SURPRISING STUFF

Lake Geneva’s now highly overpaid top employees, all moving into six figures with little in the way of credentials, begin cloning the leaders of Bell, California.
How much is the city clerk of Wausau, population at about 37,000, make a year in wages? Try $57,000.  How much does the City Clerk of Green Bay, population of about 103,000 make a year in wages?  Just at $60,000.  How is it that the City of Lake Geneva, population puny, has decided to raise the current City Clerk’s wages from $69,000 to $95,000?

Riddle us that one, Joker!  The comptroller goes into six figures.  The department of public works director goes into six figures.  The city administrator is well into six figures.  This whole spending nightmare, laid right at the feet of this current Lake Geneva City Council and the Finance, Legislation and Regulation Committee just reeks of following a city in California that did the same damned thing.  That city took the city’s revenues and went to work to distribute almost every penny of it to themselves and the city employees.  The city manager in that place eventually increased his own salary to almost half a million dollars a year and increased those others in the government similarly.  The city council members in Bell went along, eventually raising their own salaries to $100,000 a year.

Think this can’t happen in Lake Geneva?  It is happening in Lake Geneva, and you are getting to watch the show from the sidelines courtesy of the Geneva Shore Report.  Oh, and the City of Bell, California wasn’t that much larger than Lake Geneva.  The local newspaper, called, appropriately enough, The Bell, went out of business just before the soon to be overpaid city manager came into office.  The salary increases were all passed by the city council with a single posting of the budget that went nowhere.  Representative government service makes it extremely difficult to stop such practices, punish them or get the money back.  Secret meetings were also common to that council and Meetings of the Whole went the way of post-asteroid dinosaurs.

Thou Shall Not Build a Pier longer than 100 feet.
This inter-municipality agreement has been in force for many years. In order to resolve the “My Pier is longer than your Pier” syndrome, plaguing Geneva Lake with piers getting longer and longer, the 5 municipalities surrounding Geneva Lake (in 1983) all agreed to pass laws stating a maximum pier length of 100 feet would be it. That set of ordinances was agreed to, approved, and officially signed off on by the DNR (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources).

So why is the DNR now repudiating the 100-foot law by recently issuing a rash of pier permits to allow building in excess of 100 feet?

To answer the question, the DNR had its environmental law specialist, Attorney Michael Kowalkowski, zoom into the Town of Linn Board Meeting on November 14.  Kowalkowski started out by informing everyone that, according to Wisconsin State Law, the DNR is the supreme authority on all matters dealing with Wisconsin lakes. Local municipalities might have the authority to pass their own ordinances and standards on lake issues, but, supposedly, according to state law, those local rulings must first be approved by the DNR to become legitimate and lawful within the lake side area of the municipality. However, even an approved local ordinance, though approved by the DNR, has no bearing or authority over the DNR’s superior power and jurisdiction in, above and around Geneva Lake.

In other words, the DNR is not restricted by local laws limiting pier lengths to 100 feet because it has the power to issue pier permits of any length determined by the DNR without any rational basis. In fact, Attorney Kowalkowski admitted the DNR operates on the assumption that the owner of a pier also gives the riparian rights to the water nearby surrounding the pier no matter what local rules as they might beadvised to do in the DNR Pier Planner rules previously agreed upon.  It isn’t the DNR policy now to enforce those rules or even to take them into consideration when issuing pier permits.

So, what happens when the DNR issues a pier permit to a riparian owner and the municipality declines to issue a permit? Mr. Kowalkowski explained that it is the responsibility of the local municipality and property owner to work it out, either in person or in the courts. The DNR does not arbitrate disputes, nor does the DNR provide litigation between the local municipality and riparian owner.  What are the standards the DNR uses in evaluating a pier permit request? Mr. Kowalkowski only talked about Public Interest and Navigation.

The proposed request can’t be “detrimental to the public interest” nor can the request be “detrimental to navigation.” Unfortunately, the definition of ‘public interest’ is determined by the DNR in consultation with the DNR personnel working in the parks and DNR law enforcement supposedly working on the lake. A public hearing is possible when requested, but in these times, it’s done On-Line and not in person.  Just as public education found out that on-line education was too impersonal and disconnected to be effective, so too is on-line Public Hearing an exercise in near futility. It’s a hearing without a public. Sure, attendees can send in comments to the DNR, but they’re viewed out of context and generally discounted.  The On-Line meetings have all viewers muted.  How nice.