Open Space & Recreation Committee - Regular Meeting

Call to order this May 20th meeting of the Open Space and Recreation Committee. We'll begin with a roll call. Travis? I'm here. Stephen? Here. Shannon?

Here.

Anne-Marie? Absent. Trevor? Absent. And Scott Hall, our newly appointed Trails Committee representative. seems to be absent at the moment. Of course, Dave is here, so we have a quorum. One of the things I wanted to do for this meeting tonight was get to know our new Trails Committee representative. If for any reason he's unable to join us by the time we're done with our meeting tonight, we'll just have to defer that to the next meeting. I hadn't heard anything from Scott one way or the other, but anyway, so I will for the moment at least put off that agenda item just in case he possibly does join us. And the only other, well, maybe I'll take them in reverse order. The last agenda item was to review the meeting minutes that Shannon distributed today. Any comments, any motions?

I was not on that meeting, I'm pretty sure. And I wasn't listed as present or absent. I don't know if that's a big deal, Shannon.

You were not there?

I wasn't there. And you didn't list me as present, but you also didn't list me as absent. So I don't know if that matters. You can just let it go if you want.

No, I can take it out. I can list you as absent.

Yeah.

I don't know how official we have to be.

Yeah. All I can say is...

The rest look good.

For minutes that I do, I generally remember to list all the committee members who are absent just for the sake of completeness.

The other ones are listed.

Yeah. And I had... I read through them and I didn't say anything that leaped out at me as needing to be amended. No, it looked good.

Can we vote to approve the minutes pending the update, or should we just wait until the next meeting?

The usual procedure would be to vote to approve the minutes as drafted with the amendments that we discussed.

All right. So I will make a motion to approve the minutes of March 18th, 2026. with the additions of the changes that we had agreed upon, which is adding Travis as absent. Second.

Moved and seconded. Any discussion of the motion? Hearing none. Travis?

Yes.

Stephen? Yes. Shannon?

Yes.

And Dave votes yes. Motion carried unanimously. The minutes are approved. with the corrections noted. And then the other agenda item is to review our list of action items. And I will confess that I didn't do what I was hoping to be able to do prior to the meeting. My thought was I wanted to look through the action items and look at everything that's been done from the beginning. Shannon conveniently distributed the action item progress report for 2025. I wanted to also look back to see what actions, what was reported for previous years, but since I managed not to make time to do that, the purpose of looking through this was basically to see, is there anything we might want to change on the action item list? Any any action items that we perhaps might want to remove or more likely want to just modify the description of the action item.

Sorry, Dave. You're referring to the action items for the open space and rec committee, or are you referring to all of them?

No, I'm thinking about the entire list.

All right.

keeping in mind, which just I was reminded yesterday or I think yesterday that pretty soon, and I haven't really dug into the exact scheduling requirements, but pretty soon we are due to be updating the entire open space and recreation plan. And we haven't yet begun making arrangements for that or even determining whether that OSRP update will be done by this committee. or another committee formed for the purpose of updating it, that really doesn't strike me as being... Certainly not efficient. You wouldn't necessarily want to make a whole new committee for.

No.

But yeah, with our new town planner, I want to be working with him to begin thinking about... how we want to go about updating the open space rec plan. If memory serves, we're required to update it every seven years. Although I have this vague recollection that may have changed a bit, but in any case.

So these are the action items for the open space and recreation plan, OSRP. Yeah. I did see that our master plan was just updated. Yes. How does the OSRP fit in with the master plan? Or maybe that's way too long of a question.

That is sort of an interesting question. And I think it ties in with any near future plans we are going to have regarding updating the OSRP. They're two separate plans.

Right.

And the OSRP has, it's something that we are required to keep current and to have it approved by the state, which I think it makes us eligible for certain grants. So having an up-to-date OSRP is important. As contrasted with the master plan, which first of all has no update schedule defined by state law, there is little, if anything, nothing that I know of in the way of state grants or other things from the state that require us to have an up-to-date master plan. So there are two different things with two different purposes, but included in the master plan is a section on open space and recreation. And part of the master plan That section of the master plan was derived from or copied from our OSRP. And to the extent that the open space and recreation section of the master plan was updated more recently than our current open space and rec plan, one would probably expect to take that master plan into account when we do an OSRP update. That's about the extent to which I've thought about it so far. I think it would be silly to just go through a massive update of the open space and rec plan without factoring in the work that was put into the master plan and basically taking that, the existing OSRP plus what we did with the master plan and using that as a basis for updating the OSRP. Last time when we updated the OSRP that we're looking at now, we spent some time with, I think we hired some consultants and they did some community surveys and whole bunch of other stuff that i am not sure we need to do that much work to to once again update the osrp so i'm i'm really unsure about that and and i think you know the the the planning department of the town town planner in particular you know you kind of lay headed up the uh the work of updating the OSRP last time around. So, in fact, the planner just reached out to me yesterday asking about, you know, what we've already decided or what we've already got in motion to do that update. It is, as I recall, one of the action items is to update the OSRP on that seven-year time frame. But beyond that, no, obviously, none of us have put any time into thinking about how to proceed with that. But that will become more important at some point. And it got me to wondering too, thinking about the fact that we're going to be doing an update within the next year or two, got me thinking, questioning whether there's anything in the current action plan, any of the action items in the entire plan, whether there's anything there that really needs to be modified or revised at this point. Because we're close enough, I think, to an update of the OSRP that included in that update will be John Gierkemaier, generation of a new a new list of action items based on what we already have so it may be that we really unless something unless anybody has any specific thoughts specific thoughts about. John Gierkemaier, Changes that we ought to be making to our current action plan. probably, probably we can leave it, leave well enough alone. We can, we continue to monitor the progress and yeah, well, we'll, yeah. I'm kind of rambling on here. Sorry.

Yeah. So I, I might suggest some changes to some of the phrasing in the, the action items list, but I'm not sure that has, if we're going to update the overall plan, then maybe it's like, it's not a big deal now, but there's some language like, okay, so something that I see is conservation land or conservation restrictions are often encroached upon by neighbors. And in the open space and rec plan, it mentions working with town council, blah, blah, blah, to protect conservation land. And I'm wondering if it would be stronger if we said, land under the control of the concom or land that has a conservation restriction so those are the things that i might suggest would be like a stronger language around the terms we use for the land we're trying to protect but yeah the overall objectives i think are great like let's make sure people aren't encroaching so does that make sense dave

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to be a little bit clearer about what we really mean by the action item.

Yeah. A conservation restriction is a more legal term if we're involving town council on encroachment. So maybe it would help prevent neighbors from mowing wildlife corridors.

Yeah.

Which I did see, if I could, I noticed that there's a two- 0.1-A, amend the subdivision rules so that there's retention of open space for wildlife corridors. I think that's great, but if the neighbors are just going to move it, then not really a wildlife corridor. So that's the only recommendation I have. But that, I think, could be wrapped up in an overall modification to the plans.

Yeah, I think that's a good thing for us to remember. And I think there are probably a number of action items. Well, when we're preparing the next or the update of the OSRP, there will be some action items that we won't be including simply because it was something specific. It was done. But for those that we do, a clarity of what we mean by the action item, I think, could be very important. It would also make them a little bit easier for folks to understand, easier for those who are responsible for the action item to match that up with what they actually do. Yeah, I think kind of the whole action plan is up for rethinking when we're updating the OSRP. So I guess the short answer is, what I think I'm hearing and what I'm thinking is, we're at a point where it's probably more important for us to think ahead to how we might improve this action plan in the OSRP update, unless there's something that we think really deserves more or less an immediate change. Off the top of my head, I can't think of, probably I can't think of anything that really. I didn't see anything. Yeah.

I did, so I agree with all of that. I agree with. Working on it for the next update of the plan. I was a little bit surprised to see that, um. There were several sections like 2.3. Or action item 2.3 and 5.3, where it talks about, um. initiatives to help bring awareness to farmland and protecting farmland and protecting the viability of existing farms. And it just said no action. It just said no action had been completed at all. And I just thought that was a little concerning. I didn't know if there was anything that we could maybe do with that in the future. as a committee, but I would love to see that get worked on more. I mean, I would love to help with that as well.

Yes, I think I don't have the list in front of me, but I think pretty much anything to do with farmland, we had said this would be the responsibility of the Agricultural Commission. Yes. It would be great if we had an active Ag Commission.

Yeah.

Right now, our Ag Commission is kind of dormant. So... In the short term, I don't see much we could do with that, but I think in the longer term, we either manage to get the Ag Commission more active or we find other what, boards and committees or organizations that could take that on because, yeah, it's definitely something that seems to have been dropped. That was one of the reasons for establishing the Ag Commission. But unless we can find sufficient number of people to get an active Ag Commission, that's something we're going to want to rethink because who in town is going to be good to take care of that?

I mean, I know someone who's interested, who's a farmer. So I could have that conversation with him. I'd be happy to be on that commission because it's very important to me. And I think it very closely ties in with the land trust because... the Mass Land Trust Alliance, or it's either Alliance or Coalition, they have classes frequently about like how to preserve like agricultural preservation restrictions and different mechanisms of preserving farmland. So I've taken some of those classes and I'm very passionate about it. So maybe we can get that started up in the next year or so.

Yeah, I think that would be a good thing. To the extent that we as a committee can promote that, there's only so much we can do. I don't, it's probably not practical for this committee to take that responsibility on. I wouldn't expect that. I would like to see the Ag Commission become active again. So if you've got a, if you and you know someone who would be interested, then you might be able to find, let me just see if I, do I have, agricultural commission. They actually have four members listed on the agricultural commission.

Three vacancies.

Yeah.

Who's the, uh, there are three vacancies.

But they, uh, The last agricultural meeting. Oh, my goodness. The last Agricultural Commission meeting is 2021. Wow. So it's been a few years. Yeah, I think it would definitely be time to try to revive that.

I spoke to a member of the Holden family about the A Commission when he was not happy with the progress of the interest in pulling it together and moving it forward. And this was a while ago, a couple of years ago.

Yeah, it looks like Trevor's already on it.

Yep. Trevor, Paul, and Holden... I know Paul slightly. I don't know Paul Grady or... Shannon, is that Paul Grady that you wanted to... That's who said he was interested in it.

He was already on it.

Paul Grady, he's a good guy. He'd be very interested in participating in that with his farm.

At least it sounds like there are some people who might be interested in reviving the Ag Commission. Yeah, I'd be happy to see that. I've been a bit disappointed that the Ag Commission has been so quiet all these years.

I would like to see what the mission is of the Ag Commission. What is the intent?

to represent the Town of Grafton's agricultural community and interests, serve as facilitators for encouraging the pursuit of agriculture, promote agriculture-based economic opportunities, pursue initiatives appropriate to creating a sustainable agriculture community. Yeah, there's nothing in that list. I'm just reading off their website page. Nothing in that list that specifically talks to trying to encourage the preservation of farmland.

Yeah, and what Paul Grady, for example, at Holden Farms, they have a plan for themselves. They work independently within the town and what would the benefit of having a collective under the Agricultural Commission be for them and the town? That's why I'm just trying to get a mission. How do you bring those parties together working towards a single goal?

Well, I think it's a lot about promoting local farms, too. I mean, we don't really have a a network of local farms to like promote them, you know, like different community supported agriculture. CSA is just like letting people know about what's out there. Some people don't even know what farms we have in town. And then just being like a sounding board for each other and for other farmers that have issues, I think.

Yeah. The farmer's market would be a great avenue to pull them together if they're available, sell their wares, as well as promote the community of farming.

Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to send us down a rabbit hole on that, but I just wanted to bring that up.

Yeah, this is great.

No, I think that's, you know, I think it's reasonable to say that that falls within our mission as trying to trying to see that the open space and recreation plan action items are implemented. This discussion started out with some very agriculture related things. And as we said, back when we started this effort, we thought those fit well with the Agricultural Commission. We have an Agricultural Commission that is currently inactive. If we can identify, and you've mentioned a couple of people that we know who could be interested in this, they might want to think of sort of rewriting or repurposing the mission of agriculture. Maybe the reason the Ag Commission is inactive is because the folks who would... who would likely be on the Agriculture Commission, don't really see that there's any need for them to meet. And so maybe, I mean, way back when we first created the Ag Commission, there was different people involved and different interests at the time, but... Yeah, I would say talk to the people. If you can get two or three people sufficiently interested, they could very well come up with an improved mission for the Ag Commission. Something that they can actually get behind and want to do together.

Shannon, I met Paul Grady at the... what was the meeting we had? We had a meeting at Highfields every year at dinner for the Land Trust. I met Paul Grady at a Land Trust event. And that's when we got, it was quite a while back, but that was my first introduction to it. How much other farming related topics are covered by the Land Trust?

Well, we own several properties that are actively used as farms. Okay. So that's how the land trust is connected. What's that?

I was going to say, it's probably the Holden Farm. They farm a bunch of land in Grafton.

Yeah. Not just at that one location. I believe they own different... Yeah.

Okay. All right. They own different areas.

Yeah.

And I think it's my impression that the Holdens, Tyler and Trevor and whoever else works with them, they farm some land that... is not they don't own but they right they do the harvesting and whatever else on more land than just what they own right well we'll have to i'll talk to you know talk to people and maybe we can all spread the word and try to get people excited to be on it Yep, that's really the key is you need people who are sufficiently interested that they're willing to take an hour or two every month or whatever they decide is an appropriate, useful meeting schedule to get together and work on something that they all think needs to be done.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I think that's, if nothing else, that's a useful outcome of tonight's meeting.

Yes, it is. I like that.

Yeah. Good topic. I've noticed every year that the Ag Commission has been inactive, but I never have followed that thought up with the thought of, well, how do we reactivate it? Or is there anything I can do or... we can do or any committee that I'm on to reactivate it. But I think we've got some ideas here that would not have occurred to me thinking just by myself. Yeah.

It's pressing too. I mean, to me, it's pressing because we're losing farmland, uh, left and right to development. And you can't just create farmland, right? That soil takes thousands or millions of years to create that. So once it's scraped and built upon, you've lost that.

That's kind of like something I always keep in mind whenever we talk about land uses. We cannot create more land. We can't take more land in town. We have the land that we have, and it's more a question of how do we use it. Once farmland has been reused for some other purpose, it's not farmland anymore. It's most of the time that other purpose is housing. There's a definite need for housing. When we did the master plan, we tried to emphasize that there's a We need more housing. Better to add housing in a way that doesn't chew up all the land.

Yeah. We don't need more. We don't need more mansions in Grafton.

No, but that's what sells. That's what the market likes. But yeah, we have yet to embark upon the implementation of the master plan, much like what this committee is doing for the open space and rec plan. Before Fiona left, she was trying to start organizing a similar implementation committee for the master plan. And now I've just begun talking with our new town planner about following up on that, but Yeah, it's never enough to write a plan, check the box saying you have the plan and put the plan on the shelf and never use it. Never follow up. And that's why I proposed creating the committee that we're on right now.

Yeah. I'll drive some of that forward.

It's just that you have to depend upon other people to follow through on all the implementation activities.

One other thing, if we're ready to move on, on the action items, that is. I noticed Fisherville Pond, it's full of water chestnut. You can't paddle it anymore in the summer. I know Concom I know Leah's trying to get funding to treat it because apparently it's our responsibility as a town it's not a state waterway I'm from the Midwest so this is very odd for me that the state doesn't fund this stuff even though there's like a state boat launch anyway one thing to think about as we're moving forward with revising this plan is there anything we should do to like promote invasive species control so that we can continue to utilize open space, like Fisherville pond, you can't, you can't paddle it anymore. It's just completely unusable. And I know there's other parcels that are full of bittersweet. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, but that takes money to and funding and initiative to control those invasive species. So something to think about, like, is there anything we can do in this plan to further promote invasive species?

Yeah.

That's a long range conversation, but.

If I remember right, we included something along that line in the master plan.

Okay.

So I think, remember we said something about invasive species control.

There is a group in town and I'm going to have to send you an email because I had picked up paperwork to volunteer to help Is it the Weed Warriors? Sorry? Is it the Weed Warriors, maybe? Oh, it is the Weed Warriors, yes.

Yeah, that's a... Leah and Jan, the Con Con folks, they're promoting that. That's not, like... That's awesome, but Fisherville Pond is, like, beyond anything volunteers can do.

Yeah, right. But that's a great initiative. Oh, good. Travis, thank you for reminding me of that.

Yeah, and I've got to take a Friday off and join them since I'm on the dot com.

I want to start doing that myself.

Yeah. You should.

It's fun. Yeah.

Yeah. Not surprising you're doing it, Shannon.

Okay. Well, it appears to me that Scott Hall has joined the meeting. He's on mute. You on mute, Scott?

Oh, there we go. Sorry. Apologies. I said at 6.50, I was like, oh, I got to do this meeting in 10 minutes, and then I got totally distracted by something and forgot. So that's totally on me. Apologies, apologies.

No problem. I've had that happen once or twice to me. I know something's coming up, and then I get totally distracted, sometimes missed things completely by getting distracted like that. So no problem. I'm very happy that you're able to join us.

Yeah, I'm glad I caught you before you ended, at least just to say hi.

Well, we've actually been going on talking kind of longer than I thought we would about our list of action items in the open space and recreation plan. And we're starting to think about, well, how might we improve upon that list, add, remove from the list? And we kind of tied that in with, well, actually we are going to be officially updating them in open space and rec plan sometime in the next year or two. And I'm working with our new town planner and I will be working with them to try to schedule that. And we kind of assume probably our committee is going to be involved in that, but it remains to be seen. But anyway, so we've been talking about various topics related to the open space and rec plan action items and things that we might want to remember when we get around to beginning to update, do the update work. But anyway, I'd like to formally welcome Scott Hall to the Open Space and Recreation Committee as the representative from the Trails Committee. So, Scott, you can introduce yourself or say anything you want about yourself. Sure.

I'll start by saying I'm usually more punctual.

Listen a little bit about what the Trails Committee has been up to lately.

Yeah, just a quick introduction. I didn't really have anything prepared today. My intent was just to kind of sit and listen a bit. The Trails Committee was in a little bit of upheaval. Our chair had resigned. And given a few other personal matters and stuff related to the vote, we've been a little dormant over the last month. But now with the vote done and our chair position resettled, which I'm taking over and whatnot, we will get back into full swing. Our primary focus has been to start to pull together the trail audits and going on to the trails and everything. seeing what their conditions are and whether they all still exist, et cetera, et cetera, which I will share more completely as it pulls together a little bit more tightly maybe next month. Um, but that's, that's kind of what our focus is. Now let's see what else is on the top, top of mind. You guys may already know this, right? The bridges that, uh, Hasselman asset, um, we've been overseeing those. The last one is going to be completed here next month, um, by, by the Eagle scout. Um, so that's well in, in play. And, uh, those are the two major, those are the two major things.

Yeah, I think, I think I remember Dan mentioning that, uh, The Trails Committee was working on some sort of a trails inventory or something like that. I don't remember. It was something he thought the committee would be in a position to present to us. But then last I heard from him about that as well, it's actually not quite ready. So I don't know if that's an activity that...

Yeah, that's what I was referring to at the first thing. That's sort of the primary. And it's gone a little bit slower than I was expecting it to as we gear. That's where I was saying that now that the vote and everything else is behind us, I think a couple of us will be able to engage a little bit more and make a little more progress, which will make it a little bit more presentable and ready to have enough substance to make it worth a while of showing people who are interested like this committee.

Yeah.

But, you know, that's the gist of it. It's cataloging all the properties and getting out of the trails and seeing what the states of them are and seeing where signage is and seeing where there's hazards and, you know, ensuring whether the trails actually exist or if there's new ones and so on and so forth.

Yeah, I'm remembering that. At the time the Trails Committee was created, actually some of the discussion on the Slack board around the proposal to create a Trails Committee, there was some concern expressed by some people that it looked to them like the Trails Committee was duplicating the work that's already being done by like the Conservation Commission, the Land Trust, or taking over the job. There was some question about about who's doing what and why do we even need a Trails Committee. The reason the Trails Committee was proposed in the Open Space and Rec Plan was that essentially the two trail systems in town, one overseen by the Land Trust and one overseen by the Conservation Commission. Back when the OSRP was created six years ago when we put that together, there was a feeling that we... We could use a single organization that sort of has a complete view of the trail systems. The idea was land trusts would continue to do what they do. Conservation would continue to do what they do in managing trails on their land. But there's a, you know, there's like a missing pieces and we sort of bring it all together. And that's, that's, I think, what led up to the creation of the Trails Committee. You know, you have a sense of how that's, how things are working out in practice. We're not

Well, only a little bit. I mean, to give you some background also about me and Trails, I just joined in November. So I'm also a little bit new to this and not overly familiar with what it has attempted to do in the last year and a half of its existence, especially with Dan rolling off and Ben is going to leave us too. So from my vantage point, where the roles and responsibilities or future authority or whatnot of Trails is, I can't even say. I'm right now just mostly interested in having the committee be as knowledgeable as it can about what exists out there in the current state of things and to be able to take and leverage that information to coordinate with the other committees and sort of figure out where that right, where that right role is. But, you know, not doing it from a, you know, position of ignorance. So that's what the inventory that I've sort of sponsored is really meant to, meant to be as a starting point. And then where that has value, you know, in cross committee collaboration, you know, we'll, we'll see, I'm sure that there will be some, I just wouldn't want to speculate what that future looks like at the moment. Sounds good to me.

Any other questions or comments anybody on the committee has for Scott or any general discussion that we have on the topic?

Just to repeat what you had talked about, Dave, is the intent originally, I agree with you, when this committee was formed, it was to pull together land trust, which is a separate entity, and conservation, which is another entity that has ownership of trails and have a complete view of all the trails in town. Because you're going to have crossovers. And then we're talking about joining properties together. And if you're looking at what's land trust trails and what's conservation, how do those paths cross? How do they join up? And can you put a trails map together that includes everything in Grafton? Not looking at, oh, this is all the conservation trails together. and land trust is separate, a complete picture. That's what I would expect.

Yeah, and I just, again, just kind of coming into this, I haven't really seen that Trails has moved in that direction very much since its inception. So it's why, I mean, literally the inventory started with me just wanting to get more familiar with the inventory as town, and it just sort of expanded. And I wish it was a little farther along, but when it is, that'll be clean. And, you know, same thing. Where does that go? Okay, great. Now we know a lot about a couple of parcels that are nearby and this one would be great to join together. And you're finding me reticent to say, oh, well, we can do all of that because right now that's probably under the purview of one of the other committees. And I certainly don't want to be here going, starting to start taking, attempting to take responsibility away from any other committee until we're all sort of formed and, you know, sort of aligned. So again, that's why I'm just information gathering And once we have information and it's quality, then it's the whole reason I wanted to get onto this board. You know, then we can collectively go, hey, how does this information best get leveraged and who should own what, even if that means somebody gives up something because it maybe is better here or whatnot. So those are all future conversations as far as I'm concerned. You know, maybe that comes around even in the fall or something like that once we have this inventory well in hand.

That's pretty consistent with what I remember. When we wrote up all the action items for the OSR feedback and a lot of that happened in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. We finally got the last details put together for state approval in 2021. But I'm the only one still around who was on the group that put that together. And for a fair amount of that time, I wasn't really the primary, just one of the committee members. But anyway, that's neither here nor there now. But the one thing I do remember from whoever it was that suggested that we have to include an action item that says form a trails committee was precisely that, to develop a complete picture of all the trails in town. And then with that complete picture, maybe there's more you can do following up on that. And that was all sort of assumed that you wouldn't step on the toes of conservation-owned land and GLT-owned land, but you'd bring the picture together and that might help do a few other things. So at least from what I remember, your Trails Committee is in the process of fulfilling that intent. Yep.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. So with, you know, me joining Trails in November, not only is that where I started at Trails, but it's also my first foray onto a town committee. So, you know, again, not to be overly repetitive, I'm still very much in sit back and learn mode rather than bull in a china shop mode and saw that the opportunity was to launch this project, which I have. And, you know, and then and then go from there.

Yeah. Well, excellent. Excellent. I'd say.

Yeah. Great start, Scott.

It's moving in the direction that we kind of thought it should move way back when we, when the idea was first plopped into the OSRP.

Yeah, and we've already got some great interest, I think, in the open seats on the committee now. So, you know, the full intent is that we will get a lot more momentum now over the summer and into the fall. And then, you know, oh, these guys are quality. But you've got to give me another four months or so to get there.

I know there's a lot of people in Grafton who love trails, love to walk the trails. Yeah. Not so easy necessarily to draw from that. that group of people, a few people who are actually interested in doing the committee work.

Yeah. Yeah. It seems like we have some volunteers. I'm not sure who they are, but I think there's a few that are going to go to the select board on the second to nominate in. So hopefully it'll be some good, you know, folks who want to actually contribute. So do it that way. If I may, just for a half a second, Shannon, we were exchanging some emails and then I just really got sidelined with some other things. But like, as I say, now that the vote is behind us, I'd love to happily reconnect as we were talking about sort of co-collaborating on some of these audits to support your obligation under GLT, under the conservation restrictions.

Yeah, it would be great. I also was out of town for a while, so I'm back now and ready to... Get into it again.

Okay. Yeah, very good. I'll swap an email and maybe we could even have an offline conversation just on that. So both of our purposes are served. David, what Shannon and I were talking about is because they have stewardship and responsibility under the conservation restrictions they hold. There's some overlap with the inventory work and basically the property survey work that we're trying to do. So why not, you know, leverage or co-join or see what they need that we could add on or somehow do that so it doesn't have to be done in duplicate. So that's what we're talking about.

Yes. I'm generally in favor of not doing duplicate work.

Me too.

If somebody's already doing it, why do I need to do the same thing over again? All right. Well, that sounds good. We usually meet on the third Wednesday of the month. Is that doable for you, Scott?

Yeah, yeah, entirely, entirely. Again, sorry. I'm making bad first impressions by being half an hour late.

We'd be looking at June 17th for our next meeting. And subject matter for that meeting, unless something else comes up, is maybe just Following up on any further thoughts we have on action items, I will see if I can't get a better idea by the time our next meeting comes around, better idea of what our schedule needs to be for launching the update of the OSRP and some sense of who needs to be involved, who will be involved, I suspect it would be this committee that would take the lead on that. But how much work? I think before you joined the meeting, Scott, I mentioned that when we developed the last OSRP update back in 2020, we'd actually started that work. We made an attempt to start that update all the way back in 2014 because the last one had been done in 2007. So we made an attempt to start the update in 2014. That died largely for reasons of people coming and going. We revived it in 2017 and sort of worked kind of slowly, but we finally got it done in got the update completed in 2020, submitted that to the state for their approval. They came back and said, well, you got a conditional approval, but you got to do this, this, and this, and this. So we worked through around the middle of 2021 to get it all done. Anyway, hopefully we can get this up and done more quickly. We can leverage the work we've been doing We can leverage the work that was done in the master plan, which is just approved last year. There was an open space and recreation part of that. So we'll leverage all that and maybe we can do this round of OSRP updates without a lot of work. Well, we'll see. Hopefully, I'll have to make a note to myself to follow up on that for our next meeting so we can better plan our future activities. So with that.

Stephen, can I just take two minutes, David, if you mind? Just a tangent. Stephen, we could talk about this offline, too. Do you know where or does anyone know where there's a playground at the end of Pepperbush Court over in High Point? I don't know if you're familiar with it. No. Yeah. So that property over there is still owned by the developer. It hasn't been conveyed to the town yet. And I don't know the backstory about why that is or when it's going to be. The playground equipment is in solid shape. I happened to go do the inventory of Hennessy and I discovered it. I didn't know it was there. but the land around it, not so nice. And I actually happened to talk to a couple of people who were in the neighborhood, one pushing his daughter in a cart. And I said, Hey, if that playground was brought back tonight, would you go in there? Oh yeah, we would love it. We would love it. It just seems like this golden opportunity. It's just sitting there neglected in this beautiful neighborhood with all these kids who would love to go play on it if it weren't so neglected. And that was the, one of these things in the back of my mind is we get to all of this going, Hey, maybe a wreck can help out, but, Technically, it's not Grafton's property. So just something in passing.

Yeah, there's a long story about that whole subdivision, but we are somewhere close to having the developer turn over the land to the town that was always intended to be turned over to the town, which would include that playground, as far as I know. I think... The last I knew what was holding up that transfer was the question of who was going to do what with that kind of rundown shack on Adams Road. And I'm not sure. I haven't heard anything lately about that. whether that was going to be resolved, the town was going to do something, the developer was going to do something or other. But once that is, they might be in a position to do that transfer, to have the town accept that land at our fall town meeting. Gotcha. It's my impression that it's somewhere close to being done. It was supposed to have been done a long time ago, but... Yeah. There's a lot...

Rec department would love to get involved if a playground, we already have equipment there. Yeah.

Again, I don't know what authority or reach you have, even though it's technically not our land, to be able to volunteer and help over the summer because it's just sitting there. The equipment is in excellent shape, but the land that it sits on is overgrown and a mess.

Thanks for bringing it up, Scott.

Sure. Once the town becomes the owner of that land at will be that much easier.

I think Adam would be Adam would be excited to get get over that.

Okay. Excellent.

Yeah, if memory serves, the intent was to transfer all of that land to the control of the Conservation Commission.

Yeah. Yeah, I would have expected that. Yeah, I forgot. As soon as you mentioned it, I remembered. I did know that, that the holdup was that now completely collapsed mini barn or whatever it is on the front. Just a pile of sticks at this point.

I recall, I think I must have been attending one of the Slack board meetings when there was some discussion about that. And I recall there being some uncertainty as to what that structure used to be. Was it a workshop? Was it a shed? I don't remember the details. I remember there was some considerable amount of uncertainty as well. What exactly did they used to do?

The next Superfund site.

Well, that's why it's important that that guy, I'm glad that that gentleman at that select board meeting brought it up. I was, I happened to be there as well. Because that's a really good point is that before you take it as the town, you want to make sure that there aren't any issues. It's an old blacksmith shop.

Yeah. So we can hope that they finally get that resolved so that the town can accept the open space, the town can accept the roads, because technically the roads are still private roads. Right.

Yep. And that can make some children happy. Yes.

The history of that subdivision goes back, I think, at least 25 years, if not more.

Wow.

And, yeah. I don't even know all the history. What I do know about it is pretty complex. But anyway, hopefully the town will be able to move forward on that. Okay. Okay. I can change its designation on the open space. I've already got it on the open space inventory as privately owned future subdivision open space, but it would, it would be nice to be able to say the town actually owns that.

Yeah. Standard process. Right. When they, when these developments are done to turn over the open space. Okay.

Okay. Awesome. Yeah.

So from us anyway, we'll continue to work the inventory. We'll get it in enough of a position where it'll make sense to actually show somebody so it doesn't look like it's a mess or incomplete or we don't know what we're doing. And after this meeting, I'll reach back out to you, Shannon, and we'll get re-coordinated.

Sounds good. Great. Yeah. Thanks for joining, Scott.

Thanks for your patience. Nice to meet you. You as well. Yep. And Travis over there who didn't say anything on the few moments I was here.

Nice to meet you.

Yes, I'm sure we'll have occasion to talk.

You missed a lively discussion. Yeah.

Well, let's see. We have now completed all the items on our agenda.

Yeah.

So unless somebody else has something that needs to be said, a motion to adjourn would be in order.

I'll make a motion to adjourn the meeting at 8.01. I'll second that.

All right. Moved and seconded that this meeting be adjourned. We'll take a roll call vote. Travis? Yes. Stephen? Yes. Scott? Yes. Shannon?

Yes.

And Dave votes yes. Motion carried unanimously. We are adjourned. Thank you for taking your time. Thank you very much.