Geneva Township Severs Ties, Leaves Visit Lake Geneva in the Dust

There was something rotten in the state of Lake Geneva, and it wasn’t just the stench of bloated budgets and taxpayer money being funneled into the ether. No, this was deeper more insidious. The Lake Geneva Tourism Commission, a shadowy cabal of glad-handers and backslappers, had finally done what all two-bit tinpot regimes dream of: they killed the cameras.

For years, former Mayor Klein had insisted that every meeting be streamed, recorded, and preserved like some quaint democratic artifact. But Commission Chairman Brian Waspi loathed it. The scrutiny, the prying eyes, the uncomfortable questions it was all too much. Like a cockroach scuttling for the shadows, he spent years trying to move the meetings upstairs, into the municipal equivalent of a smoke-filled backroom.

And then, in the wake of the Spring 2024 election before new Mayor Todd Krause could even warm his seat the Commission made their move. Without warning, without discussion, they simply stopped recording the meetings. No livestreams. No archives. No record of the deals being cut, the money changing hands. It was as if they had ceased to exist except for the millions of dollars they continued to dispense in the name of “marketing.”

Your correspondent, ever the glutton for bureaucratic punishment, filed Freedom of Information requests for the audio recordings. A reasonable ask, one would think. But these bastards, slippery as a greased pig in a county fair, simply stopped making recordings altogether. It was a masterstroke of shamelessness. The only official record now? The minutes scribbled down (when she bothers to show up) by City Council President Mary Jo Fesenmaier.

This, of course, could not stand.

So on February 10th, I did what any self-respecting lunatic would do I showed up at their meeting, recorder in hand, ready to drag this vampire commission into the sunlight.

The showdown began with Mayor Todd Krause, who, in addition to his other duties, now sat on the Commission. When asked why they weren’t recording the meetings, he spun some weak yarn about the city’s streaming system not being “set up yet.” A convenient half-truth. The same council chamber, mere hours later, would host a City Council meeting streamed live  and recorded on Vimeo. When I pointed out this glaring contradiction, the mayor did what politicians do best he got flustered and walked away.

One could only assume he was used to dealing with his usual audience City Council members who nod along like dashboard bobbleheads, eager to accept whatever nonsense excuse he served up that day.

But the real chaos began when a little transparency cracked through the facade.

Commission Chairman Brian Waspi was off on vacation, leaving Zakia Pirzada as the acting chair. A brief reprieve, but Krause had already begun plotting Zia’s replacement a good old Fontana crony named Tammie Carstensen, who wouldn’t take the reins until May 2025. Meanwhile, the money train kept rolling.

Enter The Lake Geneva House of Music and Adams Publishing Group, two well-connected outfits looking for an easy payday. They wanted $25,000 each from the Commission for their annual Cheese Festival and Taco Festival both to be held at the House of Music in Geneva Township. Under normal circumstances, Waspi would have rubber-stamped their grants with nary a question. But with Fesenmaier and Pirzada, at the helm, the script changed.

The questioning began. It got uncomfortable. And then came the reveal Lake Geneva Chamber President Stephanie Klett let it slip that Geneva Township had pulled their room tax dollars from the Chamber and set up their own Tourism Commission. A schism in the church of taxpayer-funded marketing.

The implications were massive. Geneva Township’s main hotels The Ridge, The French Country Inn, Lazy Cloud, and Geneva National had effectively cut Lake Geneva out of their loop. And then the bombshell: On their funding application, House of Music had failed to disclose whether they had approached other sources for money. When pressed, Chris Buttleman of House of Music finally admitted that, no, they had not and in fact, he himself sat on Geneva Township’s newly formed Tourism Commission.

The grift was exposed.

Sensing blood in the water, Fesenmaier moved fast motioning to delay the grant request until the next meeting in March. Pirzada, seconded. End of discussion. No easy money today.

But make no mistake: this was not the end of the road. The Lake Geneva Tourism Commission had long been in the business of handing out public cash to private enterprises outside the city limits Grand Geneva in Lyons Township, Pier 290 in Williams Bay, and God knows where else. Their appetite for slush funds and secrecy knew no bounds.

This was only the beginning. The war for transparency in Lake Geneva had begun, and I was going to be right in the middle of it.

Stay tuned.