Sex Offenders List Indiana Fishing Cabins As Permanent Residences

Here’s a tip for anyone thinking about starting up a fishing camp cabin-rental business: stick with renting your cabins to anglers and only anglers…

From this story in the Chicago Tribune:
A central Indiana fishing camp might be forced to remove its 50 cabins after it provided temporary housing to recently paroled sex offenders who listed the cabins as their permanent residences, apparently violating a local zoning ordinance. The Pendleton Board of Zoning Appeals is due to consider a new zoning variance for Pine Lakes on April 19 after revoking a variance last week that allowed the camp to have the cabins. Town manager Doug McGee told The Herald Bulletin of Anderson that the cabins were not zoned for residency.
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_Peter Walls, who manages the site, said a parole officer contacted him in December because recently paroled inmates needed places to stay for a few days. He said he didn’t know that the men staying overnight in his cabins were sex offenders. Walls said he charged the parolees $50 per day, the rate he charges all customers, and the men moved along after a few days. His wife, Leanda Walls, said the longest any one parolee stayed was seven days. The problem with the town developed when officials discovered that many of the men were registering on a sex offenders database, as required by state law, and listing the cabins as their permanent addresses.

Which brings up business tip number two: if your fishing cabin guest has a parole officer, he’s probably not there for the fishing.