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Tourism: Striking A Proper Balance

Tourism is usually associated with the sound of ringing cash registers.

For some area residents, the sounds of tourism are different – loud parties, traffic and the fun of cleaning extra trash out of one’s yard.

The trick for area elected officials is protecting their year-round residents while ensuring a vacation area isn’t so overwrought with rules and regulations that summer residents are chased away.

That’s why discussions that began recently in Lakewood, and to a lesser degree in Bemus Point, are so interesting.

The Lakewood Village Board is beginning work on a historic district or zoning overlay within which vacation or weekly rentals would not be allowed. The area is roughly from Park Lane to Owana Way, north of West Summit Street, continuing east to Oakland Avenue and north of East Terrace Avenue. The zoning law would also include a licensing proposal regarding future rental properties with owners likely required to leave information for a property manager responsible for dealing with tenants.

Members of the Bemus Point Zoning Board have been asked by residents of the Bemus Bay Condominiums to approve a fence around the property because private shoreline property is consistently being trespassed on with trash left behind regularly. The fence requested is 4-feet high and 200 feet long. The plan has been tabled for now while village officials discuss their options. Board members will then present the Zoning Board’s comments to condominium board members later.

It is obvious there are some in Lakewood and Bemus Point who feel their rights are being infringed on by summer visitors. At the same time, year-round residents surely don’t want to pick up even more of the tax burden in Lakewood and Bemus Point if summer visitors choose to stop coming here because the villages became a fun-free zone. Both boards are, thus far, striking a balance between the interests of year-round residents and allowing summer visitors a vacation atmosphere. They must stay on that path.

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