Overnight campers who stay a little (or a lot) longer than the typical vacationer at Cullman County parks will soon have to pull up stakes and park elsewhere — at least for a time — before starting the process afresh.

At its regular meeting Tuesday, the Cullman County Commission approved a pair of policy changes aimed at curbing the use of park campsites as virtual residences. Beginning Jan. 1 of next year, all full-time campers currently abiding at county parks under such circumstances must leave their spot and submit a fresh application (and fee) to claim their campsite again.

Thanks to another policy change passed on Tuesday, those campers will know how long a single stay will be allowed in the future — as well as how long they’ll need to wait to start from scratch. The commission approved a new measure that requires campers to vacate the park for 7 days between extended stays. Under the same policy, a stay at any single county park campsite can last for no longer than 28 days.

County parks director Doug Davenport said the policy changes will apply across all county parks that offer overnight camping, though the need for the new rules stems largely from long-term camping done at Smith Lake Park.

“It seems like it could be leading into a long-term issue for us, so the commission agreed to go ahead and institute the new policies,” Davenport explained after the meeting. “We’ve had a lot of people get on site and hold their space nonstop, and not free up the opportunity for that space to be available to someone else. We looked at other campgrounds in our area, and found that this is the way that most of them address it.”

Davenport said the changes weren’t made in response to any criminal activity or safety concerns. Rather, he said, they’re simply aimed at giving all potential campers the same chance to claim their preferred space.

“This isn’t going to eliminate any vandalism at the parks or anything like that,” he said. “But there’s a waiting list, sometimes, where people will want to come on site and park in a space that’s always being used by the same camper, and this will give people more of an opportunity to do that — or even to change their camping site, if they’d like to move around inside the park. It’s just a way for us to be fair to everyone.”