Open Space & Recreation Committee - Regular Meeting

We call the meeting to order. And we'll begin with a roll call of the members. Travis. I'm here. And Stephen. Here. Anne-Marie.

Got a hand up. Yeah, here, I guess.

Can you hear me?

Yes. Yep.

I think you have to promote me. I'm not sure if I'm really in as a member.

You're in as an attendee right now.

I'm here anyway.

Okay. All right, so I have one Anne-Marie as an attendee and another Anne-Marie as a panelist.

I'm only here on one computer.

Zoom's got you twice, but as long as we can hear you. Okay, so... Where was I? Travis, Steven, Annemarie, Dave is here. I got a note from Shannon that she was not going to be able to join us. Trevor hasn't joined us for quite some time. And the only one I haven't heard from is Scott Hall. And I don't remember off the top of my head whether he had indicated that he'd be available for a July meeting. But in any case, we do have a quorum of the committee present, so we will proceed with our agenda. First item on the agenda, this being the first meeting after the start of the fiscal year, we are normally expected or required by the bylaws to reorganize ourselves. Dave Kuntz, And seeing as how we're not all present. Dave Kuntz, I think we did this last year we deferred that until we to us a later meeting where everybody was in attendance. Dave Kuntz, Would that be your wish this time to.

Dave Kuntz, Make sense Dave.

Dave Kuntz, Okay, well, without objection, I will defer that item to our. next meeting and we'll keep it on the agenda until we have a meeting that as many as possible are present for. So the next item on the agenda was an action item status update. Not much to say about that. We normally ask our lead agencies to report on their status at the end of the year. But two reasons I put it on the agenda, just to let you know. I got a very recently received status from the Historical Commission, which they had not provided me. This is their 2025 status report. It came in very late, but I have updated the action item status. I have not yet uploaded that to the webpage, but I plan to do that. So that's just a minor update to the 2025 action item status. And I created two reports that just hadn't occurred to me to create prior to now. But that is looking at each action item and just showing the status reports for each year in one place. Welcome, Scott.

So just a question, is that report available for us to see somewhere, or did we get that?

Yes. I do intend to put it up on the web page, but I did send out a meeting packet, which reminds me.

OK, sorry.

How many of you actually got the meeting packet that I sent out or the notice I sent out earlier this week? I sent it out to the town's official open space and rec committee mailing list. And I'm wondering whether that mailing list is up to date, which is why I ask. Did anybody, I think I sent it out like Monday or Tuesday. Did anybody get that?

I did, yes. Yeah, this is this dope proposal that was sent out on July 14th.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, I did receive it.

Did you get that in, Marie?

I'm on my personal computer, so I'd have to go over to my town one just to confirm, but if it went out, then I trust that it went out, and I apologize.

Okay, because we've had problems with those mailing lists in the past, this committee and the two other committees that I use. Scott, did you receive anything? Okay, there you go.

Sorry, I'm on mute. No, I did not get it. As a matter of fact, I didn't get notice of this meeting either, just happened to see it on my calendar. So I didn't get any emails from you. I'll double check my spam just to be 100% sure, but I get other things from the town, so I doubt it's there.

Yeah, I thought maybe there was a good chance that you, as a fairly recent addition to the committee, may not have been added to the committee mailing list. So I will follow up on that with the office. I had had problems sending email to those lists.

Dave, you had sent him, Scott was on the last email from you back in June.

Yeah. In the previous emails to this committee, I've been sending email to committee members individually. This time around, I thought I'd try the mailing list since I I found a workaround for the reason I wasn't able to send stuff to it. But yeah, I need to check to make sure that everybody's current email address is on that list.

I'm going to go grab my town iPad and just confirm and I'll be right back. But go ahead. I can still hear you.

Okay, great. Yes, I'm the Anyway, there's two new reports. One is sorted by action item and the other is sorted by the responsible committee. But in both of them, I thought it might be useful for each action item to see the progress on that action item from one year to the next, which might also be helpful as we evaluate the continuation of the action plan And as we move into the open space and rec plan update. Which is The next item on the agenda. So the actual item status updates. Now I wanted to report that to you guys has essentially for your information, make sure everybody's aware that we did. There is an update and again I'm going to get those posted up to the webpage so that it's easily available for the public to see. The meeting packet also is on the Agendas in Minutes portion of the webpage. So even if you didn't get an email, you can always refer back to the Agendas in Minutes. I've been doing this. I think this may be the first time I've constructed a meeting packet for the Open Space and Rec Committee, but I've been doing that for a couple of other committees. I thought it's probably a good idea to just have a permanently accessible record of everything we sent out to you. I find myself too often trying to dig through my emails, trying to find committee-related emails. Anyway, I'm rambling on here. So I think the major topic for discussion tonight is it's almost time to update the Open Space and Recreation Plan. And for that, I think I'll ask Christian to sort of introduce what he and his office have been doing about preparing for an OSFP update.

Yeah, thanks, Dave. And it's good to meet everyone who I have not met here yet. I joined the department in May and have gone through the notes that I was left with and just doing an inventory of our plans and saw that it's about time for the open space and recreation plan to be updated. The open space and recreation plan, if you're not familiar with that fully... It is a state regulated plan that once created and approved enables ability to apply for certain state grants, including the land and park grants, which are larger grants and open up many opportunities that the town may be interested in applying for. What I have done so far is I've identified that there have been funds set aside to update this plan already, so those funds are available specifically for this plan update. And I've looked back and was able to determine that CMRPC had done the previous two updates, so we'd be able to utilize them. again for this update, and they have provided me with a scope of services and cost proposal that would fit within our budget. The plan is set to expire in June of next year, so the timeline is a little tight. If there's some overlap, it's not the end of the world, and that's fairly common. So that timeline would work for us. And at this point, I can definitely answer any questions that the committee has. Dave, if you think it's beneficial, I can share some of the information from the cost proposal. But from here, with any additional input, I would be able to move forward with engaging with CMRPC. We go through the TA's office for that. But we could initiate the update process.

okay excuse me so reading through that proposal the proposal talks about working with the open space and recreation committee as the the local the local participation and there will be others as well but i think it's sort of the the open space and rec committee is being proposed as the local body that kind of works with CMRPC to put together a survey to engage in whatever outreach we can help with ultimately to work with CMRPC for them. They'll be doing the bulk of the writing of the plan, and we will be reviewing. They'll be asking us for input. We'll be reviewing what they produce and working with them to flesh it out and add detail and so on and so forth, ultimately culminating in an action plan, which presumably the action plan would be based on the action plan that we're currently working with, but updated, adding, changing, removing as need be. So what we did before, we didn't used to have an ongoing open space and rec committee like we do now. And when we were created primarily for the purpose of monitoring the implementation of the action plan, The existing open space and rec plan was, we had a similar committee, an open space and rec plan committee that worked with CMRPC to put it together. So I suppose an alternative, since our committee has a fairly specific mission of monitoring the implementation of the plan, You know, you could argue, well, maybe we need to put a different committee together, although this kind of seems to fit within, within the scope of what we would be capable of doing as a committee. I think we have on this committee, we have representation from all the relevant town bodies, similar to what we had on the committee that put the plan together. And I guess I'm generally not in favor of creating new committees if we have a committee that can do the work. But I think one of the first things I'd like to do is get your reaction from the other committee members. Is this something you think is appropriate for this committee to do? And would you like for this committee to be involved in this? Any comments or thoughts?

I think that sounds perfectly reasonable.

Yeah. Long story short, yeah. I think it'd be great if we were involved.

Yep. And if for no other reason, I could justify that by saying updating the plan is one of the action items. Although I think we assigned that action item for some reason that I don't remember to the recreation department as the lead agency on that. And it's, probably more appropriate to sign. Maybe it's more appropriate to assign planning through the director of planning and development as sort of the lead on that. But with this committee's assistance, I mean, I don't know. I don't suppose it really matters that much exactly how we describe it. But if everybody's, you know, everybody's comfortable at this point with moving forward with engaging CMRPC, first of all, and second of all, for this committee to be the local committee that CMRPC works with.

That makes sense, Dave, given that we're scouring through the plan already. It doesn't make any sense at all to bring another committee on board to drag it out longer than it needs to be.

Yep. Henry, your hand is up.

Yeah, just wondering the funding for this will come from where?

This was a capital request that had been requested previously that it was approved and is maintained to update this plan specifically.

Okay, so we already have this $25,000 in our capital budget?

Yes, yeah, yes.

Thanks.

Any other questions, comments, of course we can, as, as we move forward with this, we will be, we will probably have more questions and certainly we will continue our involvement with this, but yeah, that is, this is sort of what I primarily was looking for was whether this committee agreed that they should be the local committee involved with this. I'm not hearing any objections.

Yeah, I'm fine with that.

No, makes sense. Okay. So, Christian, is there anything else you need from us right at this moment?

No, I don't believe so. So, I'll provide updates once we move this forward and when the kickoff meeting and all that happens.

Yes, as I recall, the It's been a couple of days since I read through the proposal, but I think they envisioned the local committee meeting monthly.

Yeah, there's about 10 to 12 meetings.

Yeah, which is our usual meeting schedule anyway. We've occasionally skipped months when we didn't have much to do, but yeah, we do have a regular meeting schedule. Third Wednesday of the month.

And there's also outreach sessions involved in the scope of services to include other departments and community members to provide input as well.

Yes, certainly. It's not going to be just a few of us driving the whole plan or providing the whole plan. For every update that I've been involved with in any way whatsoever, we kind of start out with a community survey. At this time around, we have a more recent community survey and material to work with with a master plan update. Master plan includes... included a lot of open space and rec plan topics. I would expect CMRPC to be not only looking at the existing open space and rec plan, but also factoring in anything in the master plan that relates to it. Master plan will have a slightly more recent community survey for us to work with. As I recall from the last open space and rec plan, Actually, we did two community surveys. We did one in 2014, where we started an update and then just never followed through on it. But we did the community survey in 14, repeated the community survey in 17. The results were nearly identical, if I'm remembering correctly. And for the most part, that's to be expected. The community's desires and interests and concerns about open space and rec don't change that much from one year to the next. It's always good to try to get the best current reading we can on it.

Yeah, that's correct. And I know the attention is to, like you said, Dave, build off of the work from the master plan and also carry forward all the progress that's been made from the implementation of the previous plan with your inventory work. And of course, this committee's focus on implementing the action plan. So it'd be a good time to revisit those in an update with an update in mind. So carry forward whatever is determined, build off of that or reevaluate whatever is determined. But with this committee being the lead on that, I think it should be fairly seamless.

Okay, great. Any other discussion on the topic that anybody has? If not, let's see, the next agenda item would be to review the minutes of the previous meeting. Uh, but, uh, Shannon had another commitment for tonight, so she was unable to provide minutes for our review. No big deal. We'll let's carry that item forward to the next meeting, which unless something comes up that requires a change. Where is my August calendar? August 1st, 3rd, Wednesday of August is the 19th. So that will be our next meeting, unless circumstances dictate something different. So with that, if there is no other business, I think a motion to adjourn would be in order.

So moved.

Second. Moved and seconded that this meeting be adjourned. Ann Marie.

Holy, aye.

Travis. Aye. Scott. Aye. Stephen? Aye. And Dave Wozniak. Motion carried unanimously. We are adjourned. Thank you for taking the time on this midsummer's eve.