Conservation Commission - Regular Meeting

i have 7 30. it's crazy um we're missing harry and l anybody else so i think um both harry and l are oh yes um ella is i just can't remember yeah here he is so if mike you want to vote for harry Yes. And Gary, you can vote for Harry.

Gary for Harry. Okay, sounds good. I couldn't help it. I had to do it.

All right, so the first thing is the DRC, no one's coming? We're on our own?

They said they would try to be here, but...

So should we, like, we'll just wait?

If you want to just start on the whole business.

Yeah, we can give them some time. We have public comment we can do. Do we have anything to say?

Probably.

We would have been disappointed. Yeah.

Ray Breslin, 3 Cary Drive. I guess I don't have a lot to say except I appreciate what all you folks are doing. And I think we have a, what is it, a plan that strategic plan the strategic plan that apparently has been modified and I think we're all wondering why personally I think it is pretty lengthy and some things that I don't know if we should be talking about this but strategic plan I mean personally I think some things probably should be moved forward FAIRLY SOON RATHER THAN MAYBE NEXT YEAR, 2027. BUT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT AND LOOKED AT VERY CLOSELY BEFORE YOU MOVE FORWARD, I UNDERSTAND. BUT I AM WONDERING ABOUT THAT STRATEGIC PLAN AS IT SHOULD BE MOVED FORWARD. And I think the town manager has some great ideas and is trying to do a good thing. Hopefully the town council can get together with the town manager and move forward. That's about all I got to say.

Thanks.

Thank you.

So, in old business, I heard from the forester, which was spooky because it was the day I had it on my calendar to call him, and he emailed me. So, very good. So, I'm just going to read you the email. I hope you're doing well, enjoying the summer. I just want to check in and give you a quick update on the musquash project. I have begun work on the initial forest inventory on the property. I am working with Steve Fuller, who has been assisting me in collecting the forest inventory. He's actually a PhD wildlife biologist who used to work for the New Hampshire Fish and Games Rare and Endangered Species Program. He was one of the people who designed the cottontail management work that was done in a musk wash. He does more consulting work now and I thought he would be a great asset to our team. He will be able to provide some nice feedback on the wildlife habitat management. My plan is to continue to collect the forestry inventory over the next month. Then I think it would be great to bring the Conservation Commission together for a walk and talk to explore some areas and discuss some goals and management options. I would then like to engage some additional stakeholders and interested parties. Matt Tarr and Greg Jordan from New Hampshire Extension may be someone from the Mountain Bike Club and others who would would recommend we speak to others resources on the property we should be on track for a plan to be delivered by year end i'll be in touch later this in the coming months to discuss setting up an initial meeting So I don't know if you guys remember, Matt Tarr was involved when we did the rabitat in the beginning. And he's kind of the one that said, whoa, look at all the birds. So things are progressing.

Yeah, sounds like he's jumping in. That's good.

And then the second thing I had is the recreation guide. I went back through invoices and things trying to find where we paid for that just to get the name of the company to contact them to see if they had a copy of it that we could resurrect and I couldn't find anything other than I believe that it was March of 2016 that it was completed because we had that on our agenda, and I had something regarding John Vogel from 2016 on that plan. And then I found the list of all the different places and the things that are allowed in it, which I know this was a page in that rec guide, but this actually says 2014. So, I don't know.

Do you have a way to go back to old minutes? Jay used to just do the Google search, or the minute search, and none of us probably say the minute is the same way we used to.

Well, I was going to ask finance if they could just maybe look in 2016, somewhere probably around March, on either side of March. because it would have been a big check, because wasn't it like 30 grand? It was a lot, yeah. Something like that. We may have paid it over time, too.

We might have, maybe in two installments.

Yeah, installments. But it still would have been a chunk of money, so.

And the goal is to try to find out who we paid that money to so we can ask them.

Right, if they still have a copy that we could resurrect. Right, right. Because without that on the website, the trail maps you can't get online. They're not there now. Right. And then I was happy I found this because at least we don't have to, like if we have to recreate it, at least I have this information, what's allowed at each.

So what did you say the difference was between the 2014 and 2016? 2016 was when she thinks we paint.

We made the final payment.

Oh. 14 is the date of her chart there, which, yeah, that would have been made up before they finished everything, because that's one of the things that says what's available.

Yeah, because where I got the 2016, the March 2016, was in the minutes to review the review outdoor recreation guide. Although it said plan, but I think because the other would be... Well, there was both, don't forget. Right, but we didn't call it recreation. We called it outdoor. It was different. It didn't use those words, recreation, outdoor. Outdoor recreation. The outdoor part wasn't included. It was recreation plan or something. And that was all the things that Stantec drew up for us. All the, they broke out each, you know, putting the parking in Muskwash, putting the dock, or whatever, or SCOBY, putting all the upgrades we envisioned. I have all that. That's easy. I have multiple copies of that. It's just, this was a digital product, so we didn't ever have a printed...

And I think John Vogel's role in it was simply to take the work product and integrate it into our town system.

I wasn't sure. It's just that was on the agenda. So I think maybe he spoke to it or something. So I'm going to see if maybe finance can't find some trace of that. Because I really hate the thought of having to recreate that whole thing. Oh, yeah. That was a lot of money.

And, apparently, two years. So, I mean, I can now go through my records, too, and see what I can dig out from that era.

That's ten years ago!

I know. I went through my paper files, I went through my digital files. I don't know why I don't have anything. Especially... Oh, you know what?

It could be in some of those banking. Well, I have, because I still have all the old cases.

From 2016?

Yes.

I've been wondering why I've been keeping them, but I still have them. Now you know. Well, yeah, because all we need to know is who was the check payable to. And then see if we can track them down if they're still alive. I don't think they were that old at the time.

Well, I'm thinking that the company is still alive. It's 4-14. You said possibly 14?

14 would have been when it started, I think, so in that space between 2014 and 2016. Who paid for what?

I was not paying attention, really.

The Outdoor Recreation Guide. But didn't Stantec do one of those? No, this was like a website master. But I think they might have used some of the Stantec information because it was happening at the same time.

I can remember sitting in that room upstairs going over all that stuff. I can't see the person's face.

Any old business anybody else has they want to bring up?

I don't know if you want to cut that reimbursement as an old or new business.

Well, if we already voted for it, it's just a matter of submitting it. Because I usually go back to my book and mention the date that we voted, just to see why. New business, I have strategic plan, but I'm just gonna, because I think it's gonna be a long one, I just am gonna do a little quickie. Got an email from Mike Byerly. He's still involved with Trailways, and he was commenting about Piper Rising, which is the trail that the mountain bikers made with all the jumps and the fancy things, and he mentioned that He said, there's no signs or blazes, and he wondered if that was intentional. I said, no, I just haven't done it. And he said that he would blaze that trail for us if we told him what color. So I challenge you to pick a color.

Based on the map, what's left?

Right? I came up with pink because it's off of a white trail. It's near a yellow trail, close to a purple and a red trail. Blue could... We could do blue, but...

I think we could reuse colors as long as it's not nearby.

Yeah, right, that's the trick.

That is impressive. See, we have a blue here, a blue here, and there's only one red, but it would be here. It would be too close to that red. Oh, no, there's a little red.

No seafoam?

I was trying to come up with what other colors could we... Turquoise? Turquoise.

Yeah. Fuchsia? Orange?

Fuchsia, right? That's pink.

Orange?

Orange. We've got two oranges.

Okay.

And some yellows. Two yellows.

Fuchsia's in the purple group, sort of.

Yeah, it's a pinky purple. Yeah. So I'm open to your wildest suggestions.

Pink's fine with me. Pink's fine.

Yeah, pink is good. Start a new trend. It's not going to be confused with red. And it's different.

Yeah. And it's bright enough, it won't be. It's not like putting brown on a brown tree.

Not a flaming pink, but a wimpy pink. Yeah.

Pepto pink. Yes. Yes. Oh, that was the color of my bedroom when I was a child. All right. Well, all right. Pink it is. And we're still... Sandy, you and her husband go on the trails and put in a spreadsheet things that need doing and keep track of that. So eventually I would like to plan a work day. I don't know how many of you remember that we did a work day where a lot of people got together and we went out and blazed the trails. and learned that don't use a stencil because you end up with paint all over you because you don't realize that stencil is wet paint. So we'll do it a little differently. So the strategic plan, well, do you want to do the, should we do the DRC?

Yeah, might as well.

All right, because that's kind of a necessary.

The plans are way down at the bottom.

Do you have a number, page name? Do you have a page number? Or you just know that?

They're pretty far down.

It's like, try page 40. There are 147 pages. No, I'm sorry, 140.

Yeah, that sounds better.

I've got the spinning wheel of death just trying to load it.

Yeah, it's 69 megs, I think.

Nice diagrams.

There's one page on it, one of the planned pages that has a summary table of impervious surface. That might be it right there. Before and after. I mean, to me, the thing that stands out about this is two things. Number one, there is no impact to the wetlands. I don't believe that it doesn't. The wetland scientist says there are no wetlands. There's no buffer, but it might be because there's no wetlands. But I thought I remembered there being some wetlands on this site. I don't know if it's just that it zoomed in, the plan has zoomed in so far, but it might be worth double-checking that. And then, given that there's no problem with buffer issues, the other thing was, it's just they added more impervious service. That's a lot. To their credit, they took out some vehicle parking lot and made it into... you know, rather than just adding. But it was, I can't remember the amount, but quite a bit.

Well, if they're not changing the building, why do they need so much more parking?

I'm sorry?

If they aren't changing the building, why do they need so much more parking?

They keep saying something about being more efficient and so on and so forth.

I think they're having trouble shuffling trailers around.

Oh, okay.

So, I mean, basically... this is what's been added. So these personnel parking here, that's pretty much new disturbance. This is where these parking people used to be. And now they've been turned into having more room for trailers. So, but, you know, it's just, there's no, that I can see no planning regulation or, you know, site plan regulation or anything in the zoning ordinance that, you know, is contravened here. And so, I sort of like the idea that they reduce the personnel parking. They did a very thorough job with the stormwater, and they put in a good stormwater plan, my usual. I was hoping they'd be here because I was going to ask them, you know, who is the face of the monthly report? You know, if the building inspector goes out and says, who did the last month's report? Can I see it, please? And then goes to the bottom to find a name, You know, can you find that guy? Is he really out there doing that? You know, it's the same problem we have with pretty much every site plan we've looked at, but to me it's a continuing concern that we've got these elaborate inspection regimes for all of the but it's not clear to me that, number one, that we have the staff to follow what they're doing, and number two, just do they do it? Because I don't think we have a way to know. I don't really. Sometimes the plan makes it a requirement to submit to engineering, the staff, the monthly report, and most of the time it doesn't. And I don't know if that's a change in the policy or it's just that particular engineering firm throws that in. So it's not consistent at all.

But even if it is required, who even knows to say something if they didn't get it?

Right, right.

So do we have any comments?

I would just say, ensure that there is no requirement to depict a wetland buffer. Clearly there's no wetland on there. They've got a symbol for that.

You said I didn't see anything on there.

No. So strategic plan. I don't know if you guys looked at it at home.

I did and I pretty have a lot of things to say. I have to say, I have to confess, I committed, I limited myself to things that were really relevant to what we have to do. I didn't go into finances or, you know, all that. But I noticed right away that they were just read that first they were just delete delete delete and i had to look up what a kpi is which is a key performance indicator performance indicator which is something i think that sean takes pretty seriously well that's how you track progress okay well metric yeah yeah yeah so by the time i got through through that i i was like really disturbed. And then when I read Sean's report, I said, oh, he said what he said. Personally, I don't know if this is an appropriate thing to say, but there are a lot of, there's a lot of movement to get rid of regulations, to get rid of certain aspects of our government, to turn New Hampshire into something that it wasn't before and shouldn't be now. And I think that the deletions are

prime example of that well I couldn't tell you what page this is but it's the the page it's in blue and it says growth land use housing an economic crop economic vitality and the what was put in there was translate the master plan into an actionable implementation framework. In other words, implement the master plan, delete. So we're going to just shelve the master plan that we paid all the money for and spent a year and a half working on, and we're just going to shelve it.

Oh, but we can have a heritage-informed design lookbook toolkit for applicable projects.

And then that that concern me because it it does impact us. It impacts everything.

One of the things that stood out to me is its It's a flow. You start with an objective. You come up with action items. You look for KPIs. And randomly, an action item would still be there, but the KPI was gone. Or the action item was gone and the KPI is still there. Well, what are you... performance indicator are you looking at if there's no action item in front of it?

Yeah, because it's any ability to evaluate or quantify progress was eliminated. And to me, my note I wrote, that ignores basic business management principles. And the two things I said, if you don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going. And that which gets measured gets done. Those are sayings we always...

i was thinking the same thing because to me that three things stood out it removed the connective tissue between efforts between boards and departments number one it removed accountability and it removed transparency so the only thing i can think of is the that the edits were made because the person doesn't want those three things because if you're held accountable and you You have to be transparent that you're held accountable. So if you eliminate those two things, then you can't be held accountable. And you can do whatever you want to do. Which is a real problem. And there was a number of edits. I know for a fact, when they were talking about the ERP system, the chart of accounts, the Department of Revenue was actively pushing all state agencies to fix their financial systems. And we're doing it in the Department of Education to all of the SAUs and districts. I'm trying to develop a system to do that because the chart of accounts is a very important piece of accounting and gap principles. And you'll fail audits left and right if you don't have the right chart of accounts. So why they don't want that is beyond me.

I think that Deb summed it up very well when she summarized by saying what he said. Meaning what the top manager said. I carefully reviewed the proposed edits. I carefully reviewed the town manager's comments and my recommendation would be that this commission fully support the position of the town manager.

Well, it intrigues me that this is a lot of changes And never is there any indication as to the thought pattern behind those changes. Why were we doing this? Everybody else is saying why we should put things back or why they should be a certain way. This came with no explanation. Just red marks.

Sean's trying to set up a timeline to create a mature organization is what I'm seeing here. And that's being ripped apart. for a reason that's baffling to me. Can't figure it out.

Is Combs the only one that wants to do this?

Maybe he volunteered. He's the one that wrote it. Are other councillors going to do the same thing or not?

If past experience is any indication, three will vote for these and two will vote against.

Two will pass.

pretty much as most things do why spend the money to develop these programs why put in the hours and effort if we're just gonna delete

Well, are there any other organizations in town that will speak up or will support this?

All committees and commissions and departments were asked to do the same thing.

Well, I think we should write a strong support of some kind.

Strongly and fully support the town manager's position.

And maybe you want to specifically mention things like the master plan.

And I would probably specifically mention that, well, I will suggest we categorically object I agree with David. I find it completely baffling. I find it extremely disappointing. And if I didn't know that other people had already looked at this, I would think it was a mistake that someone had inadvertently deleted part of the plan and possibly did not know that they had because there are no constructive edits. It is simply removal. This is not a red line edit. If someone had sent me this, I would think, Where are the edits? Just deleting a whole bunch of things doesn't really give me any constructive feedback. I find them nonsensical. Some of the deletions, there are deletions about us having public hikes. It doesn't make sense.

I remember that one, too.

I don't really understand it. And there was another silly one. And there's no rationale, and so I would be in favor of a... strongly worded objection to these deletions. I find them without the care and attention necessary for this significant project, and I find them completely baffling and disappointing, both as a commission member and just as a resident of this town. I am dumbfounded. that these are the edits that have been presented to what everyone has spent a significant amount of time and very careful attention preparing these remarks with a very thoughtful process, as David has mentioned, with just oversight and being able to track where we are in the process. And it has just been just completely gutted. And I don't understand the reasoning for it. and none was provided.

I think one area that I'm particularly worried about is if this moves forward with these edits is retention of highly valued town employees and council members, committee members. Because Sean was talking about actively fixing retention problems and also finding single point of failures to look for retraining someone to back up that person. It's a huge problem that we have in the state as well. 60% of the people in the state are eligible to retire. 60%. So that means they're either 65 or they have their 20 years in the state. So picture that, and that's all that tribal knowledge. It's all of the connections those people have figured out how to get things done. So that's a real concern. I mean, if I was a town employee, I would be questioning, sorry, Mike, how would I work under this type of a structure and be effective?

Yeah, it invalidates everyone who works or volunteers here.

And there are a lot of volunteers. Yep.

Should we all go to town meeting on Monday or Zoom?

Oh, yes, please. Although, bring a seat cushion and maybe a pillow because it's going to be a long one.

It's not a public hearing, right?

Right, which is why we need to do the comments ahead of time is we will not be allowed to speak at that time that this is being delivered, but we can do public comment in the beginning and the end. Gee, I wonder why. Right?

Would it be a good idea between now and Monday to... formalize a paragraph or whatever we want to do to express our position on this. And I think we could vote now to delegate to somebody the ability to do that. But what I want to do is make sure that we speak as a commission. So here I am, I'm representing the Conservation Commission. you know, then the rest of us can troop up and say, you know, I'm representing myself and here's my thoughts. But I think it'd be important to have somebody. So I think we just designate somebody to do that.

And then, well, and then tell me, like, I don't mind doing it. Just tell me the key points that we want to put in that.

As I was listening to Susan's eloquent, literally description of this situation, that she might be ideal to put something together for us.

We should send Susan our key points.

Willing to do that?

Do you want me to, I assume you just want me to write it, and then Marge, you would present it, or what are we thinking?

Well, I think we... I think I just need to email it in ahead of time, which ahead of Monday. So we got to do it like.

By Friday, would that be sufficient?

I think so, as long as.

Now there is a, on the town council agenda, each agenda item has the ability to submit a public comment. So that's your link to get in. Okay.

And is that then read or if it's, is it once you put a comment in,

Who sees it? Well, I can't say for sure. Mike, can you give us any insight on that?

Because I had no idea this was going on until I saw the emails. As a citizen, I had no idea this was going on.

I think all this information came to me from Tierston.

Okay. Right.

So that's where I would return it.

Yeah.

But who said we should all get up and speak individually? How long will they allow public comment? Is that even an option?

Oh, it's gone for hours before.

I mean, theoretically, I think you're limited to... Is it five minutes or three minutes?

Well, they may change it to three minutes because they are expecting volumes of... Yeah, right.

Ray thinks it's three minutes already. Is that correct, Ray?

Yeah, I mean, it can be five, but I think they're going to limit it to three. Yeah, I would know.

Which is fine. I mean, you could say what you need to say in three minutes.

It's public comment, and then they have their vote, and then more public comment. So that's when you say, well, that's a stupid vote, or that's a great vote, or whatever.

You can say whatever you want, yeah. There's no opportunity for a public hearing. So what you're saying is at the beginning of the meeting when you have public comment, that's when we have to make the case for this we have to say you know i noticed that you know this is on the agenda tonight i'd like to say thus and so because we won't get a chance to do it when it comes up unless the council votes internally that they would like to allow some public comment but no giving margins assessment of that situation it's unlikely right because they were all set to vote on this

last time until um counselor privilege yeah was it was invoked to delay it for another meeting so they had no intention of hearing public comment yeah right at all uh nor do they probably one day yeah well i can i can certainly try to draw something you want me to send you my notes that i And you can, just the comments that were said, or actually you can probably watch the video so you can see it.

Yes, if there's a way that I could watch the video, that would be super helpful.

Yeah, go to the Londonderry Town Government YouTube page, and you can just watch the whole video.

Okay.

Perfect. That didn't take as long as I thought. Well. So any other interesting things happening? In which world? Well, anything outdoors, I guess. So I guess all we have is minutes.

Amen.

If nobody has anything, I'd move to accept the minutes of June 23rd as presented.

Second.

Okay, motion by Bob, second by Mike. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Susan abstains. Motion passes. Minutes are approved.

That's it?

That's all, folks.

I'll move. We adjourn then.

I'll second that.

Motion by Jean, second by Mike. All in favor? Aye. Meeting adjourned.