Thanks all (especially Janet) for the Facebook heads up about the Tay Valley Township (TVT) recreation plan and the notion of having a public boat launch on Black Lake.
It looks like the Facebook reaction is uniformly opposed, for obvious reasons of vehicular and boat traffic. As a result, BLPOA will be systematically assembling an owners position on this to represent to TVT.
At risk of sounding like a broken record, the one catch is that representing lake owners is hard to claim when maybe one in five is a member of the BLPOA (2019) and when we have contact information for less than half of the (likely 240+) owners, including the official mailing list with only 126 subscribers, including co-owners, so less than half the owners.
Since the official email list is how we can systematically assemble a collective opinion to represent to TVT, including via our preferred method of running one or more Survey Monkey owners polls, we need more people to sign up.
Now, if you received the email on this same topic, you are signed up! But, if you did not, please use this link to opt in to our email updates. Also, your neighbours may not be aware of our website, email list or even our organization. Please spread the word, forward the email or a link to our website, to your neighbours and road association contacts.
Remember, we don’t insist that you join the BLPOA to sign up for the emails, but do prefer to restrict that list to owners, a claim that we cannot make about the Facebook group which likely has lots of friends and family.
I will also shortly being launching an appeal to collect owner contact information, just for BLPOA use. Stay tuned.
Now, one calming word. I don’t think the Black Lake public boat launch at ‘Site 10’ near Tom’s Rock can happen. It will need a road, as it is an unopened road allowance. That will be very expensive and the now inevitable Covid-19 recession will make our governments focus on other priorities. It will need parking and turnaround space. There isn’t any, just the road allowance, much of which would be taken up with the road. The surrounding property is private.
It also has a very steep shoreline, so boat launches will be far too much like in ‘The Dukes of Hazard’ (for those of us old enough to know the cultural reference). I do not think there is any way to trailer a boat in and out there without shoreline alterations.
So, if TVT sees (a) expensive (b) not functional and (c) wide-spread owner/voter opposition it will likely not happen. Your BLPOA Board will work on (c): the systematic opposition.
Cliff Halliwell, President BLPOA