Surprising Stuff

Alderman Bob Kordus

It’s not surprising stuff at all. Bob Kordus, “Big Boy” Bob is up for president of the Lake Geneva City Council.

Mr. Right Wing “Give me the Money” Kordus, also head financial guy for a good chunk of the republican party, is ready to step in and assume the mantle being dropped to the floor by Alan Kupsik, who’s become mayor. There’s not much to write about Bob Kordus becoming anything, because there’s not much about Bob Kordus. If he was a baseball player then there remains no doubt one of those little bobble-headed dolls would be sold in his honor, not because of his play but simply because it would describe his form of management.

City Council prioritizes agenda items.
To understand what is important to the City Council, one needs only to separate agenda items into categories, and then add up the time that the city council spends discussing them. The Council’s priorities will become self evident. Tourist related issues take up most of the time and will be on top of their priority list; issues related to businesses are next; followed by city employee issues; then residents and at the very bottom are the consent agenda items in which almost zero time is spent discussing them. The greater the cost to implement an agenda item for the top of the list (meaning tourists and business) the more time the City Council will spend trying to get it approved; whereas, the higher the cost for those on the lower end of the list, then the shorter the time will be before it is defeated.

The construction of a parking garage versus the purchase of old Hillmoor Golf Course for a park are extreme examples, where weeks of discussion at multiple meetings was spent on the 7 million dollars parking garage, but less than an hour of actual council discussion was spent on the city spending 3 to 5 million dollar for the purchase Hillmoor for a park.   In the most recent meeting, the City Council spent more time on two items than any other item. Both of those items would affect tourists and businesses.

First: A $557,000 property purchase and construction of a city parking lot at 227 S. Lake Shore Drive.

Second: Expanding the Outdoor Dining Ordinance from just restaurants to include creameries and additional food establishments.

Whereas, passing a parking sticker violation Ordinance that only affects residents barely got 2 minutes, and was passed. This is not a criticism of our city government. It is more a statement of fact. Most residents don’t care about what the city council does as long as it doesn’t directly affect them, and most council members don’t care about what the majority of city residents actually think, unless they unite against an issue. To a large extent the residents ignore the city council, and the City Council ignores the residents, and both go blissfully about their respective business. Oddly enough, it is this mutual ignoring that makes for a pleasant operation of the city. The residents do what they want and the City Council does what it wants, and as long as they stay out of each other’s way their “Ignorance is Bliss”. It is when those paths cross that the bliss for the City Council ends. One of the purposes of the GSR is to alert and inform residents when those paths are about to be crossed, so that they are aware of it and can have input into the decision before it is made.