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“We are looking at things that perhaps we could get passed,” La Crosse Common Council member Dorothy Lenard said of the proposal she and Andy Monfre introduced, which would direct the city engineer to design gates and other safety measures at the levee. “There didn’t seem to be community support to put a fence down the river.”
Lenard was responding to resident Rick Hamilton’s criticism the proposal limits the city engineer to only ideas from the Alcohol Oversight Committee. That group is looking at ways to develop recommendations from an earlier alcohol task force, formed after the April 2004 drowning death of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse student Jared Dion after a night of drinking downtown. It was the seventh area drowning in seven years.
“We will be back here again,” Hamilton predicted, “and the next time it will not be a college student. It will be a 3-year-old or someone taking a wedding picture.”
Under the proposal, the city engineer would bring designs back to the full council in May. Other safety measures suggested include flotation rings, signs and ladders.
Council member Jim Bloedorn said the plan would waste money because the city tried the same measures in the past and they didn’t work. “They were unused items that served as decorations in the park,” he said. “Finally the ladders were stolen or rotted away.”
The committee still passed the proposal, which goes on to Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole meeting, which also is a public hearing. The council will vote on the measure Thursday, April 13.
Joan Kent can be reached at (608) 791-8221 or jkent@lacrossetribune.com.
