How City Officials Spent Taxpayer Money on Daily Lake Patrols and Then Couldn’t Figure Out Where to Park the Damn Thing
Jesus Christ, where do you even begin with this story?
The City of Lake Geneva Police and Fire Commission and the City Council—those bastards—woke up one morning with a nautical itch screaming in their skulls like a bad case of the DTs. For reasons that are still tumbling through the ether somewhere between raw impulse and pure institutional madness, they decided they needed their very own police boat. Their own! Never mind that they’d been throwing money for years at the Geneva Lake Law Enforcement Association, which had been patrolling these waters just fine until 2026. But logic is a quaint notion when the fever takes hold.
Geneva Lake, for those keeping score at home, runs nine miles from one end to the other. The City of Lake Geneva? They control maybe a third of that wet real estate. Not exactly commanding the Pacific Theater here. But geography means nothing to men seized by visions of aquatic authority.
Mayor Todd Krause—God help us—signed off on roughly $200,000 for the boat itself, then threw another $100,000 at it to turn the thing into a floating Swiss Army knife with a badge and delusions of grandeur.
And then came the line that should be cast in bronze and welded to the goddamn hull for all eternity.
According to police Lieutenant Tietz of the Lake Geneva Police Department: “The city asked us to provide this service. We didn’t ask the city.”
“The city asked us to provide this service. We didn’t ask the city.”
So there it is, friends. The call came from inside City Hall. The lunatics were running the asylum from day one.
The minutes from the Police and Fire Commission—those beautiful, bureaucratic confessions—tell us arrests were up significantly last summer, even without Geneva Lake patrols. A curious data point, dropped into the record without a trace of irony.
Before the city bought this nautical albatross, the Police Chief swore on a stack of municipal bonds that no additional officers would be needed. This in a town that transforms every summer into a seething human anthill of tourists and drunks. He also muttered dark warnings about response time on the water. The boat, he insisted, would be for law enforcement only. Not emergency medical response. Draw that line in the sand and pray it holds.
But then came the inevitable mutation. Mission creep. Every new toy demands to be played with, fondled, taken out for a spin.
At the February 10, 2026 Piers and Harbor Committee meeting, Alderperson Yeager finally asked Lieutenant Tietz the question that had been hanging in that room like cigar smoke at a Rotary Club lunch.
“Are you only going out for emergencies or are you going out for regular, just surveillance of the area so that we know what boats are out there and things like that?”
Because that, she said, was the impression the City Council had when it approved this whole deranged scheme.
Lieutenant Tietz answered with the kind of plain, cheerful confidence you only get from someone who’s already halfway down the launch ramp with the engine running.
“When it comes to our patrol duties, we’re planning on being out there daily and it’s not going to be just for emergencies.”
Daily patrols! No extra officers! Maybe some overtime—and thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill those bastards in Congress just passed, that overtime isn’t even taxable income. Sweet Jesus, a nice tailwind for anyone rowing the municipal boat straight into the sunset.
But like the city’s trolley fantasies—another fever dream we’ll save for another time—this shiny new vessel needed a place to live. A home. A launch point. And so Mayor Krause, the city administrator, and the police chief gazed upon the waters and concluded there was only one possible location.
Right next to the Mayor’s Batman boat. I’m not making this up. Don’t even ask.
Specifically, they chose the west end public pier launch lane—one of the busiest, most congested aquatic choke points on the entire lake. Boats have names, you understand, often feminine, born of ancient maritime superstition and the old sailor’s belief that vessels are protective, maternal creatures deserving respect and appeasement. Sailors trusted luck. City planners, apparently, trust congestion and chaos.
Members of the public lined up like witnesses at a traffic accident to explain what anyone with functioning eyeballs already knew: the chosen spot was the most crowded, hardest-to-maneuver section of the lake. Dogs, swimmers, launching boats, kayakers, a public fishing pier, neighboring private piers, and a brand-new ADA kayak launch all crammed together like some kind of floating demolition derby designed by a committee on mushrooms.
Then came the subtext. The thing nobody wanted to say out loud but everybody was thinking.
Why here, dear reader? Why right next to the mayor’s boat?
Public piers, as it turns out, invite public behavior. The unwashed masses. People picnic. People wander. People leave their trash and their DNA all over everything.
As Jennifer Aaron said at the meeting: “I had beer cans and Cheetos left on my boat from people.”
The horror. The absolute horror.
Enter Al Bosworth, a long-time lake resident with a private pier stuck right next to this maritime carnival of fools.
“My first reaction was a great spot would have been over by the Riviera where the old water safety patrol was parked back in the 60s and 70s.”
Others echoed the concern—including Alderperson Yeager herself, who also keeps a boat in the area. Traffic. Safety. Common sense. The usual suspects.
Bosworth kept drilling, laying out the geometry of this slow-motion disaster.
“And one of the issues was parking on the west side of that pier. Everybody agreed it should not be allowed. And that’s why there are now no parking signs… So, by placing a boat in that position, it is creating a pinch point.”
Alderperson Yeager admitted her unfamiliarity with the alternative location.
“I know nothing about the Riv area, so I would like to see where you were talking about the Riv area as well. People mentioned where the safety boat used to be, and I don’t know where that is.”
In the end? No action was taken. The boat stayed theoretical, floating in bureaucratic limbo. The problem stayed real. Everyone agreed that maps of the area would be included at the next meeting.
Which is how things always end around here—with charts promised, questions unanswered, and a very expensive boat waiting patiently in the wings for permission to make waves.
Selah.
Editor’s Note: This article is based on public meeting minutes, recorded statements, and direct quotations from city officials.
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