Spring 2025
Winter has finally eased its grip at the Lake, just a little, and Spring is in the air. At least according to the calendar. It was an unusually cold and snowy winter this year (see the article on snowfall), but warmer weather and another busy lake season lie just ahead.
Spring is a time of rebirth and fresh starts, and so it is also for the PLPA website.
PLPA.org has been reborn, with a major upgrade. The goal was to make it a more useful and functional resource for the lake community and a better tool for the PLPA to communicate with members. We hope you’ll think so.
The website has been redesigned to work equally well on your laptop, tablet or mobile device. We’ve also made it easier to navigate, reducing the number of clicks needed to find information. While looks aren’t everything, we’ve also made the site more visually appealing and reduced the clutter.
One of the website improvements that members have suggested was to make it easier to find out what’s going on at the lake. We’ve done that. Upcoming events and the latest news will be featured prominently on the Home page. To help you keep up with lake events you’ll be able to sync the PLPA events calendar to your Gmail, Apple, or Outlook calendars. Look for the “Subscribe to calendar” button at the bottom of the “Events” page.
Many thanks to the Ad Hoc website committee of Lisa Hanger, Val Nicotina, and Karen Mulrooney for their time, patience, and great ideas. Oh, and for bringing organization to my disorganized ways. Over the next few months we will continue to make the website even better—so if you have any ideas, suggestions, complaints, let us know.
The PLPA is still putting the season’s calendar of events together, but we do have dates for buoy maintenance and for the container drives—and a date has been picked for the “Welcome Back to the Lake” cocktail party. They are all up on the website calendar.
The PLPA, with the help of the Peck’s, maintains and places the hazard markers and buoys—and we can always use help getting them ready for their summer home in the lake. So please, if you haven’t before, please consider volunteering. You’ll meet some of your neighbors and help make the lake safer. The buoy prep is scheduled for May 10, but remember to check the calendar as dates sometimes change.
The Lake Life Committee has been busy putting together PLPA events schedule for 2025. This year we are looking forward to some exciting events here at the lake – including the Caroga Arts Music Festival’s annual concert. The full Events Calendar will be accessible on the website, and as I mentioned earlier, you can sync it to your personal calendar. You can read more about the events they have planned in Karen Mulrooney’s article elsewhere in the newsletter.
As we inch closer to the summer season, we remain concerned that some lake property owners will continue to offer their properties to transient, short-term guests. You can read more about this on the website and in the article “About Short-term Rentals” elsewhere in this newsletter. We hope that all lake property owners will abide by the restrictive covenants in our deeds and refrain from offering their property as short-term rentals and house-swapping.
You’ll also see in this newsletter John Dackow’s article about his experience taking the required boater safety course. New York law now requires that ALL those operating watercraft must take an approved boating safety course. Information about the required courses and a link to the New York State page are also included on the “Lake Rules” page of the website.
And speaking of the newsletter, we could use some help! Over the past few years we have lost some of the newsletter’s most prolific authors—and we are coming to the sad realization that instead of four newsletters per year, maybe we should pare it down to two. We need content.
Looking through past newsletters (you can see quite a few yourself in the Archives section of the website) there was a great variety of articles—on gardening, trends in local weather, hobbies. More recently, Lisa Hanger has been sharing her knowledge and interest in wine. I hope some of you might consider writing an article for the next newsletter. It doesn’t have to be about the lake. It can be about a hobby you have that you think others might be interested in, or maybe an experience you’ve had that you’d like to share with your lake neighbors.
I’m hoping to see many of you this season at one of our many social events, or maybe you’ll consider volunteering at one of our lake events—like the buoy prep or one of the container drives. Anyway, Happy Spring and welcome back!