Lake cabin permit fees to be set aside for projects

Talk about it

The Stutsman County Park Board agreed Tuesday to set aside money from the increase in cabin-permit fees on Jamestown Reservoir for possible later use in projects.

Land at the Reservoir is public land owned by the Bureau of Reclamation, which then offers permits for private usage of the land.

Fees for cabins on the Jamestown Reservoir are set by Reclamation, but must be approved and collected by the Stutsman County Park Board.

The county collects the permit fees set by Reclamation and can then decide what to do with them.

At an earlier meeting, the Jamestown Cabin Owners Association had requested that the permit fees be frozen so that they could speak with the Bureau of Reclamation about the fee levels.

The groups did speak with each other, and the Bureau of Reclamation will be doing appraisals on the land, and that will be used to set the permit rates, rather than the land index Reclamation currently uses.

Stutsman County Commissioner Dave Schwartz, a member of the Park Board, warned that appraisal could potentially increase the permit fees and “might come back to haunt (cabin owners).”

“I do know that the index is haunting us, and I don’t know that there’s a better idea,” said Fran Romsdal, president of the Jamestown Cabin Owners Association.

The Cabin Owners requested that 20 percent of the permit fees be forgiven or simply returned to them to be used in repairing and maintaining shorelines.

However, there was some disagreement as to whether that would be legal, and Park Board members decided to put all the money from the fee increases — about $23,300 total — aside into a fund, perhaps to be used for projects benefiting cabin owners.

Costs for renting a cabin at the reservoir have gone up over the past few years as part of an attempt by the Bureau of Reclamation to get permit costs high enough to reach the fair market value of renting the land.

The Park Board includes members of the Stutsman County Commission as well as two others — Robert Woodward and Mark Schlecht.

The Park Board also discussed an incident in which county personnel violated the county’s burn ban after a miscommunication between departments. Procedures were changed to ensure it wouldn’t happen again.

In other news Tuesday, the Stutsman County Commission:

* agreed that Country Grain Co-op could pave a third of a mile of a county road at its cost — about $54,813.99.

* increased the levies of townships that owe Stutsman County money for road repairs, provided they were not already at their levy limits. Those townships are Bloomfield, Conklin, Corwin, Flint, Gray, Peterson, Roosevelt, Sharlow and Valley Springs.

* accepted a Homeland Security grant for $20,840, which will be used to purchase new defibrillators for law enforcement and local fire departments.

* appointed Dennis Clark as a member of the Stutsman County Water Resource Board. Clark, who was previously an alternate on the board, will complete the term of Jeff Mitchell, who resigned from the Water Board after he was found to have created an illegal drain. That term ends in December.

Sun reporter Kari Lucin can be reached at 701-952-8453 or by email at klucin@jamestownsun.com

Tags: local news, news, county