Six-Figure Spending, Zero Public Record, and a Lake Level Story That Doesn’t Add Up.
Here is something most Big Canoe property owners do not know: the POA has been soliciting contractor bids for a major marina expansion on Lake Petit. The project would add more than fifty boat slips stretching out towards Eagle Island. Bids have come back in the range of $600,000 to $700,000.
This was not announced and appears in no Board meeting minutes or committee reports available to members. The community learned of it only because a direct question was asked at a recent Board meeting, forcing General Manager Scott Auer to confirm that the project was already in the exploration and development phase.
That confirmation raises more questions than it answers.
The Invisible Paper Trail
According to Scott Auer, the Finance Committee has been involved and aware of the marina expansion planning, along with operations staff, marina personnel, and the Board itself. If that is true, the obvious question is: where is the record?
The Finance Committee has released no meeting minutes since November. And neither those earlier minutes nor any Board meeting records reflect discussions of marina capacity issues, dock replacement needs, RFP authorizations, or approval of expenditures in the high six-figure range.
Issuing an RFP is not an informal exercise. Someone must define the scope of work—how many slips, what configuration, and where. Those specifications must be documented well enough for contractors to price the project. The RFP is then issued, contractors spend weeks developing responses, and bids are reviewed internally.
None of that happens in a week. This process has been underway for months. Yet there is no public record of it.
Either these matters were discussed without documentation, or the claimed level of committee and Board involvement is overstated. Neither explanation reflects well on how this community is being governed.
Property Owners Are Starting to Notice
Frustration over the lack of transparency at Big Canoe is no longer confined to private conversations. Property owners are now speaking out publicly—on social media, in community forums, and increasingly at official POA Board meetings.
At the January 29, 2026 Board meeting, property owner Bill Shaw delivered a pointed, data-driven challenge reflecting that growing concern. Shaw reported that in 2025 alone, the Board held 13 public meetings while conducting 39 closed “special meetings”—sessions held behind closed doors, typically on Monday mornings, with no advance notice, no stated agenda, and no publicly available record of who convened them or why. Over the three years of the current Board president’s tenure, Shaw counted 109 such closed meetings.
His conclusion was blunt:
“I believe much of the real governance of Big Canoe is happening in those meetings. By the time we get to the public meetings, everything appears rehearsed, and the show just goes on.”
Shaw went on to address the broader consequences of that pattern:
“I think that in Big Canoe we’ve crushed transparency. I think it’s shown up in a lot of ways—maybe even in the election. We have to have more transparency. With transparency comes trust, and with trust comes clarity about who’s responsible and who’s accountable.”
The proposed marina expansion illustrates exactly the concern Shaw described. A major financial initiative affecting the entire community was developed entirely outside public view, justified only after the fact, and attributed to committee involvement that leaves no visible paper trail. Property owners are learning about projects like this not because they were informed—but because someone happened to ask the right question at a public meeting.
That is not transparency. And increasingly, property owners are no longer willing to pretend it is.
Why the Marina Expansion Exists at All
Auer explained that the marina expansion is tied to the spillway reconstruction. According to Auer, the project will require lowering Lake Petit by five feet ─ rendering some existing docks unusable. He said the expansion would provide temporary capacity to keep the marina functioning during construction.
That explanation hinges on the five-foot number. And the five-foot number has a problem.
The Five-Foot Assumption Has Never Been Approved
The community has been told repeatedly that Lake Petit will only need to drop five feet during spillway construction. That figure has been presented as settled. It is not.
Georgia Safe Dams reviewed early drafts of the spillway project that referenced a five-foot drawdown, but those reviews were preliminary, not final approvals. The project still requires a Public Variance from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and that variance has not been granted. To the contrary, it has been vigorously challenged through public comments that point to contradictions within Georgia Safe Dams’ own internal safety communications.
As a result, the spillway plans are now being resubmitted for reapproval, with a stated deadline at the end of February. Scott Auer’s oft-repeated “five-foot” drawdown is not approved—it is an internal target the POA has instructed its engineer to pursue, despite the absence of regulatory sign-off. That approach prioritizes the politics and optics of keeping the marina open over unresolved safety considerations.
And that uncertainty matters—because when the five-foot assumption is stripped of its authority, a very different regulatory framework comes back into view.
What Internal Records Show About Lake Lowering
Internal Georgia Safe Dams correspondence (link to 2020 email), obtained through open records requests, paints a starkly different picture of what regulators consider appropriate when a spillway is offline.
In an October 6, 2020 internal email exchange with DNR compliance staff, Georgia Safe Dams Director Tom Woosley addressed Lake Petit directly. He explained that when evaluating spillway risk, program staff use one-third of water depth as a starting point for determining how far a lake should be lowered.
As Woosley wrote:
“The program staff will use 1/3 of the water depth as a starting point for lake level lowering. Other factors may be considered on each dam which could adjust this amount up or down. For example, if the dam or its spillway is in bad shape it may warrant further lowering.”
He went on to be even more explicit:
“If it is like a large crack or issue with spillway then yes I would want every bit of 32 feet and then some. My rudimentary calcs say at 32 foot drop that is about 35% of reservoir volume.”
This was the director of the state dam safety program describing—in writing—how his agency evaluates risk during major spillway work. And a spillway that is fully offline and deconstructed for an estimated 18-month period spanning two tropical storm seasons fits squarely within the conditions he described.
That internal regulatory framework has never been publicly reconciled with the five-foot drawdown repeatedly presented to Big Canoe residents as the assumed operating condition.
Appeasement Over Truth
For years, the POA has known that major spillway work could require a deep, prolonged drawdown of Lake Petit. Internal regulator communications confirm it. Yet residents have been repeatedly told the lake will “only” drop five feet.
That is intentional politics. The five-foot narrative exists to avoid angering marina users and to preserve the appearance that nothing fundamental will change. As property owner Bill Shaw warned at the January 29 Board meeting, real governance is happening out of public view while residents are fed a rehearsed version of plans. In Big Canoe, inconvenient facts are delayed, softened, or withheld until residents force them into the open—or until after the Board has already decided the outcome.
The Problem with Spending Now
The marina expansion is being framed as a temporary solution to keep docks operational during a five-foot drawdown. But if the final, approved drawdown turns out to be significantly deeper, that temporary marina becomes worthless before construction even begins.
At 32 feet—or even 15 feet—no dock on Lake Petit functions. Expanded capacity is irrelevant. The slips serve no one. The money is spent on infrastructure that cannot be used.
Yet the POA is contemplating this expenditure before the spillway project has final regulatory approval, before the required variance is granted, and before anyone knows what lake level will actually be required. That is not careful planning. It is a large bet placed on an assumption regulators have not endorsed.
And the cost is not limited to contractor bids. Issuing RFPs, developing specifications, coordinating staff, engaging engineers, reviewing proposals, and preparing “business cases” all require substantial staff time, consultant involvement, and legal and administrative expense—none of which has been disclosed to the community.
Let’s Be Honest: This Is Not “Temporary”
Management has framed this marina expansion as a temporary measure—a stopgap to preserve dock capacity during the 12–18 months of spillway construction.
That framing strains credibility.
No organization spends $600,000 to $700,000 on infrastructure it intends to dismantle in a year and a half. That is not how capital planning works. It is not how any prudent Board allocates community funds.
If this expansion is built, it will remain. The slips will stay. The capacity will become permanent. The “temporary” label functions as a rhetorical convenience—a way to avoid the scrutiny that a permanent marina expansion would rightly invite.
Property owners deserve candor. If this is a permanent expansion of marina capacity, say so. Defend it on those terms. Explain why adding roughly 50 slips for a small fraction of the community justifies a $600,000+ expenditure at a time when the Association carries $15 million in debt and faces unresolved regulatory uncertainty over the dam.
But do not tell residents this is “temporary” and expect them to accept it without question.
What About the Rest of the Lake?
In conversations with property owners leading up to this article, a different set of concerns emerged ─ concerns that have received no attention in the POA’s planning process.
The existing marina is nestled within a protected cove. The proposed expansion would break out of that cove and extend straight into the open lake, generally toward Eagle Island. This is not a minor reconfiguration. It is a fundamental change in how the marina relates to the lake itself.
Visual aesthetics. Lakeside property owners purchased homes with views of a mountain lake, not a commercial marina facility. Adding 50+ slips projecting into open water will alter the visual character of Lake Petit for every property with a sightline to that area. No one asked them.
Lake congestion. Lake Petit is not large. Adding 50+ slips means adding 50+ boats to an already constrained waterway. How does increased boat traffic affect safety, noise levels, and the recreational experience for everyone else? Has anyone studied this?
Property values. For lakeside homeowners, the view is a significant component of their property’s value. A marina expansion visible from their docks and decks could affect what their homes are worth. Was this considered?
These are not hypothetical concerns. They are the concerns of people who live on the lake and will be directly affected by this project. And yet there is no indication that anyone from the POA reached out to lakeside property owners, conducted a survey, or solicited their input before issuing RFPs.
If the POA wanted to create division and resentment among property owners, this would be an effective way to do it.
Who This Serves
Big Canoe has thousands of property owners, but only a small fraction regularly use the amenities that most often drive major spending decisions. Analysis of prior community surveys and amenity participation patterns shows that regular Clubhouse users make up less than 20% of the community, regular golfers less than 10%, and marina slip holders fewer than 2.5% of Big Canoe property owners. These groups overlap substantially, forming what many residents now refer to as Big Canoe’s “Super Elites”—a relatively small 15%+/- subset of property owners whose preferences have come to exert disproportionate influence over planning and capital expenditures.
The Association currently carries approximately $15 million in debt. The spillway project itself faces cost uncertainty and regulatory delay. And yet, in that context, the discussion centers on spending more than half a million dollars to preserve marina access—temporarily or otherwise—for a few dozen households. That is not an accident. It is a choice about priorities. And it is a choice that deserves to be discussed openly, not discovered by accident.
What Residents Should Be Asking
The issue here is not whether marina users matter. They do. The issue is whether major financial commitments should be made in the absence of public deliberation, based on assumptions that have not been finalized by regulators, for the benefit of a small subset of the membership, while ignoring the concerns of other property owners who will be directly affected.
There are straightforward questions that deserve answers:
- What drawdown level has DNR actually approved, or indicated it will require?
* Internal email (link) shows a 32’ drawdown as the “starting” point. - Has the POA paused marina planning pending spillway reapproval?
- Is this expansion temporary or permanent? If temporary, what is the plan for removal and at what cost?
- Where does the funding come from?
- Were lakeside property owners consulted about visual and congestion impacts?
- What parking expansion, if any, is contemplated to support additional marina capacity?
- Why was none of this disclosed before a member asked about it in open session?
- If the Finance Committee and Board were truly involved as claimed, why does no official record of that involvement exist?
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