By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

            Levy County Commissioners this week tabled a request by the owners of Wells Horse Hole mud bog in south Levy County for a special permit that would allow them to add self-contained camping and make other changes. Commissioners said they wanted a detailed site plan for the entire 102 acres.

            Commissioners appeared to be leaning at one point toward requiring some type of RV campground at the mud bog, but the owners said they have never seen an RV campground at any other mud bog they visited and they don’t think it’s fair to impose the requirement on their property.

            At the very least, Commissioner Matt Brooks responded, the board needed a detailed site plan showing the number of camping sites on the property and precisely where they would be located, how many people would be accepted for camping, an exact layout of the campground on the 102 acres, how they would buffer noise and how the owners would handle containment to prevent mud boggers from driving on neighboring properties.

            The original request by owner Heather Hosfeld included changing operating hours from 10 a.m. to sunset, to 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.; removing a paintball court; reducing the time deputies and ambulance EMTs are required to be on-site, from being there all the time to bring them as needed during peak hours, and the most contentious issue of all — having self-contained camping.

            Self-contained camping means the owner of the camper doesn’t have an electrical hookup and uses some type of generator for power, which neighbors fear will generate too much noise. The campers are self-contained. The owners said 90 percent of today’s generators are quiet. Neighbors complained that the owners were already allowing camping without a county permit.

The owners are being asked to work with County Planner Stacey Hectus on developing detailed site plans, but commissioners weren’t entirely clear if they would allow self-contained camping or some version of it. They want more details on exactly what the owners want to do and they want the owners to bring those plans back to the county commission for review.

            Commission Chairman John Meeks said the owners should return with a site plan showing “the potential area of camping to the least invasive for neighbors.”

“Personally, we need more information,” Meeks said. “I don’t want to rule it out 100 percent because there’s some potential as Mr. (Cameron Hosfeld) said for safety issues.”

Hosfeld didn’t like what the board was proposing.

            “You want us to be a campground in a mud hole?” Hosfeld said. “It sounds like you want us to be a campground or you want us to be the only mud hole in the United States that has full hookup for campers. We’ve been to quite a few of them. There’s nothing like what you all are asking for. As long as you are self-contained (camping) 90 percent of the generators today are quiet. I’m not going to say we’re not going to have one that is loud, but 90 percent are quiet.”

A man who identified himself as a neighbor of the mud bog, Zeke Ackroyd, representing his parents, was concerned about preventing mud boggers from driving on his property. (we’re spelling Ackroyd’s phonetically based on the audio because the county commission doesn’t require members of the public who speak at public hearings to print or sign their names on a comment sheet) Ackroyd said he wants to make sure the mud bog property is fenced.

            “The main reason for that is we’ve already had trouble with people coming off there and tearing up Butler Road and coming on my land,” he said.

Ackroyd said the current county requirement to fill in the fencing gaps on the mud bog property won’t work.

            “They’re going to drive right through the fencing gaps. I mean, you put a couple hundred people in place with four-wheelers and they’re coming off it. We pay taxes. We just don’t want them on our land. You don’t tell me what’s going on my land and I won’t tell you what’s going on yours, but keep off my land,” Ackroyd said. “There is a piece of barb wire about this high off the ground that was not there in April. That was added and this is a death trap. It’s not only a death trap for their people, it’s a death trap for anybody driving down Butler Road at 5 o’clock going to a hunting road, off the road. It needs to be addressed.”

            He added, “I don’t like worrying about somebody driving on my property at night and stealing my game cameras, my stands, buggies, I got on my property. I don’t know these people from anybody. I don’t want them on our land. That’s all I got to say.”

            Another neighbor of the mud bog, whose name was not clear when he spoke to the commission from the podium, said there has been camping at the mud bog for the last six months. He said the side-by-sides are running on U.S. 19 and going into Goethe State Forest. He said there are “souped-up,” “hyped-up” vehicles being used at the mud bog and law enforcement needs to be there. He said the mud bog brings a party atmosphere of drinking. He said he lives 150 feet where they plan to add self-contained camping and said he was worried about the noise. He said 75 campers with 75 generators going all night would generate noise he could hear in his yard.

            The county commission has been reluctant to ask speakers, particularly at public hearings, to sign in and giving their comment forms to the board. The comment forms are available on a table at the back of the meeting room. Meeks brushed off a Spotlight reporter when he urged the chairman to require people to sign in when they were speaking at a public hearing. Failing to require speakers to print their names leaves an incomplete public record of who spoke at a public hearing and what they said. It leaves no official record for the clerk’s office to use in recording the meeting minutes, though the minutes kept by the clerk’s office are often spartan at best.

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Board of County Commission Regular Meeting October 5, 2021; Posted October 9, 2021