Since my 2006 column on Dune Acres has received so much renewed attention from readers, friends and followers, here is the sidebar I wrote on that issue. The term private town is an oxymoron, local officials agree. Dune Acres is a public town with public roads, said Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Ogden Dunes. It would be like Mayor Daley putting up a guardhouse on I-94 and not allowing unwanted visitors into Chicago, she said. Yet the Fortress of Dune Acres, she noted, has been doing this for a long time. And its always been illegal, said Tallian, who has constituents in that town. Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Superintendent Dale Engquist said if the town is, indeed, screening out-of-town visitors, technically its not legal. Engquist also confirmed that much of the towns beachfront is public, not private. Accessing it is another story, he said. Andrea Johnson, deputy director of the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns, said she is unaware of the towns decades-old welcome wagon practice. Dune Acres is one of 480 due-paying members of the downstate lobbying organization. When asked if her organization frowns on one of its members illegally restricting access to its public roads, Johnson said she doesnt have enough facts to make that determination. Were not a policing organization, she told me. She also has not heard of any other Indiana city or town doing such a thing, she said. Tallian, a Portage-based attorney, said Dune Acres officials have no legal ground to defend the practice. If pressed, she said, they will back off.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 20:17:41 +0000
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