THE BRIGHT SIDE
A new toy police boat, maybe built by Tonka?
Except this new ‘command and control’ craft will cost a quarter of a million dollars and then a hundred and seventy-five thousand a year to operate…and the lake waters are already patrolled by the Geneva Lake Law Enforcement police for seventy-two thousand dollars a year. The quiet plan is to pull the city out of the GLEA agreement structure, along with its seventy-two thousand dollars a year contribution (the lake communities all put in the same amount every year, each).
What are the police and fire commission thinking, and how did this item get placed on the agenda? Tom Clauson is the head of the police and fire commission. He’s a former fire chief, not a police chief. The argument for the toy boat is all about response time. There’s so much crime going on near the part of Geneva Lake near the pier. What crime? Where? When?
The GLEA has been doing the most credible job, so why penalize it and why upset the city’s neighbors? Clausen’s number is (262) 249-9652. Call him and ask him some of these uncomfortable questions: “Tom, why, if response time is so important that the city should have a police boat, then why is the boat to be a command-and-control boat?” How about: “This boat will cost $250,000 and cost $177,000 a year to operate instead of $72,000 for the current adequate service?” A command boat to command no one. Money poured down into a bottomless hole simply because the public can never be safe enough.
Who’s getting the money, really? The Lake Geneva city attorney, as usual, supports, confirms, and certifies just about every bad idea that any of Lake Geneva’s damaged leadership comes up with. He even claims that the city can enforce all the lake use ordinances, and the GLEA can and could use the current police department personnel. This is patently untrue, but when some big lawsuit arises out of this mire of black hole decisions, he’ll be long gone. Once more, the citizenry will be handed the bill. At the ‘secret’ meeting, unfilmed and barely attended, the boat measure passed with only Ames and Fessenmeir voting smartly no.
