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“The primary purpose for the lake is water.
“The second purpose is water.
“Anything more is gravy.”
That is how Maryville City Manager Matt LeCerf concluded an interview this week dealing with one of the city’s major assets ” the 3,000-acre Mozingo Creek Watershed Project, popularly known simply as “Mozingo.”
“Recreationally, the waters of Mozingo Lake will provide a means for outdoor activities including outlets for boating, skiing and fishing enthusiasts,” was how the 1,009-acre lake development was projected to evolve in an extensive Mozingo Lake Recreation Development Plan written in 1995 by Mitzi Lutz for the Northwest Missouri Regional Council of Governments.
“A primary means of land usage for recreational purposes at Mozingo Lake will be the 350-acre, 18-hole championship golf course,” the regional council projection continues. “The 7,100-yard course features a clubhouse and cart rental and offers challenging play for golfers of all skill levels.”
Having “worked most of the night and we were still finishing things up that morning when the RV park first opened” — at noon, July 4, 1997 — is still a vivid memory for David Middleton, maintenance superintendent at Mozingo Lake Park.
Middleton today is perhaps the individual most responsible for what the thousands of visitors who utilize one phase or another of the vast outdoor recreational wonderland regularly experience, but he is still the unassuming city employee who first began at Mozingo in 1992 while serving as city street superintendent. He became “full time” at Mozingo in 1998.
“I thought it would be popular from all the feasibility studies and things like that that had been done,” he said last week during a drive-through tour of the facilities as they exist today. “I wouldn’t have taken the job if I hadn’t thought it would be nice.
“But it is so much more than I ever thought it would be,” he said.
But if “Curley” is the guy who has played the major role in overseeing the ever-evolving development of the Mozingo projects, both he and LeCerf direct the lion’s share of the credit for making it all possible to “the citizens of Maryville.”
Maryville residents approved a half-cent sales tax in June 1993, (62.7 percent in favor) and the 10-year approval has been extended to now sunset in 2017.
“I think every organization in Maryville has helped,” Middleton said, “plus lots and lots of individuals. It’s really been a community project.”
The current half-cent sales tax provides approximately half of the park’s projected $2.06-million operating budget for the current fiscal year, according to LeCerf.
“The primary purpose for the lake is water.
“The second purpose is water.
“Anything more is gravy.”
That is how Maryville City Manager Matt LeCerf concluded an interview this week dealing with one of the city’s major assets ” the 3,000-acre Mozingo Creek Watershed Project, popularly known simply as “Mozingo.”
“Recreationally, the waters of Mozingo Lake will provide a means for outdoor activities including outlets for boating, skiing and fishing enthusiasts,” was how the 1,009-acre lake development was projected to evolve in an extensive Mozingo Lake Recreation Development Plan written in 1995 by Mitzi Lutz for the Northwest Missouri Regional Council of Governments.
“A primary means of land usage for recreational purposes at Mozingo Lake will be the 350-acre, 18-hole championship golf course,” the regional council projection continues. “The 7,100-yard course features a clubhouse and cart rental and offers challenging play for golfers of all skill levels.”
Having “worked most of the night and we were still finishing things up that morning when the RV park first opened” — at noon, July 4, 1997 — is still a vivid memory for David Middleton, maintenance superintendent at Mozingo Lake Park.
Middleton today is perhaps the individual most responsible for what the thousands of visitors who utilize one phase or another of the vast outdoor recreational wonderland regularly experience, but he is still the unassuming city employee who first began at Mozingo in 1992 while serving as city street superintendent. He became “full time” at Mozingo in 1998.
“I thought it would be popular from all the feasibility studies and things like that that had been done,” he said last week during a drive-through tour of the facilities as they exist today. “I wouldn’t have taken the job if I hadn’t thought it would be nice.
“But it is so much more than I ever thought it would be,” he said.
But if “Curley” is the guy who has played the major role in overseeing the ever-evolving development of the Mozingo projects, both he and LeCerf direct the lion’s share of the credit for making it all possible to “the citizens of Maryville.”
Maryville residents approved a half-cent sales tax in June 1993, (62.7 percent in favor) and the 10-year approval has been extended to now sunset in 2017.
“I think every organization in Maryville has helped,” Middleton said, “plus lots and lots of individuals. It’s really been a community project.”
The current half-cent sales tax provides approximately half of the park’s projected $2.06-million operating budget for the current fiscal year, according to LeCerf.
“We had expected to receive $830,000 from the sales tax this year, but it looks like we will be maybe four percent short of that,” he said. “Our sales tax revenues were down two percent for the first six months.”
When the current sales-tax authorization expires in eight years, LeCerf said the “best case scenario would be for the city to be able to tell the citizens that we appreciate the support they have given us, but we are getting closer to being self-sustaining and we could ask for a quarter-cent tax the next time. It is our duty to the taxpayers to determine how lean we can get” while still providing a top-quality park experience.
Back to that July 4th in 1997 when the first 13 recreational vehicle pads at Mozingo were opened for business. Like the 95 fully equipped spaces now available, they were totally occupied, as has been the case during most summer weekends since. The current park spaces were “sold out” as early as Tuesday this year, with license plates indicating campers from Iowa, Kansas and
Nebraska in addition to the Missouri majority. “We see lots of Maryville campers, and we’re seeing even more with the price of gas where it is now,” Middleton said.
One Maryville camper this weekend is former Maryville Mayor Dale Mathes. He and his wife, Glenna, are regulars at the local park and their motor home was already parked Tuesday afternoon when he outlined plans for a meeting of the newly re-organizing Mozingo Park Long-Range Planning Committee at 6 p.m. Thursday at Maryville City Hall.
In addition to the RV pads, there are five cabins — accommodating from six to a dozen occupants — and tent camping spots to house summer visitors.
“All this activity takes me back to the very first meeting when we started talking about the golf course and RV park and other things,” Mathes said. “People got excited and really supported it, and that hasn’t ever changed.”
The original plans for the overall development included much of what is now in place — boat-ramps, a beach and swimming area, bathhouse and restroom facilities, picnic pavilions and hiking/biking trails (currently under construction from the RV area to the Flag Point area). All in addition to the golf course, where the first nine holes opened in August 1995, some two years before the first RV spots. A much-less-sophisticated youth camp was in the original plan, as were considerations for horse trails, a skeet-shooting area and a remote controlled model airplane site.
The earthen dam impounding Mozingo Lake is 77 feet high and stretches for 2,750 feet at the south end of the lake. Financed with federal Soil Conservation Service funds to the tune of approximately $5.2 million, the dam has a capacity of 24,877 acre-feet and controls 20.9 square miles of drainage area, 2,251 acres of flood-plain lands, according to the Northwest Regional Council of Governments document. Construction began in 1992 and was interrupted twice in July 1993 by excessive rains that caused the water level in the yet unfinished reservoir to top the partially completed dike.
Long a topic of discussion for the Maryville area, the development was originally considered for inclusion into Missouri’s state park system, but when that idea was dashed by the decision to invest available funding elsewhere in the state, then Mayor Vilas Young refused to be deterred. Following Young, Mayor Doc Henggeler relied on former Northwest Missouri State University AD Dick Flanagan, ex-City Manager Bill Galletly, the city council and hundreds of involved citizens to push ahead city plans for the development.
Of the total of just more than 2,000 acres available for use around the lake, the park’s developments take “close to 500 acres,” according to Middleton. “Northwest has 123 acres for its uses (including an observatory and a state-of-the-art ropes course),” he said. Although most of the development is on the east side of the lake, there are 140 acres that accommodate approximately five miles of horse trails on the west side.
A major “restriction” on present and future development is the requirement that the city mitigate 1,500 acres (to compensate for habitat lost to the actual lake) for dedication to “park-like savannah, warm season grasses, wildlife management strips, timber conservation and woodland management.” Much of that acreage is on the west shore.
(In Monday’s edition of the Daily Forum: A look at Mozingo Lake as the city’s water supply source; construction, operational financing, and utilization figures.)
