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Highlands Today

LAKE DENTON: Controversial Proposal Goes To Commission

The Final Of A Two-Part Series

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By Jim  Konkoly | Highlands Today

Published: January 2, 2008

SEBRING — Don Bates, the Highlands County commissioner who chaired the special Lake Denton Citizens Advisory Committee, admits there still are unanswered questions about the county's closing of public access to the county's most popular lake.

But, Bates said on the morning of New Year's Eve, he's going to present the advisory committee's recommendation to the county commissioners today.

"I'm going to make a motion (for the board of county commissioners) to accept the recommendation of the committee," Bates said.

Bates said he doesn't know if there are enough votes on the five-member county commission to approve and implement the committee's controversial, four-point plan, which includes charging weekend user's fees to some, but not all, of the groups who use this exceptionally clear, clean and deep lake.

Still, Bates said, he feels it's his duty to present the advisory committee's recommended plan because it was passed unanimously by the seven committee members, who were appointed by the county commission.

"Since the committee voted unanimously to make the recommendations," Bates said, "I feel that, being the chairman (of the committee), I would be negligent not to make a motion to accept the committee's report."

Bates was the eighth member of the advisory committee. He was a non-voting member and, as the chairman, served as the moderator.

The most controversial recommendation is to charge weekend user's fees of $25 per day for scuba divers and boaters, while not charging any of the other groups of Lake Denton users.

Those other users, who will get in for free, include swimmers, sunbathers, fishermen, paddle-sport aficionados, wildlife photographers, bird watchers and general lakes and nature lovers.

Bates said he doesn't know how the county commission will react to the revelation –– made in the Dec. 29 edition of Highlands Today –– that the county's so-called boat ramp at Lake Denton is legally not a boat ramp, but a donated and dedicated public road pledged to the public's "perpetual use."

According to the county Plat Map for Lake Denton Drive, the boat ramp is a part of Lake Denton Drive. Also, according to the plat map, recorded on Feb. 2, 1954, county officials dedicated the road.

In dedicating Lake Denton Drive in 1954, county officials signed a legally binding document which says that the donated land on which Lake Denton Drive, including the boat ramp, was built must be kept for "the perpetual use of the public."

That official dedication, which allowed Lake Denton Drive to be built and maintained as a public road, says that the land on which Lake Denton Drive was built shall revert to the original landowners, or their heirs, if that road or any part of it, is ever closed to the public.

Those landowners are John Albert Cain and his wife, Allie H. Cain. They platted the subdivision which became the present-day homes on Lake Denton Drive.

Bill Serey, a retired police officer from Kentucky who moved to Highlands County four years ago, runs Fear Not Scuba and was one of several scuba instructors and dive-shop owners who attended the Lake Denton Citizens Advisory Committee meetings.

"There are several unanswered questions that need to be answered," he said, before the commissioners decide how and under what restrictions public access to this state lake should be restored.

"One of the questions that was raised at the (advisory committee's) meetings was about charging $25 to the divers and the boaters for use of the lake, but not charging any fee for the swimmers and the sunbathers and the other people who use this lake," he said.

"There are questions about whether that is fair," Serey said. "Is it discriminatory? I don't know. But somebody should answer that question."

Another question that needs to be answered, Serey said, is whether the state of Florida has been sending or spending public money to improve or maintain the Lake Denton "boat ramp."

If the answer is yes, he said, Lake Denton, and the public access to it, could be purchased and managed by any of a dozen different state agencies.

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