Surprising Stuff
The human side of Lake Geneva’s city budget:
Today is neither the best of times nor the worst of times, but it is the difficult city budget time. For those with empathy on the city council, budget time is the most difficult time of the year. To them, the city budget is more than just making decisions about money and issues, it is also about people and how the budget will affect them. The part that makes it difficult for those with empathy is the human element. Wants always exceed revenue, and every decision made will benefit some and adversely affect others. Every dime the city spends allocates or borrows came, or will come, from someone’s pocket. For those with empathy, that empathy adds an emotional burden on every decision that they make, because they also feel for those who will be adversely affected by their decisions and not just those who will benefit.
On the other hand, for those on the city council who lack empathy, it is not a difficult time except when they do not get their way. Decisions for them are easy and cold for they see only their side and not the negative impact that their decisions will have on others. This difference in the emotional burden, that those with empathy experience versus those without empathy who do not experience it, helps to explain why there is a disproportionate number of those who lack empathy in leadership positions in business and in government, and why there is often a coldness and indifference in the government’s management toward those they are there to serve. Decisions made without empathy may be easier to make, but they also have a greater chance of being wrong.
Friday, August 17th, at 6:39 pm. a Lake Geneva rescue unit responded to a call at Oak Hill Cemetery about a person seen hanging from the branch of a tree.
The details of this call and the condition of the person have not yet been released to the public. A witness on the scene, however, reported seeing the male victim drinking at a local bar earlier in the evening (Thumbs Up) and stated that the man in question was upset and depressed. According to the eyewitness at the cemetery who reported the incident, the man was taken down from the tree and was alive at the time he was transported to the hospital by the rescue unit. His current condition and identity remain unknown at the time this article went to press.
Person Of The Week
Jerry Halboth, a Special Olympic athlete for the last twenty-two years, medaling in track and field events at the 2014 U.S. Special Olympics. Jerry is confident his perseverance, and tenacity will make him a 2018 U.S. Special Olympics contender. The GSR sure hopes so. He’s a terrific man.
