Annual Meeting 2025 Review
Financial Report Thru 5/31/2025 – Patty
Copy is attached.
Checking Account Balance: 34,898.78
Money Market Account: 13,373.33
Dam Savings Fund: 7,758.32
Special Projects: 6,707.10
CD Due 8/8/2025 33,023.27
___________
Total Funds Available: 95,760.80
Lake ChaugaAnn: Steve Brigance
Steve explained the background of the property at the north end of the lake by the State Park. This was owned by Woffard Bonner, brother of Calvin Bonner, and originally that area was called Lake ChaugaAnn, so named for Chuck, Gary, and Peggy Ann, Wofford and Myra’s grandchildren. Peggy and Steve will be mounting a plaque at the boat ramp area explaining this.
State of the Lake:
New dock at the boat ramp area – materials and labor donated by Jim Galloway and Dale Hesse
Swinging end of the fence toward the lake at the boat ramp area has now been stabilized.
Bouys were installed in the narrow and shallow coves to identify the “No Wake Zones” Please be respectful of this.
Hurricane Helene resulted in a lot of trees falling into the lake. Some have been cleaned out, others have not. If you need help, contact a board member and we can contact someone who can remove the tree for you for a fee. There are a couple of trees that could be considered hazardous and in the path of boats.
Lawsuit: A couple of years ago there were two docks put in with no request for a permit. Tom went to talk to the owners. The owner also bought 5 acres on Bauknight Road and said this is what we are going to do with the property and the docks. He had divided the 5 acres into 9 lots and put an easement from those lots to the lake thru lot 20 (the new house) and one of the docks was to be a Community Dock for those houses. Tom told them that they can’t do that, no permit was
requested and you simply can’t give lake access to people who are not on the lake. We tried working with them, letters between lawyers went back and forth and we were always put off. They were finally told that if we can’t settle this, we would file a lawsuit. It was about precedent. If this was ignored that leaves the door open for others to sell access to the lake. We were advised that we need to maintain the right to control the lake bottom on behalf of the members. What should have been an easy case to resolve became an endless round of lawyers writing letters. Tom met with our lawyer and asked what next. Our lawyer said the next step would be to take depositions and file the lawsuit. Tom asked how much would that cost and the lawyer said in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand dollars getting ready for trial and once we get to trial who knows. Tom explained that we couldn’t do that, and what’s the back-up plan? Well, before you go to trial, you have to go to mediation which is where the two parties meet with mediators and try to resolve your differences. We had the mediation meeting and basically came to an agreement that the Board has the right to request a permit for docks, that the docks be joined into one dock for the use of Lot 20 (the new house) and that the easement would be removed. We verbally agreed to that settlement. Our lawyer wrote it up and then spent another 6 – 8 months getting it signed. Then we had to get the surveyor involved to remove the easement and get it filed with the county office. This was all done and settled a couple of weeks ago. There was discussion about the fact that current Bylaws only allow lake rights with lake front property. If the larger tracts are split up, the property without lake front would not be eligible for lake rights. It was argued that if the deed for the whole property says they must maintain a membership in the Mountain Lake Fishing and Boating Club, then the off lake property also has lake rights even though there is no lake frontage. Another question from a member was why there was no mediation meeting sooner in the process? The only answer was we had no knowledge of this and it wasn’t mentioned until Tom asked the lawyer how can we end this.
DHEC Inspection: Our dam is inspected every 2 years around March. This year Tom went with the DHEC inspector. The concrete pillows on the spillway have minor cracks in them and we need to have them grouted. We need to make sure the vegetation on the dam is cut down. We are working on getting a company to do that. There was some concern that the old outflow could be leaking. There was dye added to the water around the old outflow (which during the repair was filled with concrete) and David and Dwayne never saw colored water flowing on the other side of the dam. With the overgrowth of the dam, DHEC could not get down to the
ground to visually see if there was leakage. A member asked if there was any way to share the DHEC report on the dam. Danny said he could get it either on the website or the facebook page.
General Discussion of safety on the lake: We are asking the members to be courteous on the lake. Be aware of who and what is around you as you are boating along. There are canoers, kayakers, and people swimming. Very interesting, it was discussed by Danny, (who sells insurance) that legally, if you are boating and hit a swimmer, the driver of the boat is responsible. He likened it to a car driver hitting a pedestrian – the car driver is responsible. Please keep this in mind while having fun on the lake.
Danny, Tom, and Dwayne (who finished out a 1 year term) – are scheduled to go off the Board this year. They were re-nominated along with Jared Lowery. After the votes were counted Danny, Tom, and Dwayne were re-elected to remain on the board.
There will be a Bylaw special meeting on August 23rd at the Community Club at 2:00 to discuss Bylaw changes. The board will present the changes they have been working on and discuss them with the membership. We are trying to come up with Bylaw wording to close the gap the lawsuit created. Wish us luck.