s got nothing coming now or ever in the future) on Basso’s behalf.  Basso’s plan was shredded.

The proposed buildings are all “strangely angled.”  No kidding, as the plot of land the development is to be built on looks like a republican gerrymander delight.  The entrances and exists are “totally confused,” like dead-ended democratic attempts to stop governor Walker at anything.  It’s back to the drawing board for the Basso outfit, much to the delight of the Caboose people, Lake Geneva’s stealthy underbelly of social conscripts making believe they are living on a train that’s really going somewhere.  Those people live nearby and Basso to them means nothing more or less than a giant Basso drum about to beat long and loud right there, on the wrong side of their dead-ended tracks.  If the City of Lake Geneva goes back on its approval the “Basso Plan”, it stands every chance of being sued, and the case law written by Mirbeau-Hummel is right in front of everyone for guidance in how that might go.

 

Local citizen of note, Gary Millette (sitting as the lone citizen representative on the TIF board) isn’t getting his pier yet.  Mr. Millette applied to build a fifty-foot pier to extend out from his lakefront property along the shore of Lake Geneva.  He’s as entitled to build one as everyone else who has lakefront property.  Well, sort of.  The pier has to be approved by the Lake Geneva Planning Commission and the Lake Geneva City Council.  Any hearing or decision was deferred, however.  It will most probably remain deferred until after the TIF board decides what it’s going to do with the millions it currently holds, and whether it is going to continue.  The BigFoot re-route plan likely looms over a lot more decisions, events and actions than it might seem to.

Sign up for Updates