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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCAC Minutes - 02_09_21Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 1 of 7 Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council (CAC) Minutes of Video Conference (Zoom) Meeting on Tuesday, February 9, 2021 Danby, New York Council Members present: Clare Fewtrell (chair), Joel Gagnon, George Adams, Jonathan Zisk, Margaret Corbit, Mary Woodsen Council Members absent: Brittany Lagaly, Don Schaufler Others present: Elizabeth Keokosky (secretary), Ronda Roaring (Danby resident), David West (town planner), Katharine Hunter (former CAC member) Zoom Meeting was officially called to order at 7:04. Deletions or Additions to Agenda: none Privilege of the Floor (PoF): none Approval Minutes MOTION for January 8, 2020 Gagnon moved to approve Adams seconded Unanimous approval, except for Zisk who abstained REPORTS AND UPDATES 1) Update on Brittany Lagaly She is expecting twins and is now in the second trimester. She is not having an easy pregnancy, but she still wants to participate. She has tried to contact the Highway Dept. to arrange a talk on invasive species. She also has ideas for other invasive species events, especially in regards to spotted lantern fly. She still wants to do an easement on her property but we will need to wait until the snow melts to do an inspection. Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 2 of 7 (Woodsen announced that Mark and Deidre Silverman – on Trevor Rd – recently donated an easement to the Finger Lakes Land Trust.) 2) Annual Report for 2020 – Fewtrell Fewtrell requested comments on the annual report she wrote. Gagnon said it was excellent. Gagnon moved to approve and send the annual report to the Town Board Woodsen seconded Unanimous approval 3) Easement Webinar/Zoom Meeting – Fewtrell The online presentation to explain the Danby Conservation Easement Program to Danby residents was discussed. Fewtrell had suggested a time frame of early April using a format of 30 minutes for the presentation, leaving 30 minutes for the questions. However, in order to give CAC members more time to assemble an easement web page as an accompanying reference tool, a tentative date was set for May 13. Fewtrell complimented Corbit on the document she had written to simplify understanding easements, “Step-by-Step Guide to Donating a Conservation Easement in Danby.” It was sent out for comments but more were requested. Gagnon noted she was bringing fresh eyes to the process. The Town clerk will be uploading it to CAC website (she is also working on transitioning the current Town web site to a new one). Woodsen offered to work on creating a separate easement web page and Corbit, who had also noticed discrepancies and confusions in easement file naming conventions on the website, volunteered to work with Woodsen on this. Fewtrell asked about Keokosky’s advertising sources for the forestry webinar. Keokosky agreed to provide them but noted that only some of these would be appropriate for a Danby-only presentation. Gagnon agreed to take on the role of Presenter. The decision was left open whether to use a the normal Zoom or a webinar format. Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 3 of 7 4) Easement Sign – Fewtrell and Adams After continuous shading of the picture for the easement sign was changed to half-toning (pixilated), Adams said the price quote decreased from $25 to $11 per sign, for a minimum of 25 signs. Since he only just sent the email showing the new picture, the discussion was saved for the next meeting. Concerned that the original sign kept having complicating delays, Fewtrell told group she was sending the two options (Ruth Sherman’s older drawing and the adjusted drawing from Adams) in an email tomorrow for members to decide which to pursue. . 5) Easement Updates – Fewtrell Dan Hoffman and Mark & Micaela Karlsen, who are planning to donate an easement on their property on Bruce Hill road, have been sent the wording for the new Restricted Forest Use Zone that the CAC approved at its last meeting. There is a proposal to subdivide the Wimsatt property at the corner of Marsh and Deputron Hollow roads into 3 parcels: 40 acres on eastern-most side (going toward Deputron Hollow), 27 acres in the middle parcel, which holds the current log house and cabin, and 22 acres on the west side closest to Durfee Hill road. The western parcel will be purchased by a neighbor. The only road frontage available is on the eastern parcel corner at the Marsh Rd./Deputron Hollow intersection. The goal is to negotiate an easement to reduce development there (current zoning could allow 8 houses). The easement would define space for one new family dwelling in the 40- acre parcel but the young family purchasing it would like to have the option of three more (for their “descendants”) in the future. Gagnon explained that currently this parcel has 800 ft. of road frontage but it is on an abandoned road. House building requires road frontage on a road the Highway Dept. supports. The plan is to put the house away from road in the south field, but driveways over 300 feet require special construction. Other considerations were 1) that the woods (with a small stream) on the south side of the eastern parcel, which borders Deputron Hollow Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 4 of 7 UNA, be designated as a restricted forest use zone, or an ag and forest management zone. Gagnon noted that the property had raised a host of issues, but the next step was to negotiate an easement on the entire Wimsatt property before it is subdivided. Gagnon previewed some of his ideas for a “roads to trails” model, in response to a new government law that is requiring that if a house is built on a seasonal road, the road must to maintained to support the house. This might be difficult for some roads in Danby. Other options would be for the town to abandon seasonal roads, discontinue them, or to turn them into trails. The group started to discuss this. Qualified abandonment needs the approval of the County Highway Superintendent. Laura Shawley was reported as saying Danby Highway Dept. has a good working relationship with him. Woodsen asked if we were going to join the NYSACC (New York State Association of Conservation Commissions: https://nysacc.org/ ) and Fewtrell said we could add it to the next meeting’s agenda. 6) Report on progress of Logging Ordinance – Adams, Schaufler, and Zisk Adams said that he planned to bring the draft ordinance to the town clerk, town planner and highway department before our next meeting. His newest draft made legislation less burdensome than the original draft. His main concern was to catch the jobs that were controversial. Fewtrell said she thought the goal was just to get people to register and provide maps of the logging that they are planning so that the Town is aware of possible environmental risks. She asked if the concern was that this wouldn’t provide enough teeth to respond to problems? Gagnon said that it is time to bring the logging document to CAC group for feedback. We also need to put the DEC field guide for best management practices on the CAC website. See https://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/lands_forests_pdf/forestrybmp.pdf Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 5 of 7 The ordinance will be discussed at the next meeting after Adams gets some feedback from the Highway Department and Zoning officer, and members re-read the draft. He is still pursuing a three pronged objective which includes education as well as regulation. (Discussion of priorities for next agenda. (Webinar, sign, and logging ordinance). Zisk suggested the ordinance may take as much as an hour. 7) What do we want to achieve in 2021 (continued) and mission statement - all Gagnon summarized the discussion as being about whether the “Purpose and Authority” list in the Resolution creating the Conservation Advisory Council (put in the addendum of the last minutes) could be used as a mission statement. Fewtrell said that she was not enthusiastic about mission statements, and felt that the most important thing was to create easements – which CAC was doing. PoF: Keokosky asked about how Open Space plans (or lack of them) were affecting choices of easement locations rather than on a catch- as-catch-can basis. She was informed that this was what the Conservation Working Group was doing – though it might be taking longer than planned. The discussion continued around open space containing UNAs (unique natural areas), like Deputron Hollow. Fewtrell knows Paul Soloway, who is the owner of the parcel on the far side of the Danby- owned property on Deputron Hollow, and volunteered to contact him. Roaring had volunteered to find owners around UNAs and state land. She reported on plans she had suggested at the Conservation Working Group. She had a list of all the owners on Deputron Hollow. She also included those on Olsefski Road (a seasonal road that goes off at an angle from Deputron Hollow Road to Coddington Road), which she said also had some easements with the Finger Lakes Land Trust, as well as Gilbert Road (which dead ends on the plateau of the hill above Deputron Hollow on the edge of more Finger Lake Land Trust property owned by the Gilberts. Fewtrell asked the Town Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 6 of 7 Planner to find out who bought Aaron St. John’ properties (where logging recently occurred). Several ideas were floated on how coordinating this project could be accomplished and/or financed. A Zoom meeting between property owners and the CAC might be a way to initiate and inform people about Gagnon’s concept of roads to trails, as well as discussing conservation ideas for the area, and see if there is any public interest. (After-note: the possibility of using federal funds from the US Forest Service to create a trail system for recreation suggested by Roaring might not have the correct fit since it requires full purchase of land. It provides funds with a 50% matching requirement. See https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/private-land/community-forest/program . The DEC is proposing a forestry protection grant program that does not have the same requirements as the Federal program, but has yet to pass the state legislature.) 8) Town Board’s response to Proposed Management Plans for Town Properties on Deputron Hollow Road and Sylvan Lane – Gagnon reported that no one on the town board had comments. So if no one comes to the public hearing which is being held on the 17th it will go right through. Two small corrections need to be made to the Sylvan Lane property management part of it, which Fewtrell will take care of with the Town Clerk. 9) Planning Group and Conservation Working Group Report – Gagnon The groups are up and running again after a hiatus. They will be starting to look into how to modify Danby regulations to buttress conservation easement areas near water, UNAs, or better agriculture soil areas. One tool to reduce development density is increasing the 5 acre minimum lot size to 10 acres. The possibility for development is increased along a road because current rules allow a lot for every 200 feet of road frontage, and each lot could possibly contain a two- family house. Current regulations do not allow for flag lots with a driveway leading to land in back. A road must be put in, which is prohibitively expensive. People buy the 200 feet of road frontage and build further back from the road which is an environmental trade-off Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 7 of 7 between greater fragmentation and visual aesthetics. The Town of Ithaca has a lot size of 7 acres in conservation zones so there is a precedent. Allowing flag lots with shared driveways is also a possible way to proceed. People who buy in the country usually want privacy rather than residential clusters. Decisions like these are long-term and could determine the type of development that evolves. These ideas will be discussed in the Conservation Planning Working Group and then go to Planning Group, and from there to Town Board. CAC and Planning Board will weigh in on them as well. There was no Executive session Next Meeting through Zoom is on February 9th at 7p.m. Adjournment The meeting adjourned at 9:20 p.m. _____________________________________________ Submitted by Elizabeth Keokosky (Secretary)