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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1971-04-21 GROTON TOWN PLANNING BOARD MEETING Wednesday , April 21 , 1971 8 * 10 P .M . - 10@00 P . M . PRESENT : D . Carey H . Dow R . Gleason Z . Kane F . Scheffler A . Clark J . Bell Mr . William Morris on New York State Conservation Department D . Carey : We didn ' t get the minutes of the last meeting mailed out this time as the draft copy was mailed to me from Ithaca two weeks ago tomorrow but I haven ' t received it yet . I went down to Mrs . Bell ' s house the other night and we went over them and she retyped them and we think they are right . (Mr . Carey passed out copies of the Minutes of the April 7th meeting to everyone present to read . ) D . Carey : Has everybody read the minutes ? Any additions or corrections ? If not , they stand approved as written . Our 701 boys aren ' t here tonight but I don ' t believe they have had a meeting anyways but ended. , up their 701 meeting last week and at that time decided to have 3 zones . We took out the open zone and made it all agricultural . Z . Kane : We had done that here , too . D . Carey : Niederkorn went along with that and then we ran the commercial zone out 222 to Salt Road , I think it ' s 1 , 000 ft . back on each side and then they extended the low density zone around the Village where the Village low density was and went out South Main Street and down 38 and up into Peru over to McLean and West Groton . I don ' t know why they did West Groton and not Groton City , and then we had this whole list of things we put in , that we revised at our last Board meeting , that we would allow in these various zones and I think that ' s recorded in these minutes and that ' s about all we had in 701 . - Well , Roger , - - if you want to take over now and have Mr . Morris talk to us . R . Gleason : I invited Bill Morris , who is forester in the Forest Practice Act program for Tompkins County and he is going to talk with us a little bit about the importance of the forest and wood area in Groton . B3011 - - - 1 - B . Morris : 0 . K . To start out with - - just to give you a little background - - outside of the Adirondacks and Catskills 47% of New York State ' s forest land is in commercial forestry . In Tompkins County 46% is in commer - cial forestry . In Groton only 17% of your land area is in forests . I think there is less woodland in Groton than in any other of the Towns here . Also in Groton we have 23 individuals - - cooperators - - signed up to management agreements and their woodland acreage averages about 40 acres . H . Dow : When you say "cooperators " you mean farmers who are using your services to cull out undesirable trees or to otherwise improve their woodland ? B . Morris : Not necessarily - - they use our services to mark timber for sale but people who are merely interested in improving their wood lots by culling wood trees - - it is not necessary for them to sign agree- ments with us . The trouble with our woodlands is that they continually gone down hill and the practice has been , up until 1946 , when this re - forestry service became available , the farmer didn ' t have enough wood- land to call in a consultant to advise him on what to do with it because the fee would be exorbitant . This is primarily why this service has been established . It is important to have woodlands in good shape be- cause they produce quite a bit of oxygen . A managed woodlot is much healthier than one that is not managed . When a tree dies it takes oxygen out of the air so it ' s good to keep your woodlots in shape . There is a booklet out by the Forest Service "Timber Resources of New York" - - Forest Service Bulletin - - you can get it from Upper Darby , Pennsylvania if anyone is interested . H . Dow : Has there been a change in market demand for woods in different qualities ? Are we able to use cheaper woods to take up some of the demands for building materials - - where , for instance , knotty pine was junk before , now it ' s considered beautiful ? B . Morris : As regards soft woods - - they . come from the West Coast and the South . More douglas fir than Southern pine . Native material , such as white pine , is only chosen when you have labor trouble on the West Coast , then the white pine here is sold . D . Carey : How do people contact you for help ? B . Morris : Contact me through our office in Cortland - - the New York State De- partment of Environmental Conservation , Box 1169 , Cortland , N . Y . Mm3095 or contact me at home (after 5 P .M . ) 257 - 1536 . D . Carey : Do you charge for your services ? B . Morris : No - - you ' ve paid for them already! This is another thing - - this service is free . A discussion was held re . the damage loggers can do to woodlots if farmers don ' t know which trees to let them take or leave . B . Morris : I can give you a list of trees and what they are worth and a list of loggers , and also contract forms to fit your particular circumstances to give to loggers so they can ' t just do what they please . The best time to do logging is in the winter time when the least amount of 2 - damage is done or else late in the summer when there is no moisture in the ground . R . Gleason : This is one of the reasons I asked Bill to come over - - as a Planning Board , I thought that maybe we ought to recognize a resource here in Town . If there is anything - - if it is a resource that the Town should look at , is there anything we can do , as a Planning Board or in the zoning ordinance , and also make some use of the forest as a re- creation area . What I was hoping is that you (Mr . Morris ) might have some suggestions to give us that would help in preparing our zoning proposals or in our planning that would encourage land owners to give a thought to good forest managing and also is there any unique area or forest value here in this Town that should be , in some way , looked at as worth preserving or encouraging better development ? B . Morris : Of course , the ideal place is the Waterworks and my understanding is they don ' t want to have any recreation at all in there . I think John Cramer tried to do this once before . Some discussion was held on this by A . Clark , B . Morris and others . B . Morris : The Elementary School up here is developing their land as an outdoor laboratory . Jim Shippey can tell you about this - - he ' s very en- thusiastic . They have a pond going in - - have planted trees there la-.t year . They have about 20-25 acres . They have a little nature trail with a couple of old shacks where they can camp out overnight . Mr . Morris mentioned how hard it was for him to get any coverage through the Ithaca Journal re . trying to preserve woodland and the services his department has to offer people and suggested that if someone had about 2 acres bordering on a road that they could spare and would let him go in there and fix one up and leave the other acre as is and publicize this , it might help a lot to get people interested in requesting his services . More discussion was held on the wood land in both the Village and the Town . R . Gleason : Do you have anything else for us ? B . Morris : I don ' t think so . If anyone has any questions I ' ll be glad to answer them . D . Carey : I think it ' s a good service and more people ought to take advantage of it in the future . B . Morris : I ' ll try to write up something to give you on it . D . Carey : If you will do that , than we can have it as part of the minutes of our meeting to refer to . We might call a meeting some night and have you come up and talk to people who have wood lots . Z . Kane : That would be a good idea . (Mr . Morris handed Mrs . Bell two handwritten pages of notes he spoke from at tonight ' s meeting , these are attached hereto for the record . ) D . Carey : Thank you very much , Mr . Morris . - 3 - Be Morris : Just call on me if I can be of any assistance to you . I prefer to do my work during working hours . D . Carey : We ' ll plan a meeting far enough ahead so you can take the day offl Well , - - let ' s see - - has anybody done anything about writing a policy statement ? R . Gleason : I ' ve thought about it and I ' m wondering if we aren ' t going about it the wrong way . What I ' m getting at is - - I ' m not quarreling with what George has written and , yet , part of it seems to me to be based on opinion - - maybe looking at it with rose-colored glasses . We ' ve got information from the 701 studies and it seems to me as though we ought to go through and make what we have - - projections , facts and so on and state them first and then , on,,the basis of those see where — On or what our policy should be . It ' s all very nice to say we ought to encourage industrial development but it seems to me they say we are wasting our time . Some discussion was held on this subject by A . Clark , R . Gleason , D . Carey and others . R . Gleason : I still can ' t quite reconcile both of them being valid . D . Carey : Why don ' t we go over George ' s statement here and you pick out of the 701 March 1971 one — NO (The pertinent parts of the 701 policy statement and Mr . Totman ' s were read aloud and compared and discussed . ) A . Clark : I thought you had adopted this 701 one as your policy`-.statement- in fact that both Planning Boards had . R . Gleason : That ' s what I 'm saying , but the argument was that this is 701 and we ought to have a separate one but , after adopting this 701 one , we write this and I just can ' t really argue too much on the in- dividual statement but it does appear to be contradictory . This , to me , seems to be emphasizing that we should be promoting growth in Groton . This one seems to say that we are recognizing that growth is not going to be rapid therefore not making major efforts to promote growth . More discussion was held on this by R . Gleason , A . Clark , D . Carey and others , and Mr . Clark said that so far as he was concerned if someone asked him the policy of the Village Planning Board he would say it was the 701 one . Mrs . Kane went through our first Town Planning Board meeting minutes in March 1971 and confirmed that we had , indeed , adopted the 701 policy statement at that meeting . Z . Kane : So what are we going to do - - are we going to have two policy statements , or one or none ? D . Carey : I think I had better get hold of George and Ron and talk this thing out before we have another meeting and then we will know where we are going . - 4 DID R . Gleason : I don ' t object to having a separate one but think we have to follow this 701 one pretty closely . Some discussion was held as to the Village plans for Groton and Mr . Clark said there are some ideas of planting trees on Main Street this year but not much else . The site for the Post Office Building was also discussed and Mr . Clark said the Village is still tied up on option with the Post Office Department until it expries . D . Carey : This meeting is adjourned . The next meeting will be May 5th at 8 : 00 P . M . 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