The Ontwa Township building on US-12 was packed Tuesday evening with concerned citizens hoping to discover what a recent municipal decision meant for them.

The Ontwa Township Board of Trustees hosted a special meeting on Tuesday to discuss the issue of putting docks or piers on public road ends and alleys. Earlier this month, the board voted to reverse its September 2016 ruling that stated the board would not issue pier permits on road-ends due to changes in state law. The board is now looking into how it will permit these public piers and regulate them.

Tuesday’s meeting served as a way for Ontwa Township residents to share their questions about the reversal with the board, as well as a way for the board to gauge public concerns, which will help the board to determine, should it continue to move forward with allowing piers on road-ends, what a permitting process would look like.

The meeting was structured as a forum, moderated by Julie Pioch, district coordinator with Michigan State University Extension. Attendees to the meeting were encouraged to write down their questions about the new pier process on colored note cards, which Pioch would then read to the board to have members, local experts or township lawyer Catherine Kaufman answer.

“This is all about listening and discussing,” Pioch said. “I don’t think the board, at this time, is ready to have an opinion.”

The original September 2016 ruling drew concern from road-end and out-lot lake residents, which, in turn, played a role in prompting the board to change its position earlier this month. However, many lake residents took issue with the reversal, and raised their concerns at the forum.

Topics discussed at the meeting included:

• how many piers could be at a road end

• what activities will be allowed at piers

• what will happen if a complaint is made against a pier

• how road end maintance will be handled,

• permit fees

•liability insurance

• applicant requirements

• selection process, and many others.

The board did not have solid answers for how these issues would be handled, but said they would take residents’ opinions into account when it came to creating finalized processes.

The board did have a solid plan for an issue that was brought up by several residents. At Tuesday’s meeting, and at several meetings over the last few months, on-lake residents have expressed concerns over who will enforce policy violators or unlawful activities at road ends, particularly keeping loud children off the docks after curfew and ensuring that no one moors their boats between midnight and sunrise. The board answered these concerns by stating that the Edwardsburg Police Department will deal with these types of issues.

“Whatever the township tells us to enforce, we will. It’s pretty cut and dry,” said Edwardsburg/Ontwa Police Chief Doug Westrick. “Do I  really want to go out at midnight and give tickets to violators? Absolutely not, but if it is ordered, I will.”

Several meeting attendees, including the township’s attorney, expressed concerns that the permitting piers was a huge undertaking that would be complicated to address.

“If you go forward with this, good luck,” said Curt Jacobi, president of the Garver Lake Conservation Club, after he presented a case from a nearby city, where the board unanimously voted to not allow piers on road ends. “They were going through what you are going through. You have an out … I see a lot less benefits than I do negatives here. I see more problems than it’s worth.”

While several of the residents who attended the meeting were hoping that the township would not move forward with the permitting process, some came out to show their support.

“It’s a good thing to put in the piers for the guys in the back out-lots,” said Ryan Molnar, of Eagle Lake, who has been vocal in the past about his desire to have the board issue permits. “To take away access to the lake for us back lot owners, would be really unfair.”

Board members said that they were willing to listen to everyone’s concerns and hoped to put together a permitting process that will make sense for both the board and the residents.

“We are trying to be as fair as we can,” said Township Supervisor Jerry Marchetti. “When we made the ruling last September that there would be no more pier permits, it came through more and more that it just didn’t seem fair, speaking for myself, that it wasn’t fair for people who are not on the lake. That was the intention behind revising the original ruling.”

No decisions were made at Tuesday’s meeting, and the board plans to have several more public meetings about the pier issue in the coming months in order to deal with the issue in the best way possible.

“You all need to have patience,” said Zoning Administrator Leroy Krempec about revising the pier permitting process. “When it’s done, we will do it right. There’s a lot of questions. Who is going to come up all the answers? It’s a lot to think about. If you have the patience, it will be done right.”

Future meeting dates and times will be posted on the township website.