Roads and rentals – and their place in Lake Oconee’s long-term character and drawing power – bubbled up in discussions at the Putnam County Board of Commissioners’ first monthly meeting last Friday.
The road in question is the state Department of Transportation’s proposed widening of Georgia 44, basically in the business district now extending two or three miles on either side of Lake Oconee, roughly from Harmony Crossing in Putnam County to St. Mary’s Hospital in Greene.
Completion of such a project is currently not projected until 2030. However, a group dubbed “Save My 44” has been active for a couple of years now and wants to have a say in the design – which ultimately leads to the number of rights-of-way to be purchased and the impact that would have on already functioning businesses.
Evidently, the group has become increasingly active recently, collecting 2,100 signatures in a petition campaign and approaching the Putnam and Greene county commissions seeking support.
The solutions Save My 44’s representatives Bryan Quinn and Laura Dent pushed last week included turn lanes and roundabouts on a narrower right-of-way, versus the divided 200/300-foot right-of-way with grassed medians as seen in the current widening of U.S. 441 in Morgan and Putnam counties.
And they caught the ears of commissioners Bill Sharp, Alan Foster and Daniel Brown, with the commission agreeing to craft a letter to state officials asking for local citizen groups and businesses to be part of the conversation about design and “the best outcome over the next 20 years.”
As for the rapid growth of short-term rentals of residential properties around the lake in the past couple of years, District 3 Commissioner Foster reported that a committee of nine shareholders – residents and business owners – will hold its second meeting this week.
The committee, which was authorized by the commission in January and organized by the Eatonton-Putnam Chamber of Commerce, was charged with coming up with recommendations before the summer bulge in the rental activity.
Foster, who chairs the committee, has characterized the property being remodeled next door to his own lakeside home as a “hotel.”
He said there were perhaps 25 such properties already around the lake, several owned by corporations.
“It is supposed to be an R-1 (single-family residential) zone,” he pointed out.
One solution might be a county ordinance limiting the number of people in a house to eight, 10, 12 or so, but that invites a second problem, enforcement. No doubt this is an issue that will be revisited in future commission meetings.