Eagle Lake and the public’s right to access it, was a topic of discussion at Monday’s Ontwa Township Board of Trustees meeting.

Several Eagle Lake residents attended to the board’s July 10 meeting to share their opinions about the lack of access for off-lake and out-lot residents to Eagle Lake via piers and docks.

The issue began in 2012 when the state took away the right to deal with road ends and gave the right to municipalities, while also making the laws pertaining to road ends more complex.

The Ontwa Township Board decided it did not want to be involved with grant permits for insurance reasons. As a result, the board passed a resolution in September that it would not issue any private pier or dock permits for any road end or alley.

This left off-lake residents, primarily from Eagle Lake, without a way to access a pier.

“People who have had piers at road ends for the last 25 years can no longer do that, because we are no longer issuing permits,” said Township Supervisor Jerry Marchetti. “It’s really affected a lot of people at Eagle Lake, and a few other lakes too.”

Several residents argued at the meeting that this is in violation of a dedication laid forth by Cora M. French Stryker’s, dedicated [an easement of Eagle Lake] to the use of the public,” and that a lack of pier access to the lake might decrease their property values.

“If you close this off and deny us access to piers, boats and swimming, etc., you deprive us of real value in our homes,” said local resident Andrew Borem.

Lake View Park resident Christine Reed argued that not issuing pier permits to road end residents only benefited the wealthiest residents of Eagle Lake.

“Shame on those of you who decided that the only people that matter in this community are the most privileged, the residents who own property on the lake,” Reed said. “This board has decided ‘dedicated to the use of the public’ should be limited to the out-lot lake residents, my neighborhood, to dipping our toes in the water.”

However, not every resident was in favor of bringing road end, public use docks and piers back to Eagle Lake. Many of those on the anti-pier side of the debate said loud children and teens used to spend time past curfew at the easement, something which no longer happens now that there is no public pier.

“I live next to a public road end, and this is the first year there has not been a pier, and there has been a very positive outcome of that,” said Eagle Lake resident Pat Makielski. “We’ve had fewer police calls, because before, the kids would congregate there. We had problems with fights and profanity.”

However, several pro-pier people argued that noise complaints and curfew enforcement should be handled by law enforcement, not by the municipality.

With so many public opinions on the table, the board discussed what their next moves should be in dealing with the issue.

Township Treasurer Meryl Christensen said they spoke to a lawyer that gave the township three options to deal with the issue, the first being to not change the ordinance they made in the September. The second option is to assign a lake association to be in charge of the piers. The third option would be to create a way to open a lottery for pier permits, the way Cass County has done in the past.

The board ended the discussion by agreeing to attempt to get Sen. John Proos at the next meeting to hear the complaints of the public.

In other business:

• The board approved the purchase of four radar depth sensors for the wastewater system. The cost of the sensors should not exceed $12,000.