HomeMy WebLinkAbout2013-05-28Please Note: These are DRAFT minutes. They have not been approved by vote of the Town of
Dryden Conservation Board. These minutes may inadvertently include errors of fact, grammar,
spelling, or punctuation, which may be corrected at the time they are approved. Any corrections will
appear in the final, approved minutes when they are posted.
Page 1 of 10
Draft
Town of Dryden
Conservation Board
May 28, 2013
Please Note: These are DRAFT minutes. They have not been approved by vote of the Town of Dryden
Conservation Board. These minutes may inadvertently include errors of fact, grammar, spelling, or
punctuation, which may be corrected at the time they are approved. Any corrections will appear in the final,
approved minutes when they are posted.
Members Present: Robert Beck (Temporary Chair), Bard Prentiss, Craig Schutt, Milo Richmond,
Nancy Munkenbeck (late), Richard Ryan (late)
Members excused: Steve Bissen and Charlie Smith
Planning Board Liaison: David Weinstein
Town Board Liaison: Linda Lavine
Guests: Craig Anderson
Chairman Beck called the meeting to order at 7:38.
Minutes:
M. Richmond thanked Jane Nicholson and Anna Belcher for the thorough minutes from last month.
The detail was enough that he feels he learned more from reading the minutes than he remembered
from the meeting. He suggested the following changes to the minutes for clarification:
Sumner commented on the possibility of “Associate Members” for the Conservations Board; she think s
it is a cool idea in terms of succession planning. She thinks one of the reasons why it was stalled is
because it is different from the Zoning Board and the Planning Board. The Zoning Board and the
Planning Board have legal functions that require quorums and votes. The Zoning Board has the ability
to have alternates; however the Conservation Board is related more to succession planning and
recruitment of new members. The process for appointing alternate members of the Planning and
Zoning Boards is to serve when members are absent or unable to participate on an application or
matter before the respective board.
C. Schutt moved to approve the minutes as amended. M. Richmond seconded the motion and all
approved.
Additions to agenda:
R. Beck shared some concerns C. Smith shared with him earlier:
C. Smith has requested a statement from the Town Board giving the Conservation Board the task of
working on the Open Space Plan. He has expressed concern there was some question in our
previous work on the Critical Environmental Areas; that some people in the community felt that the
CB members were doing it on their own and that they should be criticized for that. We all felt there
was a directive from the Board but it might not have been specific enough. C. Smith wants to make
it explicit this time to try to avoid possible ambiguity.
D. Weinstein – going back to the Conservation Board charter (Policies and Procedures), the CB is
fully empowered to initiate anything related to conservation or environment of the town.
Page 2 of 10
Draft
L Lavine – She thought it was less of an issue of who directed what, than the fact that the CEAs
have been blocked. In terms of future action, we need to be more careful about interfacing with the
people that are directly affected by it.
R. Beck – the Conservation Board understands that but C. Smith, Supervisor Sumner, J. Nicholson
and D. Kwasnowski all agree that it is good to move forward and probably next time, the
Conservation Board will see the directive from the Town Board.
B. Prentiss made the point that asking for direction from the Town Board does not mean that the
Conservation Board is giving up their charge or ability to consider issues of their own choo sing. It is
simply confirmation that the Open Space Plan is something the Town Board would like the
Conservation Board to work on. They are not yielding any of their rights.
M. Richmond doesn’t feel that at any time the Town Board wasn’t with us on the CEAs. They didn’t
all have the same sense of what a CEA is or what it does, but they all felt they had a hand on it.
He agrees with B. Prentiss that the Conservation Board doesn’t want to lose the option to use their
brains. The Town Board has the option to fine tune things.
R. Beck - Part of the Conservation Board’s concern is that the CEAs have not been passed on to the
DEC as they had hoped they would have, and it is not certain when that will happen. This was also
part of C. Smith’s concern that we were, in fact, doing the wishes of the Town Board and we didn’t
feel there were any problems between us other than the current delay in getting that done.
Reports and updates:
Linda Lavine (Liaison from the Town Board)
At their last meeting, they “celebrated” the Town’s win in their quest for home rule.
M. Richmond is on board with the decision made here but fracking has been going on for years in
Louisiana and Texas, using salt water. Free fracking is recovering the sludge and gas from old oil
wells by forcing the salt water into the mine, it causes anything with high osmotic pressure to move.
David Weinstein (Liaison from the Planning Board)
There are two things the Planning Board is working on.
First, they are taking an intense look at the existing Comprehensive Plan and specifically looking at
where the gaps are in thinking through the planning issues with regard to the whole concept of
sustainability. J. Nicholson is taking the lead in identifying sections. There has already been a lot
of discussion, because a lot of people have a hard time with the term “sustainability”, even though
there are very clear definitions of what sustainability is and what it would mean to the Town. They
are not going to do things that are going to preclude the future use of resources in the Town. They
have to work through that whole idea of definitions. The basic premise makes perfect sense when
you think about planning with regard to how do we put things in place that are easily sustainable
for the Town.
He said he believes the Conservation Board might want to help; it won’t be a good idea for the
Planning Board to work on the Comprehensive Plan by themselves. Just like it wouldn’t be a good
thing for the Conservation Board to work on the Open Space Plan by themselves.
Second, the Planning Board has sent a resolution to the Town Board that there be efforts made
toward crafting a fill ordinance. It was inspired by a recent problem in the Town where a site
received a lot of fill and the proposed interesting commercial/residential development that (had
passed through the Planning Board) came crashing down because the fill had not been put in the
site with appropriate care. To some degree this is a conservation issue and this Board might want to
help with that.
Please Note: These are DRAFT minutes. They have not been approved by vote of the Town of
Dryden Conservation Board. These minutes may inadvertently include errors of fact, grammar,
spelling, or punctuation, which may be corrected at the time they are approved. Any corrections will
appear in the final, approved minutes when they are posted.
Page 3 of 10
Draft
There was a draft fill ordinance years ago that based fill permit requirements on minimum fill
thresholds.
J. Nicholson said D. Kwasnowski isn’t sure this is the right time, it should be revisited, but this
might not be the best time to pass another law or ordinance.
D. Weinstein said the purpose is not to prevent fill but to fill appropriately.
Other information from the Planning Board.
1. The Site Plan review and approval of the landscaping business next to Steven’s Furniture. They
are sharing a driveway which will reduce curb cuts on the Route 13
2. Several new businesses have been put on Johnson Road including a yogurt facility and a malting
facility.
Most of the recent proposals have been environmentally friendly.
Tompkins County EMC: no report
C.Schutt (liaison to the Agriculture Commission)
Supervisor Sumner attended the meeting. He thinks the committee is trying to figure out where
they are going and what they are supposed to be working on. That was a lot of conversation at the
last meeting and they will come back in June to start. They are also hoping to get some clear
direction from the Town Board.
M. Richmond asked whether the ag committee/community in this town feel like they are being
pushed aside, rolled over? Yes, sometimes. They don’t feel they have enough say. They are the
largest landowners in the town and they feel like there are decisions being made at the Town level
but they don’t feel they have much say in it.
M. Richmond feels the CB has made a substantial effort to get ag represented on the Conservation
Board by adding representatives from the ag community. It is disappointing to him to know that
agriculture didn’t feel like they had enough say, or being heard or listened to. When they started
working on CEAs, this was a time that ag could have stepped forward and said agricultural lands
and agricultural activities are critical environmental activities/ areas, and we want to be
represented, this is how we feel about our land. He doesn’t remember hearing any of that. He feels
like the CB tried to represent the farmers and they need to part of this.
N. Munkenbeck thinks there are some emotional issues dating back to the Comprehensive Plan.
Farmers got together and created a committee to address issues with the Comprehensive Plan and
were told their concerns would be addressed in the Comprehensive Plan. However, the plan didn’t
or didn’t completely address that and those farmers felt burned.
D. Weinstein - Having been through the process, when that ag committee formed and fed
information to the planning group, we changed all kinds of things and maybe they didn’t get all of
what they wanted, but planning is a compromise. We backed away from a lot of things; the way we
were going to portion out new developments on ag land, because they felt it was very important for
them to be able to sell off small parcels.
C. Anderson – Now agricultural interests have a thread to the Town Board, whereas before their
thread went through the Conservation Board. And it goes beyond environmental issues to include
Page 4 of 10
Draft
marketing, open spaces, development – more than the CEAs. What they are getting ready to tackle
is Open Space and hopefully the two groups will work together on that.
R. Beck said he wished we had explored agricultural land as critical open space and could easily be
considered part of critical environmental areas (CEAs). There are other towns that have (at least
one) already put all of their agricultural land in CEAs and he would like to know how they did it,
why they did it, and how did the farmers feel about it.
N. Munkenbeck said the other town that has the CEAs is Suffolk which is far away from us policy
wise. Down there, if you make an agricultural product, you need to gross about $50,000 per acre to
keep your land unless you are protected.
C. Anderson – As the PDRs (purchase of developmental rights) become more common, he can see
overlays with those because you can’t do much with them (they have given up their development
rights) and he can see those farmers being more receptive. They are really interested in protecting
their land, and it has been in their families forever.
Jane Nicholson provided a report from the Dryden Recreation and Youth Commission
J. Nicholson said she gave them a brief introduction to the Open Space Plan (gave them the same
framework as she gave to the Conservation Board).
She suggested but didn’t recommend that they have a representative on the CB because they are a
newly formed commission (the combining of the Recreation Commission and the Youth
Commission).
Melissa Bianconi and J. Nicholson will be taking care of most of the open space plan via passive
recreation rather than active recreation. The Recreation Master Plan covers things like community
centers, active recreation and fields.
Part of the reason she went to the DRYC meeting was to get them on-board and aware of the plan.
The Commission was receptive and indicated an interest in participation, especially in reviewing the
Open Space Plan.
Old Business
J. Nicholson sent the layouts for the trail signs. They are at the sign company and they should be
back soon. They should ship around the 19th of June. She is hopeful for the end of June.
New Business
J. Nicholson introduced the Open Space Plan. This is part of the directive that was talked about
earlier. C. Smith, in an email to J. Nicholson, asked for a directive from the Town Board so everyone
is on the same page. If anyone questioned it in the future, we will have a paper trail and everyone
will know what their task is and how it works together.
The Planning Department has put together something from which they are hoping the Town Board
can pass a resolution. J. Nicholson said the resolution will be general and straightforward, but still
have some specific directives in it for the Conservation board.
J. Nicholson, D. Kwasnowski, R. Beck and C. Smith decided in a meeting earlier that they should
work mostly on conservation. The Agriculture Committee will work on the agriculture and J.
Nicholson and M. Bianconi will work on the Recreation part. O ne idea they were thinking about
mainly focusing on was section five (Activities and Outcomes section). What constitutes as open
space and why, what type of land in the town would we accept as donations and easements. This is
a strategic plan, not a comprehensive plan, so it is more specific, more objective and only for about
5 years.
She suggested looking at different levels of different conservation efforts:
Low priority - only so much we have to do because so much is already preserved.
Please Note: These are DRAFT minutes. They have not been approved by vote of the Town of
Dryden Conservation Board. These minutes may inadvertently include errors of fact, grammar,
spelling, or punctuation, which may be corrected at the time they are approved. Any corrections will
appear in the final, approved minutes when they are posted.
Page 5 of 10
Draft
Medium priority are those areas that we know need some protecting and we have a general idea of
what the land is.
High priority areas are the areas that we don’t know much, if anything about, and we need to find
out what is there to determine the level of protection.
The Planning Department envisioned a chart, but they don’t want to identify specific parcels. They
want to have things in place for protecting the land in the future.
R. Beck said they could determine the means by which land can be protected and specify how to
protect particular areas when the opportunity arises, without targeting areas that might cause
backlash.
B. Prentiss asked how that wasn’t going back to the CEAs?
R. Beck - The town can make recommendations, but then sends that information on to the state.
We considered ranking UNAs, he doesn’t like that because when you rank something, those with a
lower rank are then vulnerable (it is like saying it is ok to do whatever you want with those, and the
higher ranking ones everyone knows we would go to bat to fight the environmental degradation.
D. Weinstein - even without ranking we can still identify places in the Town, the areas that are vital
to the quality of life in the town. The head waters of Six Mile Creek would certainly be protected and
if this plan did nothing more than identify where there could be resources vital to the Town….
J. Nicholson is of the belief that by moving forward with identifying these places (which is the bulk
of the work), we could go back to identifying goals and objectives. N Munkenbeck asked if the goal
was to identify where to preserve open and natural spaces that are endemic to particular areas.
M. Richmond - we already know where they are, they were identified in the CEAs
To avoid confusion: The open space planning has been defined as not a holistic broad, long - range
assessment but more of a 5-10 year planning the development that can occur and where it should
go - so all of the natural areas and CEAs are a low priority because they are not open to
development or encroachment. He thinks of an Open Space Plan like the DEC and state are doing
now, where they are identifying open land - what J. Nicholson is giving low priority, they are giving
high priority.
D. Weinstein – vulnerability is the issue, what in the next five years has the potential of being
“gobbled” up. The State Forest is not vulnerable based on its already protected status. Therefore,
the Planning Department says they are low priority. The long term goals are still in there. For
example: increasing recreation space.
J. Nicholson – for example: part of the Recreation section will have development standards, if
someone wanted to come in with a subdivision, the plan would contain requirements for a pocket
park. These requirements become effective immediately and are part of the long-term plan.
The definition of Open Space, for this project, is in the zoning code.
J. Nicholson feels the CEAs are a great foundation in terms of identifying the different areas.
D.Weinstein - when we started in 1999, we started with a town wide survey asking how important
do you think it is to maintain the open space in the town? Not only did we get a huge response in
terms of questionnaire responses, but a huge majority said we want open space, it defines the
Page 6 of 10
Draft
character of the town. What that means in terms of an Open Space plan is that is an articulated
goal so that every chance we have we should try to maintain that open space. It doesn’t mean that
we can’t develop a field, it just means that we have an overriding goal. We should not be gun shy of
that goal because the town people already said they wanted that.
B. Prentiss - that’s what the CEAs were for.
D. Weinstein – the CEAs were an identification of specific environmental critical resources, they
didn’t go to the whole question of maintaining open space in the town, they contributed to it and
some people, not the majority, felt that it was putting in a heavy regulatory factor. It is a matter of
education, so that people understand that putting in CEAs helps contribute to the overall town goal
of maintaining open space in the town.
R. Beck - going back to the survey and the overwhelming majority of people saying they want open
space. That needs to be right up front in our open space plan and we need to be specific about the
means of maintaining our open space. CEAs are one means to open space that we need to explicitly
defend and state as important in our long term goal of maintaining open space, including
agricultural land.
He feels an important part is the means and methods by which we work toward the long term goal
and maybe less so the prioritizing of areas that were identified in an earlier open space inventory.
He thinks it is time to get on with the methods of insuring that we still have a nice environment. He
doesn’t know how this is done in other areas and as M. Richmond and others have suggested, there
must be wonderful examples of open space plans from places that are ahead of us and have already
put a similar plan into words. Examples would help everyone understand how to put the idea into
words.
J. Nicholson said that they could come up with examples but Dryden is not approaching this like
any other town. We are using a systematic approach, a three tier approach. This is not a typical
open space plan that is aimed at protecting agriculture, it is a difficult concept, but it will eventually
be better than what other plans include.
C. Anderson suggested use of the word “guidelines” rather than plan, for many people a plan
indicates a law whereas the open space plan is actually providing guidance.
M. Richmond – The terminology is part of why he is confused. He has been talking with a person
with the DEC regarding hamlets in the Adirondacks where they are identifying Open Space
planning for development. Ie. what spaces are open for development so that the hamlet will be more
organized. Open space available for what? For farming, for housing, for small industry?
J. Nicholson responded that D. Kwasnowski’s idea was using the CEAs as a foundation because of
the work that has been done. He suggested the Conservation Board go back and review CEAs 1-30
and look at what needs to be done and the level of effort that has to be put into protecting them.
Level 1 = generally supported in terms of protection, we know about the sites, they may already be
protected, like state land
Level 2 = more support, more review. We might know who the land owner is and kind of what is
there so we can develop a method to protect those areas.
Level 3 = we don’t really know what is there. We need to work with landowners to find out what is
there, get access to the property so we can know what is there.
B. Prentiss pointed out that everyone is going to agree that we should protect open space/land. But
if someone says protect this particular lot, the response may be “not on MY lot”. He feels we need to
Please Note: These are DRAFT minutes. They have not been approved by vote of the Town of
Dryden Conservation Board. These minutes may inadvertently include errors of fact, grammar,
spelling, or punctuation, which may be corrected at the time they are approved. Any corrections will
appear in the final, approved minutes when they are posted.
Page 7 of 10
Draft
be getting back to the CEAs and creating something that will provide people with a way to do the
right thing. He thinks guidelines are the way to do it.
L. Lavine - what the opposition fears is that the CEAs were handing faceless bureaucrats power over
their property. What we are saying is that we are putting a face to the bureaucrats and that is us.
The idea of guidelines suggests that we are now sitting back and looking at the CEAs as information
and trying to come up with guidelines to establish what level of control we want to have and
ultimately that is going to be a political issue . It has to be done carefully and it is about serious
potential legislation.
Supervisor Sumner thinks we are on the right track, but from time to time a piece of property will
become available or be donated to us. We thought that was wonderful, but after a while, it became
apparent that we need guidelines to seek out property we want to buy. Going back to the
Comprehensive Plan, the definitive regulation control would have been zoning, but we couldn’t start
with the zoning. There was widespread agreement, not universal, but widespread agreement on the
Comprehensive Plan details and process, a lot of people felt that they had input. When we came
back with the Zoning Plan, there wasn’t as much push back as there would have been if we had
started with Zoning. Now we need a comprehensive plan of Conservation open space and a
comprehensive plan of Agriculture open space and a comprehensive plan of Recreation open space.
N. Munkenbeck – in terms of open space and conservation, what we really need is some kind of
regulation for water. We originally went through years of trying to address how to come up with
guidelines for use of water, development around water ways and recharge areas. We thought the
CEAs were a wonderful way, specific ideas were not working out well, so the generic thing sounded
good, but as we worked on the CEAs, Dan (Kwasnowski) took everything with water and put it in
one specific section and then after it was supposed to come back to us, all of the water got removed.
She would like to see the Conservation Board start with water, but if this is going to be used to a
great extent by the Planning Department in dealing with development things, perhaps the strategic
five year plan aspect of water isn’t as important as in the long-term plan.
Supervisor Sumner - The Open Space Plan will deal with protecting water resources.
N. Munkenbeck feels that protecting water has been pushed to the back burner again. In the
agriculture committee, D. Kwasnowski said that this is a document that will show people how to
proceed in developing other plans. That they will go to this document to determine what is
acceptable when presented with a plan. For example: we are trying to preserve land so the Emerald
Necklace can continue, so you can build your house here but not there.
L. Lavine - Since you guys have been so immersed in the CEAs, maybe you should brainstorm ideas
that spin off of that. What would be the logical implications of that kind of control , since the CEAs
didn’t have anything to do with our control.
One of the questions is, if all you are doing is saying it is nice to have green fields, blue skies and
clean water, then that is very different than saying we are going to have these very specific laws but
somewhere in there is the question of what kind of control is possible to exert and how much you
want to exert. It seems as if that kind of general question would infuse this discussion about what
kind of guidelines we want.
Page 8 of 10
Draft
M. Richmond - CEAs became alive and well in this state because they have legal status. Unique
Natural Areas (UNAs) and other special places do not have that status. By identifying those, they
can be seen as lynch pins or corner posts to identifying what spaces are critical environmental sites
unique to this town, and we want to hold onto them for open space for recreation or education, but
not for development or fracking, etc.
By identifying those, we develop a plan that causes us to say those have the lowest priority… he is
caught in the dilemma of the words, if something is low priority then to him, it suggests it is a low
priority. Maybe the Open Space planning we are doing isn’t about CEAs at all but is about the next
5 – 10 years, and what are we going to do about it? Are we going to seize opportunities to develop
industry, housing, something that is like what is across from the High School, have we seen or do
we know what TC3 is going to bring to this community?
He feels there have been huge changes in the past five years, and he can remember the beginning of
TC3. It has expanded hugely and are we recognizing that, is that what we have to do comprehensive
planning for, the vision of where we are going to be in 10 years.
Supervisor Sumner indicated that TC3 does have an ambitious plan and certainly with the
governor’s recommendation for the new economic zones. And yes, that is why we need to think
about how and why to be preserving open space. She thinks the “why” is the most important part.
The “why” tells us the wetlands are important because they prevent flooding, they help absorb
storm water, and they help keep the water clean. It is not just wetlands but also forests and oxygen,
and scenic views and quality of life.
N. Munkenbeck believes if the Town Board gave us directive to do this (coming up with the “whys”),
we might get it done in one meeting (there was very little agreement with this thought).
D. Weinstein – responding to something M. Richmond said…. are we worried about development
moving in or are we worried about the areas we don’t want developed. From our Comprehensive
Plan, we realized this was an interconnected system and the way to maintain open space was to
make sure the new development was concentrated in hamlets, on peripheries of villages. The zoning
made a big attempt to incentivize the process so that we would get the new development focused in
certain areas and keep it out of the hinterland. So it is not an either/or process, it is a connected
system in which you have to consider the gain by having the development here to maintain the open
space.
D. Weinstein – All of that is incentivized in the zoning already passed. That level of maintaining
open space is already in place. This will add an additional level of detail by saying all open spaces in
the town are not equal; here are some more important ones or some more important criteria.
N. Munkenbeck suggested that at one meeting we could clarify what we are trying to do. Once we
are clear on our goals, then start looking at sections of the Town such as the northwest portion
rather than looking at the CEAs, because by looking at the CEAs, we are already putting limitations
or restrictions on how we look at the problem and the solution.
R. Beck – Thinking about why the state came up with CEAs and looking at it in the broad sense,
they were not just looking at the natural areas, they were talking about the entire span of the
environment, and they wanted local municipalities, if they are going to designate CEAs, to define
what criteria of the CEA require attention. That requires someone doing a SEQR review to respond
to concerns about the specific environmental qualities that require attention. It doesn’t mean that
someone can or cannot do something, it just means someone has to take a closer look. Expand the
reason for CEAs to cover the entire town. Can we as a group define the criteria or qualities of the
environment that are important and put it down on paper: the water quality, scenic views, open
space for open space. Why can’t we put down the qualities that should be looked at more closely for
Please Note: These are DRAFT minutes. They have not been approved by vote of the Town of
Dryden Conservation Board. These minutes may inadvertently include errors of fact, grammar,
spelling, or punctuation, which may be corrected at the time they are approved. Any corrections will
appear in the final, approved minutes when they are posted.
Page 9 of 10
Draft
any development project? Have the developer put their thoughts on paper as part of the plan to
show that they have thought about it and the agency that is going to make a decision about a
project has responded.
R. Beck said that means we would have to develop criteria for scenic views, the sense of rural
landscape. These are qualities that we need to define and to what extent do we want our Planning
Department to insist that development be moved and positioned to maintain the things that we feel
are important. That seems to be what we should be focused on. Defining all the qualities that we
think are important. He feels it might help to consider why the State came up with CEAs? And it
wasn’t just for UNAs.
Supervisor Sumner said that SEQR asks about the impact a project will have on UNAs and CEAs.
N. Munkenbeck said if we want scenic views, we might have to come up with legislation like they
have in Suffolk County, where if you have property with a scenic view, the person across the way
cannot plant trees that affect your view or you have the right to cut them down. That can be
contentious.
Supervisor Sumner learned through the comprehensive plan process and the design guidelines, as
experienced as we are, we were planning for how we want it now, but not how we want or need it 50
years from now. She encouraged the Board to think about what we are going to want in 2060. She
also pointed to Borg Warner, in Ithaca, as a good example of open space. They have a good deal of
wooded open space around it. Industry and open space are not mutually exclusive.
N. Munkenbeck asked Supervisor Sumner if the Town Board was going to provide more guidance.
She responded that they are going to talk about that at the June 13th and 20th meetings.
N. Munkenbeck emphasized that she would feel more comfortable looking at these issues by area
rather than by CEA number. Looking at an area including the trails going through there, are there
wetlands? For example, the northwest corner of town has a lot of wetlands and are they unique or
home to certain creatures or some that are more important than others?
R. Ryan indicated he is in favor of looking at defined areas.
R. Beck agreed that looking at sections was a good idea and suggested we define criteria over all
and then move onto specific areas and what is special about those areas relative to what we have
already put on paper.
L. Lavine suggested the money left over in the Dryden Recreation and Youth Commission funds,
about $1000, could be used to create a great slide show to celebrate the wonderfulness of Dryden.
This would be a proactive way to protect Dryden. Another way could be to create a pie ce of
literature displaying birding habitats in Tompkins County, most of which are in Dryden. (Cayuga
Bird Club has already done a great job with the bird information.)
D. Weinstein pointed out that the Town also has rare plants, but we don’t want people going to
those areas due to concerns that they might destroy the plants.
R. Beck brought the meeting to a close with a thank you to everyone and their ideas for
conservation, promoting education, tourism and the website.
B. Prentiss said that TC3 is doing one of those phone things that will allow people to get more
information (plants and animals) as they walk along the Jim Schug trail.
Page 10 of 10
Draft
The goal for the next meeting is to think about the Open Space criteria and how to get it written
down.
There being no further business, N. Munkenbeck moved to adjourn at 9:45. The motion was
seconded by R. Ryan and the meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted,
Erin A. Bieber
Deputy Town Clerk