The Cameras Are Off and the Money Is On.Secrets of the Lake Geneva Tourism Commission
The first thing Mayor Todd Krause did after taking office in 2024 was not pave a road, cut taxes, or rescue anyone from bureaucratic despair. No. The first order of business was to pull the plug on the cameras at the Lake Geneva Tourism Commission. The microphones went dark. The recordings vanished. The public was escorted back behind the velvet curtain like peasants being shooed from the royal kitchen before the carving knife comes out.
Any halfway competent reporter learns this rule early: when government suddenly loses interest in transparency, it has usually discovered a powerful new enthusiasm for privacy. And not the healthy kind. Not “protecting citizens.” More the swamp-creature variety of privacy. The kind that thrives in fluorescent committee rooms where public money sloshes around like casino chips at 1:30 in the morning.
Under former Mayor Charlene Kline, the meetings were streamed and archived. Citizens could watch from home in sweatpants while commissioners debated grants, tourism schemes, trolley fantasies, and the sacred municipal ritual of redistributing other people’s hotel taxes. Imperfect? Sure. But sunlight at least leaked through the cracks.
Then came the new administration, and suddenly the cameras were treated like dangerous contraband. Recording public meetings, apparently, had become too radical an experiment for the delicate ecosystem of local government. One almost expects city officials to begin conducting meetings by candlelight next, passing handwritten notes across the dais like 18th century smugglers plotting a rum blockade on Geneva Lake.
And here is where the smell gets interesting.
Because nobody works this hard to avoid a public record unless the public record has become inconvenient. Governments do not fear cameras because meetings are boring. Governments fear cameras because cameras remember. Cameras preserve the exact moment someone says the quiet part too loudly. They catch the wink, the contradiction, the casual dismissal of taxpayers, the oddly choreographed consensus that materializes before public discussion even begins.
A recording is a stubborn little artifact. It does not respect revisions, spin, selective memory, or carefully massaged meeting summaries approved three weeks later. It sits there like a loaded revolver on the historical table.
So the Tourism Commission became the first room in City Hall to disappear into the fog. Conveniently, it is also one of the places where serious money and political influence intersect: grants, development priorities, event funding, business interests, downtown politics, and the perpetual struggle over who benefits from tourism dollars and who merely pays for them.
And once the cameras were gone, the mood in Lake Geneva politics shifted perceptibly. Less sunlight. More shadows. More “trust us.” More decisions emerging from the civic fog fully formed like strange fish dragged up from the bottom of the lake.
The Riviera and the Ghost of the New Deal
At the only Commission meeting in April of 2026, some inconvenient truths surfaced — along with the progressive-era heart of Wisconsin itself.
The Riviera was constructed in 1932. Lake Geneva was getting hammered economically like the rest of the country. Tourism had collapsed. Construction jobs dried up. Businesses were struggling. Local leaders decided the city needed a bold civic project that would create jobs, attract tourists from Chicago, modernize the lakefront, and signal that Lake Geneva still had a future.
So residents approved an $85,000 municipal bond issue during the depths of the Depression to build the Riviera. Depression-era economic stimulus at the municipal level — raw and unironic.
The city hired architect James Roy Allen to design a Mediterranean Revival lakefront pavilion and ballroom. Workers created an artificial peninsula of rubble and fill, then drove 280 piles into bedrock to stabilize the structure. The building ultimately cost only about $55,000, well below projections.
Wisconsin was deeply tied to the intellectual roots of the New Deal. Many Progressive Era reforms that later became national policy had Wisconsin fingerprints all over them: unemployment insurance, labor protections, public utility regulation, conservation programs, municipal reform. The “Wisconsin Idea” influenced New Deal thinking heavily. The Riviera belongs to that broader historical arc — from Progressive reform to Depression crisis to New Deal public works state. A building that is also an argument.
Who Gets Comped
Heather Jones is hired by the Tourism Commission to manage bookings at the Riviera, including the criteria for a group to book it for free or complimentary. Jones stated plainly: “It has to be a nonprofit. It has to be a complimentary, open to the public event. And then it goes, starts with me, and then it gets, it’ll go to council for approval.”
When Commissioner Fesenmaier asked if the policy was posted on the website, Jones replied: “That’s hidden. I think, I don’t think it’s something we want to advertise.”
A publicly funded venue. A publicly controlled booking policy. Hidden from the public. Because why exactly? Because the public might want to use it? The logic here is the purest municipal variety — the kind that has been fermenting undisturbed in a back office since approximately 1987.
“That’s hidden. I think, I don’t think it’s something we want to advertise.”
The Money
The numbers finally crawled out of the municipal swamp this week like waterlogged ledgers hauled up from the bottom of Geneva Lake, and suddenly the great Tourism Machine of Lake Geneva looks less like a quaint visitor bureau and more like a Depression-era political creature fed directly through hotel pillows and minibar receipts.
Commissioner Zakia Pirzada dropped the inconvenient truth into the room with all the grace of a bowling ball through a chandelier: just how much money is sluicing through the Tourism Commission every year?
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
In 2024, Lake Geneva’s room tax generated a staggering $2,294,715.36 in gross revenue. But here is where the arithmetic starts wearing brass knuckles.
The actual City of Lake Geneva received only $688,414.61 to offset the very real costs of industrial-scale tourism: police, roads, snow removal, lakefront maintenance, sewer systems, parking enforcement, crowds, noise, seasonal strain on infrastructure, and the annual ritual sacrifice of downtown sanity every summer weekend.
Meanwhile, the Lake Geneva Area Chamber of Commerce — doing business as “Visit Lake Geneva” — absorbed $1,170,350.73, while the Tourism Commission itself pocketed another $435,950.02.
Then came 2025. The meter climbed even higher. Gross room tax revenue reached $2,472,851.22. The city’s share rose to $741,855.37. Visit Lake Geneva vacuumed up roughly $1,261,204 again. The Commission’s cut ballooned to $469,792.27.
Nearly half a million dollars. For a commission. In a town of roughly 8,000 people.
At this point the Tourism Commission is no longer a sleepy advisory board handing out flower baskets and parade money. It has evolved into a semi-autonomous economic organism with enough annual cash flow to make small Wisconsin villages weep openly into their culverts.
And here is the beautiful bureaucratic fever dream at the center of the whole arrangement: under Wisconsin room tax law, 70% of all room tax revenue must be spent on tourism promotion and marketing. Not roads. Not police staffing. Not sewer expansion. Not parking. Not the infrastructure being slowly sandblasted by millions of annual visitors hauling coolers, bachelorette parties, and emotional support doodles through downtown Lake Geneva. Marketing.
So the money flows accordingly: Visit Lake Geneva receives 51%, the City receives 30%, the Tourism Commission receives 19%. Which means the entity actually absorbing the physical impact of tourism — the city itself — receives the smallest practical share relative to the burden it carries.
| Recipient | 2024 | 2025 | Share | YoY change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Visit Lake Geneva (Chamber) | $1,170,351 | $1,261,204 | 51% | +$90,853 | |
| City of Lake Geneva | $688,415 | $741,855 | 30% | +$53,440 | |
| Tourism Commission | $435,950 | $469,792 | 19% | +$33,842 | |
| Total gross room tax | $2,294,715 | $2,472,851 | 100% | +$178,136 |
The whole thing begins to resemble a municipal version of a casino economy: the house keeps advertising for more gamblers while the plumbing quietly bursts in the basement.
And this is where the political temperature rises.
Because every modern fight over Tourism Commission authority, grant programs, Riviera spending, livestream shutdowns, event funding, trolley schemes, consultant studies, and athletic complex subsidies suddenly looks different once you realize the commission is not operating on symbolic money.
This is real money. Structural money. Power money. Enough money to shape downtown priorities. Enough money to influence elections. Enough money to create entire local patronage ecosystems dressed up in the language of “destination marketing.”
The old joke in journalism is: follow the money. In Lake Geneva, you don’t even have to follow it anymore. It’s flowing through town like spring runoff after the ice breaks.
A New Sheriff in Town — or Another Hog at the Trough?
Enter Luke Pfeifer.
Mayor Todd Krause appointed the hotelier to the Lake Geneva Tourism Commission with the kind of quiet efficiency that suggests the outcome was never really in doubt. Pfeifer also serves on the board of the Lake Geneva Chamber of Commerce — which does business as Visit Lake Geneva, the same organization that vacuumed up $1.26 million in room tax revenue last year. The appointment arrives while Krause’s wife holds a seat on the four-member Executive Committee of VISIT Lake Geneva, the city’s tourism promotion organization.
A mayor. His wife on the Visit Lake Geneva Executive Committee. His appointee on the Tourism Commission with a seat on the Chamber board that runs Visit Lake Geneva. The circle is tight. The money is large. And the cameras, of course, are off.
The first grant hopeful on the May agenda was Art in the Park — held for many years in downtown Lake Geneva — asking for $26,300. Pfeifer was not happy. He questioned how the event could generate hotel nights when that “Saturday’s already going to be sold out pretty much across the city.” He also made clear he had “talked about trying to windle down so it’s not large grant amounts every year” for the same recurring event.
Fair enough, perhaps, as a fiscal principle. Except: that is not exactly how this commission rolls. Some rules apply to some events and some rules apply to others.
VISIT Lake Geneva President Stephanie Klett — who also sits on this commission, directing its members with her $3 million Visit Lake Geneva promotion budget — put Pfeifer back in his place with the kind of institutional authority that does not invite debate: “Art in the Park is a signature event.”
And so the special rules apply. Art in the Park, along with Venetian Fest and Winterfest, lumber across the calendar each year like municipal obligations disguised as celebrations — carefully engineered, relentlessly sanitized, and about as culturally distinctive as the carpet pattern in an airport Marriott. Both events possess the uncanny corporate neutrality of something designed by committee after a three-hour risk-management seminar. Nothing unexpected happens. Nothing dangerous happens. Nothing memorable happens. They are festivals in the same sense instant mashed potatoes are cuisine: technically functional, aggressively inoffensive, and entirely disconnected from the wild eccentricities that once made lake towns interesting.
The city produces festivals with the emotional voltage of a regional bank opening ceremony.
Never fear. Art in the Park got their $26,300. Voting yes: Zakia Pirzada, Secretary Alderperson Mary Jo Fesenmaier, Shelley Rowell, and Alderperson Linda Frame. Luke Pfeifer voted No.
Lake Geneva Gets Its First Pride Event
Wisconsin has a progressive history, and DEI is still alive and well here. Even Visit Lake Geneva’s main spokesman is former Green Bay Packer Donald Driver, who holds the franchise’s all-time records for most career receptions and receiving yards.
The first Pride Event is being organized by Sam Pike, general manager of the Cove Hotel. As Pike described it: “We’re trying to make this a Lake Geneva Pride weekend in a vibrant, inclusive, and community-driven celebration designed to position Lake Geneva as a welcoming destination for LGBTQ visitors.” Among the planned offerings: “One of the opportunities is doing a drag brunch next to the pool.”
Steve Schrader from Lake City Social, located in the Cove, added: “We’re approaching this as kind of more of a block party for our block. We want to activate the Maxwell Street Days kind of set up where there’s the street shopping and sidewalk sales… it’s going to flow through the BID District in downtown Lake Geneva.”
Zakia Pirzada, Secretary Alderperson Mary Jo Fesenmaier, Luke Pfeifer, Shelley Rowell, and Alderperson Linda Frame all approved the $15,127 grant. A unanimous vote. The new hotelier on the commission — the one who voted No on Art in the Park and balked at a $2,250 shuttle reimbursement — voted yes on Lake Geneva’s first Pride Event without apparent objection.
Make of that what you will.
Das Fest and the Shuttle Debate
Das Fest returned from the previous meeting seeking an additional $2,250 for a shuttle between downtown hotels and the festival at the Kenosha County Fairgrounds.
Pfeifer drew a hard line: “We can’t as a Tourism Commission give money for a shuttle that does not fall under an allowed use of funds. Yeah, but it is not tourism promotion marketing development.”
The city’s Comptroller, Laura Pisarcik, came to Das Fest’s defense: “I’ve gone back in the history, and they have not just this group but other groups have been reimbursed for shuttle expenses as long as they’re coming like to be with promoting the event and take them to and from hotels.”
Pfeifer held his position: “That’s not — that is not a marketing buy. I mean it’s very clear, there’s this is one that does not have ambiguity in the state statute.” But he offered a workaround — she “can just move it over to marketing somewhere.”
The Comptroller pointed out that the money has been used to pay for shuttles “and I’m talking years and years and years.”
Commissioner Pirzada offered the pragmatic resolution: pay the $2,250 out of “other marketing expenses” and move on. She acknowledged the underlying chaos plainly: “So right now it’s confusing because we have in past approved so many shuttles and grants.”
In the end, they all approved the additional $2,250 grant. Except Luke Pfeifer.
The Outside-the-City Grant Problem
After eight years of operating without clear criteria, the Commission finally began to confront the question of grants for events held outside the city of Lake Geneva.
Pfeifer stated his position without ambiguity: “So my thought is, if it’s not in the city of Lake Geneva, we either need to have a strict rule, we’re not doing it, or we need to have criteria that cure our bands are what we give for grants and then it’s less.”
In the end, Alderperson Fesenmaier tasked Zakia Pirzada and Luke Pfeifer with revising the application to establish criteria for grants outside the city limits.
Eight years. No criteria. Millions of dollars. A commission that freely admits its own rules are “confusing” because of decisions made “years and years and years” ago.
And the cameras are still off.
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