City hikes rent, passes new rules for lake lots

The City Council sharply hiked the annual lease rates at Lake Olney and Lake Cooper to pay for code enforcement, improvements, and police patrols but allowed owners of lakefront property to stay in their unpermitted homes or to sell them to new tenants if they don’t want to sign new leases on Jan. 1.

About seven families have lived at the lake - some for decades - in cabins and trailers with electricity and cable but no water service, and unpermitted septic systems that border the city’s drinking water source.

The Council on Sept. 26 rescinded all ordinances pertaining to the lakes and replaced them with a new chapter of the Olney Code of Ordinances, and created new leases that raise the annual rent for lake lots from $500 to $2,400. The fate of the lake lots has been a long-running issue for the Council after disputes broke out nearly two years ago among tenants over property lines. The disputes brought Olney police to the scene and prompted a closer look by the Council at the decades-old leases, which did not permit structures to be built on the 56 city-owned lots. However, many of the lake residents said they had bought homes directly from former owners, not knowing that they were illegal. Several lake lot residents told the council they were retirees living on fixed incomes and could not afford to abandon their homes and move elsewhere.

The new ordinance allows the existing structures to remain and to be sold to new tenants but prohibits the construction of new buildings at the lake or additions to existing homes. The new rules also ban the construction of new septic systems and require existing systems to be inspected annually. Tenants also are prohibited from using pesticides, herbicides, or other chemical poisons unless they are state-approved for use near bodies of water used for drinking, and from drawing water from the lakes, the ordinance said.

The new ordinance bans hunting and the discharge of firearms at the lake property, and it restricts off-road driving to anyone but lake residents and city workers.

It also limits camping to designated camping areas and to three consecutive nights, and no more than six nights per two-month period.