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Home My WebLink AboutCAC Minutes - 06_13_23Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 1 of 6 Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council (CAC) Minutes of In-person Meeting in Town Hall and via videoconferencing Tuesday, June 13, 2023 Danby, New York Council Members present: Margaret Corbit (Meeting Chair), Jonathan Zisk (Co- Chair), Joel Gagnon, Katharine Hunter (via Zoom), Don Schaufler, Renee Owens, Council Members absent: Brittany Lagaly Others present: Elizabeth Keokosky (Secretary), Ronda Roaring (Danby resident – via Zoom), David West (Town Planner via Zoom) Meeting was officially called to order at 7:14 Deletions or Additions to Agenda: Owens requested an agenda addition of the bear discussion in her newsletter article and an OK to work with town clerk, Janice Adelman, to load documents and pictures on the CAC web page. Corbit suggested moving #1 agenda item on tax abatements down to end to give it the meeting’s full attention, once smaller items are completed. Privilege of the Floor (PoF): Introduction of Curtis Jirsa, who had moved recently to Danby. Previously he had a small farm in Dresden, Maine, and also ran a native plant nursery. He is now working at on IT at Cornell. He is interested in helping out any way he can and had read in the Danby Newsletter about the CAC needing help with monitoring easements. He was gratefully directed to the supervision of Zisk and Hunter on the monitoring committee. Corbit explained to him what monitoring consisted of. He was uncertain if he would eventually join the CAC. Members of group introduced themselves to Curtis. Roaring mentioned that she was disturbed by the disconnect between when the recording was started and when the meeting was started, so leaving a lot of informal chatter on a saved recording. She also wanted to see CAC bring together all the people in Danby who have conservation easements to talk to each other and offer suggestions. When the Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 2 of 6 tax abatement is finalized, she wanted it made clear to all the people in the town what their options were. Approval of May 9, 2023 minutes Joel moved to approve  Zisk seconded  Approval unanimous for those present. REPORTS AND UPDATES (from the agenda and other additions) 1. Status of DEC approval of Timber Harvesting law – Schaufler David West, the town planner, had problems with scheduling meeting with DEC and so nothing was updated since CAC minutes of last month. 2. Update from sub-committee on monitoring – Corbit and Zisk (others?) No progress on typing up new reports, but Schaufler is sending old reports he had completed to be scanned to town clerk to transcribe to digital. 3. Updates on Easements – from leads on on-going easements Andi Gladstone: Zisk is working on it. Ben Altman: on hold for moment. Mary Woodsen: Zisk is still writing this. Zisk has made some progress in the last months with Henry Fitzgerald, Mary’s partner. Hoffman/Karlsen: easement is ready for signing: Gagnon heard that other CAC members were disappointed that the signing and associated celebration might happen before a Town Board meeting and not at a CAC meeting and in response proposed scheduling it for before the next CAC meeting. The rest of the group was enthusiastic, so Gagnon committed to trying to arrange it Ruth Sherman: group is achieving some headway in getting a meeting time for people to walk land. Hunter said they may have more at next meeting Andrea Butje: Butje notified West she will talk about easement in July after closing on parcel that was sold. 4. Report on status of checklist to trigger CAC involvement in Town Planning/Land use discussions – Zisk Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 3 of 6 Zisk has the skeleton of checklist drawn up but not completed. He is trying to create a document that town board and planning board could scan through in a matter of minutes with a trigger to involve CAC as an advisory group. Corbit offered to work on it with him. Gagnon suggested that the town planner should make the call, but Zisk thought that the more people that looked at the list the better. Hunter said that the biggest value might be the educational impact on the multiple people who read it. Planner West noted that the down-side of another agency involved would be the increased delay of getting approval. He noted that the Planning Board gets information on a property 3 weeks before the first meeting discussing it. That might be the time for the CAC checklist. He used the county as an example. They have a template to go through that makes suggestions on energy use, etc... The CAC – based on Danby conservation objectives, might want to have a set of standard responses for people submitting applications (i.e. such as how to deal with wetlands, etc). Corbit explained that this document was just a preliminary document, more intended for alerting (but not necessarily requiring) Board members that the CAC should be involved. It did not aim for inclusion in every SEQR review. 5. Status of NYSACC conference follow-ups – Keokosky Keokosky reported that, out of the original 3 suggestions of people to speak at the NYSACC conference, the coordinator, Cait Darfler, had selected two. She had been enthusiastic about Ben Altman and Stephen Henhawk speaking about Cultural Respect Easements with Cayuga (Gayogohó:nǫ), and Planner West, who had changed his topic from problems with solar farm sitings to Danby Smart Growth strategies combining conservation and development. Katie Hallas was going to look to the National Farmland Trust for someone to speak on solar siting. Keokosky explained that these were just 10 minute talks with the intent of introducing the topic and then those in the audience who were interested could follow up with the speaker. (Agenda addition on bears) – Owens Owens was writing an article to get the Danby audience interested in nature and what the CAC was doing, and she had decided to talk about the Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 4 of 6 increase in the bear population in the town’s rural areas, made all the more dramatic because of rumors that someone was planning to shoot a favorite bear in the neighborhood. She expanded this by researching advice for living with bears. Group gave her suggestions to connect to Danby/South Hill Facebook, or to coordinate with Pamela Goddard of the Community Council. She was interested in finding someone to give a talk. and a weekend day was suggested as the best way to get families to come. Corbit told her to connect with Janice Adelman, Town Clerk, who is most knowledgeable about the website, about getting her article onto the CAC webpage. 6. Update on Town Board’s review of Temporary Easement Tax Abatement– Gagnon Discussion on new developments in Tax Abatement: Gagnon said that the town lawyer had corrected their expectations that there was flexibility in crafting the local law implementing the State enabling legislation. Short (15 year) easements had been in the enabling legislation and now Gagnon said that the Lawyer had advised that the local law being written was required to track the enabling legislation, so that the option to alter it that the subcommittee originally thought was there, turned out not to be. Zisk noted that our options are either to start again from scratch or go with the plan. He foresaw people suing the town if they were refused short temporary easements. West noted that there was no inherent right to an easement and that they were totally at town discretion, so it would be difficult to sue. The determining factor is does the benefit to the community outweigh the cost of the loss in taxes. A policy has to be made justifying this and CAC needs to put the policy upfront to explain its criteria. The group discussed how this would work, and decided to go along with policy control of the choice of whether or not to accept short temporary easements. The conclusion was that we can live with it but we are not happy. Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 5 of 6 Hunter said that information that appears in the newsletter has to be scrutinized carefully, especially if it can raise hackles. Especially since misinformation has occurred other places. Gagnon moved that CAC send the current tax abatement legislation as drafted by the Town Attorney to the Town Board, including the caveat that the criteria for acceptance be based on policy weighing the administrative costs vs the conservation benefits of the easement. Zisk seconded the motion The decision was unanimous Remaining time 7. Continuing session on revisioning of CAC mission and message for CAC web page. While it was initially moved to table this discussion until next month, Owens requested that members bring a couple of things that they have struggled with to the next meeting – challenges already discovered, such as basic outreach. There is still a need to clarify what we do, or are not doing, and need, or want to do. Keokosky said that the small farmers she had talked to were interested in rural cooperatives and suggested encouraging rural industries to develop downtown Danby to encourage farming and keeping the environment rural surrounding it. These industries might be a nut refinery, a small bean packaging place, or even a USDA approved butcher kitchen. Small rural farming keeps Danby rural. Schaufler concurred and said that agroforestry might work well in Danby. Hunter applauded this and said that these are ways of encouraging another use of land in Danby other than through easements. She thought that CAC should become a resource place – the messaging should be about more than just easements. It should give options to many people with different ideas and interests... Conclusion was to continue with working with this and what should be on the website. Town of Danby Conservation Advisory Council Minutes Page 6 of 6 There was no Executive session Next Meeting is on July 11, 2023 at 7p.m. Adjournment at 8:55 pm _____________________________________________ Submitted by Elizabeth Keokosky (Secretary)