This is the 3rd winter doing my “President’s Message”. It is the first time I have had to do so without the guidance of Jim Sangster. As you may already know, Jim passed away suddenly during the Christmas Holidays at his and his wife Molly’s home on the lake. If you are a member of the Paudash Lake ‘Facebook’ site, you would have seen the notice I posted referring to Jim as a ‘Champion of Paudash’.

Jim volunteered on our Board for decades, serving as President for many years before I followed in his footsteps. Even then, Jim stayed on the Board as the vice- president until just 2 years ago. He continued to be an ‘advisor’ to the Board until his death. Jim was a friend and a mentor and I miss him.

Short Term Rentals

The survey that Highlands East posted last fall attracted very few participants. I read the results and as expected feelings were mixed, from ‘no guidelines’ to ‘forbidden’ and many opinions in between. Out of 340 responses, 88 were from Paudash Lake property owners. Out of the 340 respondents 71.26% felt that there should be either ‘no allowance for short term rentals’ or ‘yes-- but with limitations/regulations’. We will see later this year what Council proposes.

Lake Health Report

Last year your Board provided this report about our lake and other Haliburton lakes. These were given to members free and were available to pick up at Landing Point Marine. Many of you still have not picked up yours so we will let you know this seasons where to go again.

Lake Trout

The North Hastings Community Fish Hatchery has renewed their stocking program for another 5 years with Paudash Lake. That will give us 11 years of native lake trout being put into our lake – over 50,000 fish.

Summer Activities

There will be more about this is the Spring Newsletter, but the usual Canada Bay Parade, Rock Bass Derby, Golf Tournament, Regatta and Annual General Meeting with a guest speaker. Canada Day is always on July 1st and that means our parade will be on Wednesday, July 1st this summer.

PLCA Member Survey 2019

Last summer, our V.P. Gord Chong, facilitated making a survey available to membership in order to get feedback on how your Board is managing PLCA. The full results will be posted on our website this spring.

Membership

Due to the great work of our chair Lynn Lebel and her committee, our numbers reached 252 in 2019 – highest in many years. This season they have plans in place to continue to increase these numbers and get closer to the approx. 650 potential members on the lake.

Re-Generate Your Waterfront FOR FREE

In partnership with the Bancroft Area Stewardship Council (BASC), PLCA is launching a contest to our members who want to improve the health of their waterfront.

BASC will provide the winner with the consultation of a professional forester and the planting of up to 100 trees and/or shrubs in May of this year on their shoreline and in the zone 30 metres back from the water.

Anyone who owns property on the lake is eligible, but the winner must be a member of the PLCA. We are hoping to attract new members who can join prior to the announcement of the winner in late April.

Every property on the lake was assessed in 2016-2017 in our ‘Love Your Lake’ program and a confidential report was sent to all the owners. I hope that those of you who were rated as needing regeneration will enter and become a winner.

Please go to our website to enter https://www.paudashlake.org/

Yours sincerely,

Mike Thomas

President, Paudash Lake Conservation Association

PLCA President's Report, Winter 2019/2020