Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-05-29Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 1 of 13 Dryden Conservation Board 1 May 29, 2018 2 3 Members Present: Peter Davies (chair), Steve Bissen, Bob Beck, Timothy 4 Woods, Jeanne Grace, Craig Schutt, Mike Richmond, and Nancy Munkenbeck 5 Liaisons: Dan Lamb (Town Board), David Weinstein (Planning Board) 6 Guests: Hannah George (Conservation Easement Steward/Finger Lakes Land 7 Trust) 8 9 The meeting was called to order at 7:02 PM. 10 11 P. Davies said that Hannah George, from the Finger Lakes Land Trust, will be 12 coming at 7:15 tonight to talk about monitoring conservation easements. That 13 will be moved to the top of the agenda when she arrives. 14 15 Citizens’ Privilege: 16 No one in attendance 17 18 Additions to the agenda: 19 J. Grace asked if they could add “deer management”. She was able to get some 20 more information. 21 22 Reports received: 23 24 1. Agriculture Report 25 2. Rail Trail 26 3. 27 B. Beck showed them his report for the Rail Trail. They now have an official 28 logo for the Rail Trail. It was done by a local artist who works at the Cornell 29 Ornithology Lab. They went through numerous iterations and much discus-30 sion before ending up with this. He said it’s official; they voted last Monday at 31 the meeting and they assume that formal approval from the Town Board isn’t 32 necessary. They will be displaying the new Rail Trail logo at the Dryden Village 33 Square during Dryden Dairy Days. 34 P. Davies asked what the status of the Game Farm is. B. Beck said that as far 35 as they know it’s being officially approved in Albany, but every time we inquire 36 about it we are told “he’s working on it; you should be getting it soon”. It’s 37 been over a year since they first met with the executive deputy commissioner 38 who met with us here. Until they have approval from all landowners, volun-39 teers cannot go in and start clearing the area. He said the kind of agreement 40 from the Game Farm they’re getting isn’t what he’d thought; it’s not going to be 41 an easement like most of the others. Most of them are permanent trail ease-42 ment agreements with the Town of Dryden. This one is going to be a volunteer 43 stewardship agreement. They gave us an application to fill out and it sounded 44 like each volunteer that is going onto this property will have to fill out an appli-45 Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 2 of 13 cation and submit it to the DEC for their approval. He said he thought about 46 the scenario if he had a Boy Scout troop and wanted to ask the DEC if we 47 could monitor two acres of the State forest for the kids to look after; this is the 48 kind of thing that would be good for the kids, but this isn’t quite what I 49 thought we’d be doing to get approval for the Rail Trail through the Game 50 Farm. He said apparently this is the kind of agreement that they do. He filled 51 out the application and told them that it will be the Town of Dryden profes-52 sional staff that will be doing the work there. The two trusses will have to be 53 repaired after the trail is cleared. He said that seemed to be agreeable to them 54 when he submitted the application, but that was weeks ago and he has re-55 ceived some feedback, but nothing definite. D. Weinstein asked if it was true 56 that the hunting and fishing group wrote to the DEC. B. Beck said that two 57 representatives from two different sportsman’s groups met with us at the Game 58 Farm last September. They were invited to the meeting by the DEC. The 59 sportsmen made it very clear that this is the last Game Farm in New York 60 State, and it’s been threatened that this one could close at some point. There 61 is real concern that anything that is done is a slippery slope and may result in 62 the Game Farm being closed. We’ve done everything we could to assure them 63 that what we’re asking for isn’t going to be a detriment to the future of the 64 Game Farm. The DEC knows that, but their constituents, sportsmen, are put-65 ting up a big fuss. T. Woods asked how the Trail organization is managing 66 hunting on other segments. B. Beck said most of the other segments are pri-67 vately owned. The owner needs to understand there’s no hunting on the trail 68 or shooting across the trail, but owners can still hunt on their property and 69 they can invite others to hunt on their property. He said there is very little 70 hunting done on the Game Farm property. 71 72 P. Davies said the next discussion will be regarding how we might form a group 73 of individuals who could monitor conservation easements acquired by the 74 Town. He explained to H. George that we currently have two easements, and 75 D. Weinstein said we have Town owned properties that need monitoring. P. 76 Davies said the conservation easements we are dealing with currently have 77 small acreages so we’ve been told this was too small to donate the easement to 78 the Finger Lakes Land Trust, and perhaps too expensive to monitor. The own-79 ership of conservation easements and conservation developments is just start-80 ing, so we need to have procedures in place to monitor these easements to en-81 sure they are maintained properly. We need to organize a small group of peo-82 ple who’d be willing to visit each property annually. We need to know what we 83 should be looking for. He took a document that originated from the Finger 84 Lakes Land Trust and edited/summarized it and then added two pages at the 85 end that he thought might be the sort of form a conservation easement monitor 86 might carry with them and enter the appropriate information based on their re-87 view of the area they are monitoring (attached). He said he’s not sure if this is 88 what should be done. He asked Hannah George to explain what should be 89 done when monitoring conservation easements and what should be changed in 90 Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 3 of 13 the document he had prepared. She said monitoring is one small part of what 91 we do to maintain our easement lands. She went over the Conservation Ease-92 ment document she provided (attached). In addition to the yearly monitoring of 93 property the following is necessary: 94 • File management -- having original documents, paper copies and digital 95 copies secured in different locations 96 • Annual monitoring visits 97 • Training the person who’s doing the visit so they are considerate of the 98 landowner and their schedule. 99 • Responding to questions from the landowner; what’s allowed and not. 100 The landowner might want to put in a pool or a tree house for example 101 and someone needs to interpret the easement and get back to the owner. 102 • Provide information to prospective buyers as to what is allowed on the 103 property and explain the easement 104 • Dealing with violations as soon as they come up. Need to focus on that 105 issue immediately and find a way to resolve it 106 • As new land is acquired, the easement needs to be written customized to 107 the property. 108 • Supporting landowners with questions, for example regarding invasive 109 species that might be threatening to the conservation values of the prop-110 erty, and how they might go about addressing that. 111 • Help with boundary postings so that the property is clearly marked. 112 • Assist with issues with neighbors 113 • Amend/update old conservation easements that are problematic by 114 changing the wording, but not nullifying the easement agreement 115 • Review and update policies, procedures and documentation (which is re-116 quired for their accreditation commission) 117 118 She said that’s an overview of what they do. There’s more than the annual 119 monitoring, but that is definitely a time-consuming piece. She said she was 120 recently at the Parke-Dabes property and it took her a good two hours to walk 121 around, and hour afterwards to write up the report. Before doing the annual 122 visit, some time was spent to coordinate with the contact (in this case Ray 123 Burger). She said you should make sure it’s a convenient time; with farmers 124 it’s very important because they might be working a field and don’t want you 125 around their machinery or some landowners don’t want strangers coming on 126 their property without prior notice. 127 128 She provided a sample of their monitoring and inspection report (attached). 129 She said it’s important to have all the information about the property on the 130 report; location, tax parcel number, acreage, who granted the easement origi-131 nally, contact person, then the inspector’s name and title. Note if the landown-132 er was contacted prior to the visit, if ownership has changed note the new own-133 er, and note if the landowner was there during the visit and any other people 134 accompanying the inspection. It is very important to try to keep up with own-135 Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 4 of 13 ership changes. J. Grace asked if new owners were given the easement infor-136 mation when they buy the property. H. George said supposedly, but they 137 probably do not read through the entire legal agreement; it’s up to the realtor 138 and the seller to convey that information. M. Richmond said you could poten-139 tially have someone buying a piece of property and not be informed that there 140 is a restriction on the property. H. George said possibly, it is a legal require-141 ment in the agreement to give a 30-day notice, but that’s not always followed 142 and it’s very difficult to enforce. T. Woods said that one piece of information he 143 learned while doing research on his property was that very few of the municipal 144 boundaries were actually surveyed, so there were no markers out there. He 145 asked if they require in the checklist that the property is surveyed. She said 146 that prior to closing on a property they now require that a survey is done. The 147 surveyor marks different zone boundaries; especially the actual boundary of 148 the property and then a baseline documentation report is generated taking a 149 comprehensive look at the current conditions of the property with photographs, 150 written descriptions, and maps showing wetlands, forest types and existing 151 structures. After all of that is completed and the final language of the ease-152 ment is completed the closing can take place. She said they used to not re-153 quire a survey because of the expense, but now they know it’s important to 154 have because without the survey they don’t really know where things are. The 155 older properties that a survey wasn’t done on can be problematic. M. Rich-156 mond said that frequently the “easement” portion of the property is different 157 from the entire parcel, correct. She said that does happen sometimes. He said 158 there may have been a survey done on the entire parcel, but not on the ease-159 ment portion and she said that does happen. D. Weinstein said he thought 160 when there was an excluded piece that boundary was always surveyed. She 161 said usually when there’s an excluded piece they’ll see that in the survey, and 162 there should be zone pins, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes there is 163 a notation that the excluded piece is a certain number of feet from the last pin. 164 S. Bissen asked how they deal with violators; new landowners that weren’t 165 aware of the restrictions or landowners that disregard the agreement and do 166 what they want. She said luckily, they haven’t had an issue with this, but 167 there is a great resource available for situations like that, the Land Trust Alli-168 ance. They deal with land trusts across the country. She said they see viola-169 tions as different tiers of severity; low-level, if it’s not damaging the property 170 (conservation) values. The next level up might be a tree was cut in the forest 171 zone without a plan and the agreement requires a plan approved by the Land 172 Trust, so in that case they would probably just speak to the owner and tell 173 them that in the future a plan must be approved by the Land Trust prior to 174 cutting. She said that sometimes they have a situation where, for example, 175 trees are cut down where it wasn’t allowed, so we tell the owner it’s their re-176 sponsibility to fix this, but you can’t make it go back to a healthy tree, so we’ll 177 ask for them to do invasive species removal or contribute monetarily to the 178 Land Trust so that we can protect more land. M. Richmond asked if they’ve 179 ever taken legal action to extract money from an owner for cutting trees or sap-180 Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 5 of 13 lings that shouldn’t have been removed. D. Weinstein said that happened once 181 a long time ago. It wasn’t the landowner, but a timber operator who was cut-182 ting timber on an adjacent property and came across the line and took several 183 big trees, so they had to go into court. The Land Trust is obligated to go to 184 court and make things right when there’s a violation which is expensive. He 185 explained that if a violation should occur and the Land Trust didn’t take any 186 action to resolve it, another party could take them to court for not protecting 187 the conservation easement. He said if the owners are agreeable to correcting 188 the problem the way H. George explained, that’s the better option. She said 189 that she thinks the reason they haven’t had to use the legal system is because 190 they’ve worked very hard to maintain communication with the landowners. 191 She said they try to have the owner walk with them when they do their annual 192 visit, they also send out two newsletters each year regarding issues they feel 193 are important like invasive species control (in the summer) and for the winter 194 newsletter they talk about nature and the health benefits to people. She said 195 it’s just another way to communicate with the landowner. M. Richmond said 196 he feels that it’s imperative that a good map is provided to whoever is charged 197 with monitoring the property. What brought this to the Conservation Board’s 198 attention are three developments in Ellis Hollow. He explained that on a ten 199 acre plot you could put as many as five houses (2 acres for each dwelling), but 200 the developer has proposed building smaller houses and clustering them and 201 leaving the bottom two-three acres for a natural area or an easement of some 202 kind. He said in addition to all the information she’s given them they need to 203 know how that will work out and a plan that will allow us to monitor that with-204 out trespassing on other’s land; we would need access. A good zoning map is a 205 definite must have. D. Weinstein said that as stewards, you must document 206 exactly where you’ve walked on the property. That way in the future if there is 207 a violation, but it wasn’t reported, you can look and see where you walked 208 since you can’t walk every square inch of the property, and that would explain 209 why the violation wasn’t caught. He said the Land Trust has an app that 210 tracks where the steward walks on the property and a map is printed out 211 showing where the monitor walked. P. Davies said we are talking about a big 212 difference in scale. D. Weinstein said that the newest easement that hasn’t 213 been approved yet is a 44-acre parcel. P. Davies asked at what size the Land 214 Trust would be interested in taking on and what differences do you see in mon-215 itoring a large area and a small piece of property. She said she’s not sure as 216 far as the minimum size of an easement that the Land Trust would take over, 217 but a 44-acre parcel is reasonable. She said as far as monitoring and the time 218 necessary it’s still fairly time consuming to monitor a small property because 219 you still need to prepare the report and do the same tasks as for larger proper-220 ty. J. Grace said the site time might be a little less, but the rest of the monitor-221 ing process still is the same. H. George said she thinks it’s great that the Town 222 wants to focus on small pieces because often those small pieces can really 223 make a difference. She went over the “field” part of this process. Going 224 through the inspection report she brought with her she said the main thing 225 Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 6 of 13 they focus on is what has changed on the property. She said she reads the le-226 gal document before going out to do an inspection so she’s aware of the re-227 strictions in different zones, but her main goal is to document change. In the 228 report there’s a section on man-made improvements on the property; new or 229 changed buildings or any other new structures. Then there’s a section for de-230 scribing ongoing activities such as agriculture or building trails, changes in 231 land use, tree falls or natural erosion or human alterations to the property. A 232 section for photographs, if any were taken, and a section on boundaries, then a 233 section for recommendations for follow-up actions. On the attached map of the 234 property, the route that was taken when doing the inspection is drawn in with 235 arrows to mark where photos were taken and from what direction the photos 236 were taken. She said that is done so the photos can be matched with the photo 237 report (which she didn’t bring). The photo report has the photos with specific 238 details as to where it was taken, what direction you were looking in when it 239 was taken. She said her job is not to interpret but to go out and look for 240 changes, and then it’s her boss’s job to look over the report and determine if 241 action is needed on any item(s) noted in the report. S. Bissen asked if she 242 walks the same route each time. She said no, it varies, sometimes she walks 243 the boundary, and then she might write in the follow-up actions “walk the inte-244 rior”. He asked if that makes it more difficult to determine change, unless you 245 have a good memory. She said they start out with a baseline report showing 246 every feature for each property, and supposedly every subsequent monitoring 247 report done each year will have pictures taken of any changes. She said if 248 there aren’t any pictures, you can assume that the baseline report should 249 match what you’re seeing. It is helpful to have the same person go back each 250 year because they get semi familiar with the property. She said that if some-251 thing were to occur on a property that she needs to know about there will 252 probably be some signs, like a road built or a rut from ATV tracks. People 253 normally leave some sort of evidence that they’ve been doing/bringing some-254 thing on the property. T. Woods asked if the maps that they attach to inspec-255 tion reports are digitized and put into a GIS or are they just hard copy. She 256 said this map is coming from a digital survey but with the older easements it’s 257 often a hand drawn map that was scanned and now digital. 258 259 She then went over the Conservation Easement Steward Job Description and 260 Monitoring Guidelines (attached). The monitor should be trained by the organ-261 ization to know what to look for, what an easement is, what it means to be in-262 vited onto the landowner’s property, which is a legal right that the monitor gets 263 to go on the property, but you still should act like a guest. The monitor, prior 264 to going out should review the baseline documentation report and the ease-265 ment document so they know what’s allowed and what’s not, contact the land-266 owner to schedule a visit. Ideally walk around with the landowner. The upside 267 of having the landowner go with you is that you can get really good information 268 from them; they’ll tell you what’s changed, if anything, and on the downside 269 some landowners don’t really want to walk around the property or they are 270 Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 7 of 13 busy and don’t want to walk to the outer boundaries. P. Davies said what they 271 are talking about in Ellis Hollow is a developer who buys the land, builds a cer-272 tain number of houses that are then owned by individuals, and gives the own-273 ership of the easement to the Town; is the developer still the owner. D. Wein-274 stein said the developer is still the owner of the land. P. Davies asked what 275 happens if the developer walks away since they can’t do anything with the 276 land. N. Munkenbeck said she thought one of the houses ended up owning the 277 easement. D. Weinstein said no, the houses own a shared driveway strip. N. 278 Munkenbeck said she knows someone who is buying one of the houses and the 279 way he explained it was that one of the houses was going to have the large par-280 cel. He said that may be true on the second development, but he’s pretty sure 281 it’s not that way on the first. She said the house she was talking about is in 282 the second development. P. Davies brought up the possibility of each house 283 owning one fifth of the easement parcel. D. Weinstein said that would be fine 284 and a HOA would need to be created. He said because of the development with 285 the shared driveway there is a type of HOA. P. Davies said there are several 286 possibilities; who owns the piece of land with the easement. B. Beck said this 287 potentially gets complicated; if the developer has sold all the parcels and he’s 288 moved on to do other development, what is his interest in that easement; he 289 doesn’t live there and has moved on to other money-making projects. That 290 could be a problem in terms of communicating with the developer/owner as 291 opposed to a local homeowner. H. George said they’ve had a couple developers 292 who are easement landowners and have had no problems; we’ve had compa-293 nies that are easement landowners and if you have contact information it is 294 fine, but if you don’t know who the people are it can be very tricky especially if 295 there’s an issue and you need to go into court. She said that it is much easier 296 from an easement monitoring stand point to have just one owner. D. Weinstein 297 stated that on the first conservation easement on Ellis Hollow road the own-298 er/developer wanted to be able to cut firewood (for personal use) off the ease-299 ment, and that’s stipulated in that conservation easement agreement. H. 300 George said each easement is different and has its own stipulations as to what 301 is and is not allowed. Their goal with easements is to let people do what is fun 302 and medium to low impact on, like recreational and tree cutting (for personal 303 use). If tree cutting turns into a business that is when a forest management 304 plan is needed. J. Grace asked who’s making that determination because for 305 someone making these agreements and not understanding the ecology of it is 306 not necessarily a good thing. If they’re planning on only cutting the dead trees 307 that is not good for the ecosystem. D. Weinstein said an official forest man-308 agement plan should be required. T. Woods asked if she’s ever dealt with agri-309 cultural run off or aquifer point source pollution. He said he used to run into 310 that in Florida and Texas where you’d get salt water intrusion or point source 311 pollution into the aquifer. She said they don’t really look for that. They’d only 312 know that if it impacted the surface. He said they’d had cases they had to in-313 vestigate to find out who was doing whatever that was going across the protec-314 tive boundary. She said she’s never seen that and isn’t sure if the Land Trust 315 Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 8 of 13 has ever had to deal with that situation. A situation like that could require le-316 gal action against someone other than the owner’s. B. Beck said agricultural 317 nutrients that are going through the ground water into sensitive wetlands is 318 hard to deal with. N. Munkenbeck said she could see road ditching creating 319 problems and road salt. H. George said they haven’t seen anything like that, 320 lately at least; she’s only been there for ten months. She also stated that some-321 thing she just thought of when they were talking about developers is that when 322 the Land Trust is drafting these easements the resale value is taken into con-323 sideration because they don’t want to create something that is totally unap-324 pealing to anyone in the future. Often, they allow a single-family home on a 325 five-acre lot with sheds within that area and the rest is subject to forest man-326 agement, for example. B. Beck said that since the easements the Town is going 327 to monitor are small allowing a house to be built in the future will not be an is-328 sue., but if it’s a big area that would be a different situation. He said that 329 when the Land Trust was first getting started he remembers that about a sev-330 enty-five acre parcel up in Mount Pleasant where that owner/donor (anony-331 mous at the time) requested that two houses be allowed and keep the rest of 332 the property protected. He said it was divided into two parcels; one parcel al-333 lowed for two houses to be constructed and the other parcel didn’t allow hous-334 ing construction. P. Davies referenced the document he created from the Land 335 Trust document (because he felt that anyone doing the monitoring needed 336 some sort of direction as to what the situation was and what to look for without 337 having to read through twenty pages) and asked her if she had any comments 338 on what he’d put together. He said his form is somewhat more detailed than 339 her form because he thought it could be used for the initial inspection (baseline 340 document) and then used each year thereafter to monitor the area and note 341 any changes, if any. He said his form is not meant to be a replacement for the 342 actual easement. It’s just a form for volunteers monitoring a Town easement. 343 She said you need you need to have all the details outlined in the easement be-344 cause there might be something specific to that easement. He said then you 345 could add that; he doesn’t feel a volunteer should have to wade through legal-346 ese. He said that if there is an Agriculture plan or Forestry plan, that needs to 347 be appended to what the monitor has. He said given what we’re currently deal-348 ing (a flood plain along with a housing development) an Agricultural plan is un-349 likely, but perhaps Forestry plan. D. Weinstein stated that a list of permitted 350 and prohibited uses would need to be appended to the document and P. Davies 351 agreed. H. George said that some Land Trusts, but not theirs, have a one-page 352 cheat sheet for volunteers that tells them what’s allowed and what’s not for 353 each property. She said they have short notes for unusual properties that 354 stray from the standard template, like an elder cottage. She also said that 355 when the easement document is written up questions regarding different uses 356 need to be brought up and documented in the agreement. She said that who is 357 making the deal gives her some concern because that might not be the person’s 358 specialty; when do those doing the monitoring get to look at the property and 359 ask questions and give their input. She said it’s possible that the property be-360 Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 9 of 13 ing considered isn’t even valid for a conservation easement; like an acre full of 361 honeysuckle and don’t really care if that’s preserved. She asked if any of the 362 committee members went and looked at the property prior to the agreement. 363 The answer was no; R. Burger may have, but the committee wasn’t involved at 364 that time. She said the committee should have looked at the property prior to 365 the agreement. N. Munkenbeck asked if after someone has as easement on 366 their property, if they would like to adjust it to do forest harvesting of berries, 367 for example, would that be a possibility. H. George said yes. She also said in 368 their easements, the way they are written up, something as low impact as berry 369 harvesting would not need an amendment. In their forest clauses non-timber 370 product collection is allowed, like sap and mushrooms. P. Davies said he 371 thinks the group should look over the easement that the Town currently has 372 because many of the questions being asked are clearly spelled out in the 373 agreement. He said he’ll contact R. Burger and get a copy and forward it on to 374 the committee members. N. Munkenbeck said it might be nice to see one of the 375 Land Trusts agreements also to compare how they are doing this. D. Weinstein 376 said the developer got the document from the Land Trust and didn’t change it 377 very much. He said that he was told by A. Zepp that this isn’t appropriate for 378 the Town; the Town should adapt this for specific properties because the 379 Town’s purpose isn’t the same as the Land Trust. P. Davies said the agricul-380 ture clause for the small areas in Ellis Hollow probably doesn’t need to be in 381 the document. H. George said that unnecessary items should be stripped out 382 of the document because it just makes it more confusing plus it might chal-383 lenge the integrity of the document. D. Weinstein suggested that when ease-384 ments are being written up here, having someone at the Land Trust review 385 them and get their feedback. The Town of Ithaca has easements that were co-386 held with the Land Trust for five years and the monitoring was done together 387 so that the Town could learn and be up and running on their own. J. Grace 388 said she’ll contact the Town of Ithaca and see if they have any documenta-389 tion/information that might be helpful. It was decided that they need to visit 390 the properties and do an initial identification of the properties. D. Weinstein 391 said he’ll send to everyone the easements that have been signed. J. Grace said 392 that she thinks what they need to do is look at each easement document, break 393 it down like P. Davies did, with the bullet points that you need to know and 394 then you’ll have a form to fill out. He said his form was designed to be generic, 395 he removed anything that was specific. It could be used for the initial evalua-396 tion. Any items that are specific to the property could be noted. H. George 397 said that for the initial baseline report it’s better to have more description than 398 just answering questions; it’s more like a concrete picture of the property, as if 399 you were describing the property to someone. P. Davies said that whoever is 400 doing the initial inspection doesn’t know what to look for that would be a prob-401 lem. N. Munkenbeck asked if they were going to set up a time and place to go 402 and look at the property. P. Davies said that he thinks that should be ar-403 ranged through the Planning Department. They discussed this issue and de-404 cided since the Town Board had agreed that this Board would be the monitors, 405 Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 10 of 13 they need to get the contact information and call the owner to schedule a time. 406 D. Weinstein said that going forward, this Board should review the agreements 407 and make any recommendations prior to approval of the easement. They also 408 discussed different types of ecosystems other than forest and agriculture that 409 need to be noted in the check list such as wetlands, grasslands or whatever. 410 H. George said the way they categorize that is “environmental protection zone”. 411 She said that it is very important for the Conservation Board to get staff sup-412 port going forward; volunteer land trusts do exist, but everyone here has other 413 responsibilities. Having staff assistance with the file management and the co-414 ordination piece would be very useful. She was asked if it would be allowed for 415 some of the Land Trust members to walk with them while they are walking one 416 of their properties and she said that would be fine; they’ve done that in the 417 past for the Town of Ithaca. P. Davies thanked her for attending the meeting; it 418 was very useful. He said in the future they’ll probably be contacting her with 419 more questions. 420 421 Review and approval of minutes dated April 24, 2018 422 423 C. Schutt said that on page 2 the section about farms spreading manure and 424 not tilling the fields soon after is very misleading. Today large farms are highly 425 regulated and under their permits they must till the soil within forty-eight 426 hours, he thinks, but it might be within twenty-four hours after applying ma-427 nure to the fields. P. Davies said that is fine to add as an addendum, but the 428 minutes reflect what was said during the meeting. 429 430 B. Beck made a motion to approve the minutes with the change noted above. 431 C. Schutt seconded the motion and they were unanimously approved. 432 433 C. Schutt made a motion to pass the following resolution proposed by P. Da-434 vies: 435 436 Resolution #4 for 2018 from the Dryden Conservation Board to the Town 437 Board regarding incorporating the Natural Resources Conservation Plan 438 Into the Town of Dryden Comprehensive Plan. 439 440 Whereas the Natural Resources Conservation Plan is the guidance docu-441 ment for the preservation and sustainable utilization of the natural and agri-442 cultural areas within the town, 443 444 Whereas the Natural Resources Conservation Plan should be considered in 445 any future development within the town, 446 447 Whereas the Town Board has accepted the Natural Resources Conservation 448 Plan, 449 450 Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 11 of 13 Therefore, be it Resolved that the Conservation Board request that the Dry-451 den Town Board add the Natural Resources Conservation Plan to the ap-452 pendix of the Comprehensive Plan. 453 454 The motion was seconded by S. Bissen and passed unanimously. 455 456 D. Weinstein said the Town Board has asked the Planning Board to start iden-457 tifying sections in the Comprehensive Plan that need to be revisited and poten-458 tially be modified. He asked the Conservation Board for their input as to what 459 sections should potentially be on the list for modification as pertaining to con-460 cerns of the Conservation Board. He said he’d put their suggestions through to 461 the Planning Board. P. Davies said that could be on the agenda for next 462 month. It was stated that they are looking for things that need to be updated, 463 items that don’t agree with our plan, and subjects that weren’t addressed in 464 the plan. D. Weinstein said that presumably the Town Board is going to incor-465 porate the Natural Resources plan as a piece so let’s not try and update the 466 original part if it’s well described in the Natural Resources Plan. He said refer-467 ences may need to be inserted in the body of the text that say look at Appendix 468 A for details. 469 470 P. Davies brought up the subject of Resolution #3 (passed last month) recom-471 mending the establishment of a fund to be used for the purpose of facilitating 472 conservation easements and asked what the Agricultural Committee’s response 473 was. C. Schutt said that they’d agreed and passed a resolution. J. Grace said 474 that last time K. Servoss requested that they figure out what type of fund you’d 475 recommend. She looked through the fund categories and the only one that 476 seemed to make sense was called Contingency and Tax Stabilization Reserve 477 Fund. P. Davies is going to forward the resolution on to the Town Board with 478 the recommended fund type appended per the Conservation Board’s approval. 479 480 Ithaca Deer Management Plan 481 482 J. Grace reported that she looked on the DEC’s website and they have sections 483 on there about dealing with landowners and hunter etiquette. They also have a 484 co-operative hunting area in King Ferry. Private landowners enter into the co-485 operative and their property is available for hunting and the DEC does all the 486 administration on it. She said if you go on their website and look at the map, 487 click on each area and it gives you a map of that area and shows you where 488 you can park and where you can hunt. She called the DEC and spoke with 489 the person who administers it. He explained how the program works; once you 490 are an approved hunter in the program you can call and make a reservation, 491 when you leave the hunting area you must stop at a specified location and sign 492 out and if you killed a deer you must report that. He also said that expanding 493 the area isn’t feasible because people aren’t going to want to drive from Dryden 494 to King Ferry just to sign out. She asked him if we could create a second area. 495 Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 12 of 13 He said this program was originally designed by the DEC back in 2007. She 496 spoke to him about our deer management concerns and how we’d like to re-497 duce the deer population by increasing hunting and asked if they might be in-498 terested in having a new zone in Dryden. He was going to talk with one of the 499 DEC biologists and have that person call me back so we could talk about this. 500 P. Davies said this would be a good item to spend more time on next month. J. 501 Grace said hopefully the biologist will have called her. She said it might not be 502 as elaborate of a system as what they currently have in the King Ferry area but 503 hopefully we can create a link between people who are interested and have 504 template agreements that people can use; it would be a starting point. D. 505 Lamb said he was glad she’s looking into this. Earlier this year they talked 506 about the need to have this relationship with DEC regarding hunting in the 507 Parke-Dabes preserve and the rail trail going through DEC property. He said 508 he’d been talking with the DEC about this, but not to the extent that you have. 509 I’ve been asked if we’re going to open up some hunting areas; they must not 510 know that you’re working on this as well. It was stated that this discussion 511 started because the committee was considering if a deer management plan was 512 needed. Representatives from the Town of Ithaca Conservation Board attended 513 one of our meetings and presented the plan they have. P. Davies said that 514 Dryden’s situation is different than Ithaca’s; we don’t have to insist on bow 515 hunting everywhere. At a previous meeting they started talking about how to 516 encourage hunting and linking landowners with hunters and that’s why J. 517 Grace called the DEC. M. Richmond spoke about a program being considered, 518 a Youth/Young Sportsman program and setting aside a specified week or days. 519 This is already in existence on State lands where they can control hunting and 520 give youth an opportunity to hunt with the guidance of an adult. There needs 521 to be an effort to recruit additional hunters and he believes the DEC sees this. 522 The hunting population has been dwindling for about the last twenty-five 523 years. D. Lamb said he’d received an e-mail from Todd Bittner who proposed 524 managing the Parke-Dabes area for us with deer management and posting it. 525 He wanted $428.00 a year from the Town to do that. He would mark it, and 526 monitor who goes in the park. The Committee felt that this was a good idea; it 527 would promote hunting. 528 529 P. Davies made a motion to pass the following resolution: 530 531 Resolution #5 for 2018 from the Dryden Conservation Board to the Town 532 Board that this Committee supports the Town Board moving ahead with the 533 offer from Cornell University for deer management at the Parke-Dabes preserve 534 at a quoted price of $428.00 year. 535 536 The motion was seconded by B. Beck and unanimously passed. 537 538 P. Davies said the deer management subject will be discussed in more detail at 539 future meetings. 540 Dryden Conservation Board DRAFT May 29, 2018 Page 13 of 13 541 P. Davies said that the next month he’ll be out of town and asked M. Richmond 542 to chair the meeting. He also said that he’d like to invite everyone to come to 543 his home for the July meeting and have a picnic. 544 545 A motion to adjourn the meeting was made by T. Woods and seconded by N. 546 Munkenbeck. It was unanimously approved. 547 548 There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 9:20 PM. 549 550 Respectfully submitted, 551 552 553 Diane Michaud 554 Deputy Town Clerk 555