Committees - Regular Meeting

you beat out jim reed's son yeah my son will oh you're on the same team good morning morning mark um everybody see the minutes yes any corrections any changes i get a motion i accept the most except the minutes from last meeting second okay financial report um in the chase account we have 232 227 having spent um $7,858 on abstracts and other expenses and $1,300 on payroll. In the other account, the class account, we have $9,658,456 with an interest payment of $30,000. and a transport tax of 561 very generous for a combined total of the two accounts of 10 million 482 543 minus the encumbrance for the tedford acquisition So after that, we'll have a balance approximately, because we don't know the exact expenses yet, $7,957,543. And on the Tedford acquisition, we received the environmental impact statement, and it was fine. So we're good to go with that. And we received the survey certified to the town. And that was all fine. No encumbrances. There is a right of way that. There's a little extra piece and I'm not sure what why we have it, but it's there on the on the surface. So.

I have a question on the financials that the discrepancy that we saw last month ever get resolved.

The 20 audit right was the audit.

Did you want to speak to that? I'm drawing a blank right now.

You answered it. You were going to send it back to us and I'm totally spaced. Okay, I'm sorry.

I'll follow up with the ideas and then certainly you can answer. Thanks, Irina. In terms of expenses for the past month,

We had a $14,000 to DC tree for the work in nursery fields. We had a $2,400, $2,431 to the highway department for mowing. And then we had some legal expenses related to the Tedford acquisition. We're gonna, Move to a report. Must be me. Must be you. We've been looking at the building on Josephson property to check out its, and I'm sorry, Kate, I forgot to respond to your email. The email's just fogging and I can't pull it out. And then I was going to text everybody and then I'd forgotten. It's okay. Anyway, we have Robert Harper with us this morning who donated his time to evaluate the property. It was a glorious time. Chuck and Liz were there for most of the time and I was there for some of the time. Yes, exactly.

First of all, just to give myself a little credibility, I have been involved with historic preservation for almost 50 years. I was on the South Pole Historic Preservation Commission for eight years, and I'm currently the architectural advisor to the Greenport Village Historic Preservation Commission. And I also restore historic houses, including my own. So that's me. Ms. Hanson, I'm sorry, called me. I guess I have a reputation now on children and somebody who knows about old houses. And it was a simple question, is this house historic? So initially we went through together. And thank you both for coming also. And what I look for is structural things. The best place to look is in the basement and in the attic. And actually what I thought was this might be a house from the early turn of the century, 20th century, maybe a little bit older. And then Chuck Krause emailed or texted me something about the house that made everything a little bit more sense. So, first of all, what I'm seeing is when we went in the basement, when this and I went down there, I was seeing mortise and tenon joinery, which is intricate. It takes a lot of effort to do it. For those of you who don't know, a mortise is kind of a hole in the wood and a tenon fits into it. So all the structural beams down there were done with that. I couldn't tell from where I was because, well, you know your stuff. A padded mortise and tenon is the best joint you can have because it can't pull out. But I was looking at it this way. And if you've been in the basement, well, you were in the basement. Hard to see. It's full dimensional lumber, which means like a two by four is really two inches by four inches. I think the beams in the basement were 9 inches. They were really chunky. I also look for the type of wood. It's old growth wood, which means it was cut down when the tree was maybe 200 years old. It has beautiful straight grain. It's really, really strong and you can't get it anymore because all the trees have been cut down. I also like to look at something, I call it embodied energy. What it took, the materials to go into that house, just the sunshine and the water to grow the tree, the years of growth. cutting it down, milling it. All of that is embodied in that house. And as someone who's a preservationist, I hate to see embodied energy go to a dump, which is sometimes where it winds up. So, mortise and tenon joints, full-dimensional lumber. When we were up looking in the attic, we saw plaster and wax. which is an indication of age also, and good structure. The floorboards come and groove 10 inches. Wide boards, also indicative of age. The older the house, the more wood they have to choose from. So floorboards are beautiful. We had to pull up some carpet to get to it. The attic framing was done. They're called collar ties that go across that hold things from going like this. Really nice, heavy structure in the attic. There are new windows when I say new. probably from the 70s. Anything after World War II is new. The roof looked to be in very, very good condition. The plumbing, which we could see a little bit of from the basement, was copper and PEX, which is a plasticky kind of thing, which is fairly new. So I'm assuming the plumbing was updated at some point. There was a new electrical panel. And the siding, had somewhere. The picture from 1978 looks like the same sightings on the house, but it's certainly not original. The one thing that didn't fit when I was looking at it was the staircase. The staircase, have all of you been in the house? Yeah, okay. The staircase has a beautiful newel post at the end and turn balusters. Really, really fine staircase, which Well, to me is kind of the Victorian period, and that didn't fit with my initial assessment. I got this report. I don't know where you got it from the history center. Okay. This is great. I don't know if you can see it from where you are, but this is a picture of the house from that year was 1978. Looks exactly the same as it does today, which is a good sign because it means the house has weathered well over all of that time. But the thing in here says that the house is possibly or probably from 1870. That would coincide with the Victorian period. And when Liz asked me, is it historic? The simple answer is yes. I think it's a strong structure. I think it was really well built. As I said, it's got embodied energy. And the insight is from the 70s. Not my favorite era. Trying to forget it. It actually happened. But my recommendation would be that this building clearly can be saved. I don't think initially a lot of money would even need to go into it because there's nothing really structural. When you're restoring something, you always look at structural issues, what's going to degrade the house. So you want to kind of get it closed in or whatever. This doesn't need it. So no signs of leaks, right? There was nothing stained on the ceilings or any of that. The addition on the side is very 70s, but it looked also structurally sound. Nice fireplace in it. So I like it and I hope you do too. And I don't think it would cost a lot of money to get the place kind of up and running again. So if you have any questions about what I saw, yeah. I do.

So what's the difference between old and historic?

Excellent question. We explored it. It depends on who you ask and what agency you're looking at. If you go to the National Register of Historic Places, I'm working in Greenport right now with the National Register, and they have a couple of places from 1965 that they consider historic. Then there's the 100-year rule if it's over 100 years old. I think with cars, it's 50 years old, one of those types of things. The criteria that some people use is, was it associated with a famous person? Is it by an architect that's of some renown? Is it a place or a structure that's involved in some sort of history, like Gettysburg? I think locally, the criteria should really be partly age and partly does the structure contribute to the property? And I think that the design there, and by the way, it's an absolutely stunning property. I think it fits in with the overall ambiance of that area. So, My personal thing is if it's lived through history, then it's historic. And this house certainly has lived through history, been through an awful lot of stuff, the 1938 hurricane. So I would call it historic, but it's like one of those things like the word yacht. When does your dinghy become a yacht? I don't know. Or a mansion. How big is a mansion? But it's an excellent question. In my opinion, I think it's historic.

My other question is structural integrity.

Yeah, a big issue. While I'm not a structural engineer, what I could go by is the kind of timbers that it's constructed with. And as I said, old growth lumber, people always tell me, how could old wood be better than new wood? It is. Yeah, it is. The grain is tighter. It's insect resistant. It's straight grain. There's so many reasons why it's better. And these are timbers that are bigger than what they would use today. Because today, a two by four is one and a half by three, one and a half by three, three and two, of course. Thank you. I don't deal with new wood very much, as you can tell. Structurally, from what I can see, I usually look for a dip in the middle of the roof because there's no ridge beam in this. The roof rafters go like this, but it's got collar ties. There's no sagging whatsoever. Nice, straight. I look for things like bulging in the walls. I look for things where the structure meets the foundation. And everything that I could see looked really, really sad. It's very close to the ground. There's only about that much foundation that I could see. And sometimes with that, you get water infiltration coming up. But even the old shingles really didn't have much deterioration at the bottom where you would expect the end grain would suck up water. probably drains very well. So those are the things I could see and that I usually evaluate. If I were buying a house like that, those could be the structural issues. And I would give it an A plus for that. Yeah, very well built.

I wasn't in the basement. Is it a dirt basement? Do you remember if it's a dirt basement? It is. It is.

It's not much of a base.

So it's a half basement? I wouldn't even call it a half.

I wouldn't even call it a half.

It's just where the furnace would have been, or it is now. It's probably added newer to accommodate the furnace, the well pump,

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All of that is down there and it's, you know, it's not a very big space and the bulkhead doors are probably a newer thing. So, yeah, probably that was dug out at some point. Might have just been heated with a stove or whatever.

So I'm curious about if the utilities are down there.

Yeah. Oh, about water?

Water and moisture from the dirt floor.

Yeah, that's an excellent point.

I mean, you can put a, what do they call that? Slab.

Yeah, you can put a slab.

Which is not a lot of money.

You could put a barrier below that that will prevent what we call rising damp. Always a good idea, basements are always damp, that close to the water. The water table must be fairly close. But a 10 by 10, you've got 100 square feet of concrete that wouldn't, really be an issue. But again, I didn't see any kind of, you would see rust on some things if they're older. That's what I was curious. There was no rust. I didn't see any. Liz, can you? which is indicative it's a good home for spiders. I have a question.

Yeah, sure. Do you, not to put you on the spot, but a rough estimation on when the screened-in porch was added? Because I feel like that's not part of the original structure unless you think No, definitely. And also the fireplace. Was that part of the original structure and they just covered it in the 70s with that horrible brick and you think there's something magical underneath? Magic? That's a very, very good question. I'm the daughter of historic preservationists.

Oh, fantastic.

Okay, so the photograph from 1978 showed that that kind of leaned towards there. So it also screams 70s to me. When I was very young, 16 years old, I got my way through college with being a laborer for a brick mason. So the bricks that we use there, we call them used bricks, they were taken out of another building that was knocked down, they knock off the mortar. Because it's on the inside of that area, that I think was added probably in the 70s. But when we went up in the attic, Liz saw something that was very interesting, that maybe that where the chimney is now was actually on the other side of that wall.

Yeah, there was like a, it looked like they've used different timber. There was like a rectangular- It was like frames around the old chimney.

That's funny, because when I took my dad, I took him to see this, but I didn't think to reach out to Chuck for the keys, so he just saw the outside. He made a comment that he thought that the placement of the chimney was weird.

It looks like it got moved, and it was interesting, because it looks like they reused some timbers from inside, because they were like mated and stuff like that.

Yeah. You can also see it when you're in the attic. When you take plaster down, the lath, which is the wooden boards, you see white lines where the plaster would have touched it. And some of that was reused in the attic. We saw it up there. So I would think you were probably right that that fireplace was on the other side of that. When they did the extension, they moved the fireplace into there.

Or they reuse the bricks from the old chimney that they took down.

Exactly.

I have a roughly the same age house and it's internal. I had an internal chimney, actually two internal chimneys that would have accommodated wood stoves and cook stoves.

Yeah, that would have been, I'm assuming there was a...

It made a lot of sense because back in the day, that was the main source of probably cooking. Absolutely. That was their heat. That was everything.

So, yes, and that also coincides with where we think the front door was, which if you were coming in, I guess, from the side through that area. then the staircase would have been in front of you. And that makes perfect sense. And then the room around the corner probably had a fireplace, which that chimney would have connected to. So yeah, very astute observation. Any others? No. No? We want to thank you for your time. It's my pleasure. This is my thing. And anytime I can help to save another house, It's been a good day. If there's anything else you can, Liz has my contact information. You can certainly text me, email me.

Yeah, I think I connected everybody. Finally, via email. I think we're just all texting.

And I do have an historic house on Shelter Island on Spring Garden Avenue, 14 Spring Garden Avenue. So I am restoring that back to the period with the period furniture, lighting, and everything else. Wow. Good luck. Thank you.

Nice hobby.

I'm going to need it. That will be where I'm heading now. So thank you for your attention and for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to talk about this. And thank you.

Yeah, thank you so much for your time and your expertise.

Me too. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. Bye-bye.

The report? Yeah.

I want the history assessor's report with like the

um sailor from rhode island coming never got a name for the house captain captain dennis house and do we do we know much about yeah well he was a sailor he's supposed to be a very good one and a shipbuilder yeah yeah This comes from Duval.

Okay. Well, more good information for the future planning. On to Stuart, go ahead.

Well, I was just realizing, I don't know if someone knows this, but have we identified where the septic or cesspool system is? No, not yet. I guess that would be 1, I should have thought, although he, I don't know if you wouldn't necessarily the septic system is new. Oh, the subject is new. I'm asking because sometimes. In the 70s, they people updated, like. The lines, and they used orange Berg, which is problematic because that breaks down and tree roots get in there and that's a bigger problem.

that downstream down toward the water yeah we know where the well is right uh yeah the well we did locate your well yeah but that i think that's the reason why we thought i think the well's up by the garage yeah it was closer to the garage so that's why it gets up it's gotta get inside what's that it's like one would hope

While we're talking about that property, can, could maybe the guys go take a look down by the water? I mean, I don't want to go do a whole lot of stuff, but there's, I think there's an old canoe that's full of debris and stuff that's stuck in there. Okay. And I don't know what other other debris, you know, of note should be pulled out. But one day when the guys are... I'll do it this week.

I think that canoe's gone. Oh, really? Yeah.

I was there for a long time.

I was there maybe like a month ago. I didn't see it. It might have, yeah. I wasn't there. Was it in good shape? It was usable. I saw it this winter. It was filled with ice. It's been there for a long time.

But anyway, if they could just look, there's some other junk that's there. Say it was iron. Yeah. Okay. On to stewardship and property maintenance. Ken, Tim, Mark.

Mark, do you want to talk about, Mark and I met last week at Westnick. And Mark, do you want to?

Sure. I'll chime in. So my notes are, aside from previously existing or developing plans with Matt Daly to working restore the meadow by the parking area. But I think, you know, mugwort is the big problem all over everything there. I would like to take an experimental approach to addressing it in the larger meadow area that may not be a meadow ultimately, but it's the bigger area along Nostrand Parkway. And, you know, we've talked about using vinegar, we've talked about tarping, and I'd like to do sort of a sample plot of one sample plot of the other, and then a sample plot of the third, put up some signage explaining that this is a experimental, you know, treatments that we can use going forward based on what we learned. One of them will work. I mean, I, I think you could make any of them work, but you know, I think you might not need to do both. Um, tarping and vinegar. I think that's really the only permanent solution, shy of going in there with glyphosate and just blasting it down a few times. And we're not doing that. I don't know that digging it up is really a good option. I mean, there's been talk about harrowing and, you know, sort of scraping it away. In my opinion, opinion more than experience, I'd say, that's more likely to just break up these rhizomes and every single piece is going to be a new growth source. So that was the one idea. The mile a minute is only a problem because of what's going on in the woods. The patches that are existing in the preserve are very small, can be knocked back in, you know, an hour by somebody with a plants can be pulled I think that's totally manageable but it will be a perpetual problem as long as that seed bank exists in the woods and that'll just keep getting brought out by the birds or animals and and and by woods mark means the the two acres and across well well the neighbors one problem but that's private property but then adjacent

The preserve is seven acres, so the part that we're talking about restoring is the five acres, and there's that road that divides it from the two acres on the other side, which is all wooded and has a lot of junk growing in it, which we've known about for a while.

And, I mean, again, mile-a-minute is pretty easy to control. You just have to stay on top of it. But once you get things under control, it's not – like the mugwort where you know it'll just keep coming back from every little speck um but but once we have areas cleared and once you you have um these native plants native ground cover and shrubs you will the invasives will have a much harder time getting a foothold i mean if you look at um The Crab Creek Preserve, that meadow area there, I don't know what it ever was, but it's defending against mugwort and myelominut pretty well just because of, you know, there's nowhere for the stuff to land and take a foothold. There's other issues there, but, you know, not those, which are our main issues at West Neck. So, I mean, in my head, I'm envisioning like a, I don't know, 20 by 40 tarp in one area before we go whole hog. do the whole thing. And then another 20 by 40 tarp where we'll do vinegar and something else application. These things are going to have to be out there for a year, maybe two. They'll need to be sandbagged around the edge to keep them down so they don't go anywhere. But I mean, that's a proven way of dealing with this stuff. And I guess I'm looking for a yay or nay or go ahead or These tarps aren't that expensive. You can get a super heavy duty one for 150 bucks, but I think it would show that action is being taken. I know there's been talk about how it looks horrible when this stuff's growing and whatnot, and you wouldn't have to stop mowing to keep it looking nice. The mugwort doesn't care. It just keeps growing back. But yeah, You know, when you peel these things back in a year and a half, two years, whatever, and see that it's bare soil and, you know, we have a fresh, a clean slate, I think that would be a good thing for people to see. And with a little bit of signage, you can sort of explain it. You can even put, you know, like set it up as a demonstration experiment.

I love it. I love the three treatment trials and the educational signage. And not only would it show that things are being done, but it can also show people what they can do on their own property.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. There was mention of Sylvester Manor lending us some tarps that they had used on their fields in the past, but I spoke with Tracy McCarthy or texted with her, to be clear, and she said that she checked with the farm people and they don't have any tarps. I haven't had a chance to follow up with Ariel, who is no longer there. But, you know, she might know, oh, yeah, we put those in this place and nobody there would know about them. I'm not going to assume that they just don't want us to have them. So they're telling us, you know, that it doesn't make any sense. But who knows?

So I think some of the frustration is that we've been at this for a few years already, and we seem to keep shifting gears situationally. But, you know, people are wondering, what are we doing and when is it going to look nice?

So an educational trial here. would certainly address that like what are we doing well you know we've tried some things we're trying some different things now in a more structured manner and we can use these lessons in the rest of this preserve and going forward timeline i would say two years to eradicate the mugwort in a very small area right 100 by or whatever sure i mean if you wanted to go all in i'm confident that if we tarp to that whole area In two years, we would have no mugwort in there. I mean, but I don't know if anybody has the stomach to do that right now without sort of showing that that's going to work. I mean, I'm confident that, you know, you would have no problem getting rid of it that way. But, you know, it's a big commitment, big cost. It may be possible. better or sort of more palatable if we just do smaller sections and then once that's clear you just seed it heavily with a native grass mix some wildflowers and a few shrubs and you sort of like then you've got your foothold you move the tarp over and then bam and if people like hey let's just really get this done fine you know didn't we discuss cardboard at one point um we did um

Is that rejected eventually or?

Well, Mark, what are your feelings about cardboard?

I mean, cardboard can work, but it tends to break down. Also, like, it's going to let more water in. And, you know, the beauty of the solarization under these tarps is that it excludes everything that the plant needs. Gotcha, gotcha. You know, so as a weed suppression, cardboard's fantastic. But I don't know that it's, you know, once the weeds are there already, you know.

I have the same problem too. He does. I know this property was probably acquired maybe 5 years ago. Yeah. And if we just wait 2 years for this 110 by whatever it is. Then we're another 2 years down the line.

I think I think we have to really look at this. This is an experiment. It was always presented that way. We've never done anything like this with any of the properties. And I will admit that perhaps the original consultant may not have been as hands-on as I would have liked. I'm not quite sure why that happened. And maybe had some advice that was not entirely the best. But I think now we do have two people, Matt Daly and Annie Senesac, and now we have Mark. And I think we are headed in a better direction and it is going to take time. And again, also, I think we still should stick to our idea this September of taking that small section of meadow and planting that. And then at the same time, considering another section as a shrubland area. So it'll be a combination of actually moving forward with planting, but also destroying the mugwort and the rest of the areas.

So the tarp, this tarp, quote unquote, experiment, I presume it's been done elsewhere.

Yes.

And the result?

Well, Sylvester Manor did it.

Uh-huh. And? That worked.

Yeah.

Well, let's, why don't we do that? To a larger section. Do your other two experiments. But that is the easiest and least labor intensive, spraying it with the vinegar. I mean, I would just suggest a bigger area so that we can.

Yeah, I'm all for that. I just thought it would be, you know, keep it manageable, the labor and everything of putting just one tarp out. You know, it's a couple of people in an afternoon. I agree that the vinegar is, you know, you'll kill it, but you'll have to go back out over and over again.

And you have to reconnect.

And it's going to be a repeating procedure, spraying the vinegar.

So can we just make it a bigger area? I'm kind of anxious to.

Yeah, let's. Well, we all are.

I know, I know. I'm not faulting anybody.

Can the tar be covered like with chips?

Yeah, I don't see why not. Wait, cover what with chips?

The tarp.

If you put a tarp down and put chips on it.

So you don't have a blue tarp flapping around as opposed to just sand it.

We could get a nice green one to make it look. Well, okay, but still.

You'll have chips falling off. You'll have chips falling off. I mean, don't you put them down with stakes? That's what I do. You know, those little landscape pins.

They'll bulge, though, over time. You said the tarp's going to be there for like a year or two?

Yeah, I would assume two growing seasons.

You probably have to double it up, I would imagine.

And you double the tarp?

It will deteriorate when it's out in the elements.

Yeah, I mean, you know, there are... It's on the ground, though.

Yeah, it's a...

If it's a decent tarp, I mean, they last...

It's got a lot of moisture, you know, and it's going to be covered in snow and ice and...

Anyway, so I have to give my apologies. I have to go to another meeting right now that has just started. I may be able to circle back if you guys are still on here. I've got notes here. And as always, you can call me anytime. All right.

Thank you, Mark.

All right. Bye bye. Sorry. Thanks, Mark.

He said the Tim, he said the tarps weren't that expensive. So.

No, and again, and again, I spoken to Ariel about tarps a year ago, and she indicated they did have them and use them at Sylvester Manor. So again, we can reach out to Ariel in case she knows where they are, if they are still Sylvester Manor. And again, Matt, Matt was very confident about using the combination of spraying with vinegar and mowing. That combination for him has worked. So again, when Mark and I met, we decided, why don't we, and this is something we discussed several years ago, about even with Rusty Schmidt about using it as trying a couple of different things that we did talk about tarping at the time.

I'm not suggesting you exclude the other two and three. I'm just saying maybe the tarp business can be a larger area so that we can do we can do as big as we want to do. Now, this is the area next to the neighbor. Which area are we talking about?

So we'd be tarping on the nostril side. So if you're on the nostril and there's a whole section there that sort of comes down as a strip and it meets West neck. And then the area that we were talking about for planting this fall is if you're in the parking lot, if you're facing the parking lot to the right of the parking lot, there's a strip there. There's a pine tree sort of in the middle of the field. So from the pine tree to the road. So it's not that big an area that we're talking about planting.

Sort of where the house was?

Yes, correct. From the house, between the parking lot and the house. And then there's a pine tree there. So it's a I forget what the dimensions aren't met. When it when we originally proposes we have exact square footage actually of the area.

Okay. I'm curious the the horse farm. It was it was planted and plowed and then planted again. Do you do you know if they have any dealings with mugwort or what they're actually doing over there? Still about Hampshire farm. Yeah.

Oh, you're talking about, um, where they're going to plant the, uh, orchard.

Yes.

Yeah. I can inquire.

okay the other piece of this is timing and scheduling and coordination so we have ken here who has some comments i'm sure he's been very quiet um well i don't know who's going to do it well that's my first question that's my question i mean i don't want to sound like an anti-conservationist but this to me is for now frankly i mean it's to do this i mean i you look at

And we're trying, I mean, the idea of the CPF, right?

We're preserving land to help protect the water table, to protect the aquifer, to allow some open space. No other property do we do any of this on. None of them. And I feel like this has been going on for a very long time. You know, we go mow it, then we don't mow it, then we mow a piece of it, then we do something else. And now you have things in pieces and parcels, and now we're talking about laying down a 200 by 100 foot tarp in the middle of this place. it's it's gonna look terrible i understand what you're trying to do but like why can't we just continue to either rototill the whole place like you did for that whole section do the whole thing leave the locust trees leave the pine trees and you know rototill it and try to plant it i mean that's all they did at doc ryan's field they kept telling it planting it telling it under again i don't know what they had out there but doc ryan's field was full of all kinds of stuff before

I don't know, you know, if they had a mugwort problem that's down, you know, that we have at West Neck. But, I mean, look, I'm not on the board here. I'm just the guy that maintains it.

But I also feel like, you know, from a maintenance standpoint, we are acquiring properties in this town, which is a great thing. And we are providing, keeping open space. But it's going to become maintenance prohibitive eventually. doing these things. Sending guys out on a mower to mow a couple of trails or to mow the whole place and have it done, have it look nice and clean up around the trees and allow the trees that are there to flourish and that kind of stuff, that's not a big deal because it's part of the set. And I understand, yes, the committee reimburses the highway department area because I was involved with it I was involved with the tearing down of the house when I was on the crew and the game plan for the place and cleaning it all up and now I just feel like he goes through and I'm also the guy frankly I'm telling you people are the people that call me and call my office and say what's going on

I mean, it's totally up to you, but I don't know that I've got the manpower to be able to help. I've always been willing to help.

You guys know that. I do that for every agency in this community, but this one is a sore spot for me. like when it gets, when it gets mowed, if we were able to mow and maintain that whole place on regularity, it would, I think it would knock some of the invasives out. I don't know that, I don't know all the biology of it or the ecology of it, but I do know that if you continue to knock stuff down, the good stuff will eventually take hold more so than the bad stuff. And, you know, and it would look nice and people would be able to walk through it if they wanted to, or, you know, whatever, or, you know, I mean, honestly, West Neck Preserve, deal about, you know, Crab Creek, sorry, Crab Creek, you know, for years, all we did was mow that field.

Right.

Before, like, even when the, you know, when the Brandensteins owned, you know, their other hat, like, we, all we ever did was mow it. And he's telling you right now, aside from a few things that are in there that he says, you know, shouldn't be, it works, you know, and we mow paths through there now for people to walk and stuff, but And we do periodically knock the whole thing down and then it comes back. So I don't know. I mean, it's just a thought.

I think though, Ken, because you had mentioned the idea of sort of making it more like a park where you'd mow the whole thing. I mean, that's going to take a lot of work on your part also to keep that mode that people in a way that people want to walk it the whole park. And the other problem with that is you do have some good stuff growing in there. There's a whole bunch of areas of goldenrod, which actually has a very value and ecological value. So I think I understand your frustration. I myself share it to a degree in the sense that but I think We're trying to do something that's never been done on these properties. And for years, these properties were ignored. And I'm not talking about Wessex because it's a relatively new one. But for years with the CPF, there was no maintenance done on any of these properties. And I remember when Dan Fokine and I started Vine Busters and we went into Crab Creek and we started cleaning out vines. That was like the first time in a while that anything had been done. So...

i think maybe if the work is shared with other contractors or again there are a bunch of people in silver beach who have always expressed interest in volunteering and helping to some degree part of the problem with the volunteers though is they need exact instructions and and we have gone all over the place not not inconsiderate but in not not willy-nilly Because some things just haven't worked. We realized after a while that some of the initial plans from Nelson Pope were too grandiose for what we could accomplish. And actually, you're talking about the area with the Goldenrod, which I think is like to the... I don't know, northeast of where the house was, you know, as you're coming along. Okay.

Correct.

So part of the problem, part of the frustration with this mugwort area, it's the area right by the road that everybody sees.

No, I understand that.

And if we were dealing with mugwort at the back, nobody would even know we were doing it. They wouldn't see tarps laying out on the side of the road.

I had always presumed we would hire contractors to do any of this. I mean, Ken has enough to do with just the mowing, I think, but I thought all of these other endeavors were contract or volunteers. And 1 of the thoughts I had is in the spring alliance club has this on mass that's clean up the roads. And I thought we might be able to get a designated group. To go to these preserves, maybe this 1 preserve and direct them to do whatever you need them to do.

but that's a one shot one day. And it's, you know, we were talking before about the, If we were going to use the vinegar in the mowing method, you have to mow it every three weeks, and five minutes after you mow it, you have to spray it. And you probably have to go back and spray it again, and then you're going to mow it, and then you're going to spray it, and then you're going to spray it, then you're going to mow it. That has to happen like that. If you miss a week, you're off assuming that that's the correct time.

You're talking about mowing now.

Well, no, we were at one point how we were talking about mowing and vinegar specifically, because the vinegar will kill the weeds, but not it doesn't kill the roots. It just kills the topical. And by keeping the mowing up, you allow some stuff to grow, but don't allow the mugwort to grow.

So maybe you kind of, if Ken doesn't have the time, hire a local contractor just to do that mowing. You're not doing the whole area, right? You're just doing that.

Mowing is easy. I mean, my guys, we can mow.

Can you do it every two weeks?

I can do it every three weeks, every one day. But I want to mow the whole place. Why don't you just try mowing it? I mean, we've tried everything else, every other crazy idea that we've had. Why don't we just mow the whole place down Let it keep coming back to, you know, once every month if we have to. Let it see what happens.

Well, there are areas that if we did let them grow are in good native, I'll use the word meadow. I don't know if that's the correct term. But, you know, it's not unattractive and it does have colorful, appropriate, insect pollinator attracting etc etc so you know maybe we can maybe we don't have to clear the whole thing but

I think it seems like Ken's frustration is stemming from the amount of time it is taking to clear it up. And I get it. It's like, yeah.

Well, and also the complaints that we don't necessarily get. They're not calling us. They're calling him. And I do call Tim once in a while.

Tell him to call.

to me so i i understand the i like you're kind of like really now we're trying this like doing this trial and that's gonna like maybe take another two years like i get it like that's and it's right on the road that's the problem why don't you put a sign that advises people there's a mugwort we've been dealing with for several years and for the next year this is our approach and after that we're hoping that we can put a meadow in In other words, they can also, whether you use tarps or you mow it every week, you want to mow the whole thing, is that it?

Yeah.

The whole thing. It's not just this pad.

I mean, whatever.

Knock it down. It would look amazing. People would love it. It's a huge piece on a corner of two of the most popular roads on the island. And it looks like you might as well have the old guy living there in a broken-down house.

Okay, so can I just ask a question here? So do people object to the goldenrod?

keeping the gold around? No, do they object to the gold? No, people object to what looks like a weedy field.

I'm going to tell you that 90% of the people out there, you've got people that are going to, Kate is here, she's a scientist, there are people, nobody knows what a meadow is out there. They see that open field, they're not going to know whether it is an invasive or not in there. That's a big open meadow. It's a big open field. I'm not saying never let it grow, but let it grow once a month and then knock it down again.

If you do that, Ken, you're going to lose. The goldenrod's not going to bloom. It's not going to have any value. I think there needs to be education here because if we're not going to have a meadow, if we're just going to decide to keep mowing it every three weeks and make a five-acre park, I have no interest in that at all. To me, it doesn't work for me because you're essentially removing The one element, we have a real problem with losing insects, particularly native bees. So if you're removing goldenrod, which is an essential food for bees in the late summer and early fall, you're taking away the value of that preserve right now.

And if people, and if people. Just like we mow around the butterfly bushes in, you know, on the other, on the butterfly field off of 114.

If people find meadows unsightly, then we need to educate people about what a meadow is. I mean, the meadow in Mishamek is one of the best things about Mishamek. And it has a great value and people love to go through that open field. And in fact, Mishamek has spent many years recently, the last 10 or more years, expanding that meadow.

So I just think the difference is that the current state of this area does look something like a long time to get to that point.

I understand that Kate, but what are you proposing then?

I don't know. I'm just hearing everyone's concerns, right? So, okay. So Mark has said his concern with, with, the plowing or rototilling would just break up the rhizomes, right? Okay, so what if it was... Is there a way to just till it all out? Hold on, let me finish my thought.

It's a little loud.

and we then plant native stuff, which I know when you're trying to plant a meadow, you try to let it establish, and then you mow it at the end of the season, like November, and then we check on how it's going in the springtime. Yeah, maybe do you then, you know, mow it again in the springtime, try to knock down the invasives and then the native stuff takes off. I'm a marine biologist. I don't, I'm not a native of that specialist. So this is where we need to work with each other. But like, I think hearing Ken's frustrations are valid. And I think we need to take that into consideration.

No, no, no. I'm not disavowing Ken's concerns and anybody else's concerns about the project. But I will say that when Rusty Schmidt was from Nelson Poe Voorhis, we did try deep plowing several times where they went 12 inches down and essentially flipped the top surface so it was underneath. And the idea was that you would bury the mugwort. And then we planted a winter crop, a winter grass, which did very well. And actually people liked a lot because they thought that was the meadow. Pardon?

And then what? What happened after that?

And then unfortunately, when the grass died down for the summer, the mugwort would grow. And unfortunately, and sometimes the mugwort grow too high. So we're back to where we started. And I think there is some truth that when you, even when we were doing the deep plowing, that you were breaking up the rhizomes and it was making it easier for them to spread. So one of the suggestions I had, and we're probably not going to try this again, but we can. I mean, that could be another experiment again, which is you do plow, but then you immediately, after everything is all broken up, you immediately go in there with steel rakes and you just pull out all the stuff that's on the surface.

Yeah, I like that. And I would take that a step further that instead of then planting a single species winter grass that lays down in the summertime as you, it's a selection, a multi-species mixture that makes sense and, you know.

Mm-hmm.

grows at different times so that it doesn't give the mugwort an opportunity to come back.

But there's also, well, first of all, I happen to agree with Mark's opinion about the rhizomes with my limited but ongoing fight with mugwort, which anyway, because even the lightest, slightest little tiny piece will become a 10 foot long stretch of it in, you know, one season. Um, but there is a way to combat it and it, you know, the question, but the other obstacle we have is there's no water. So we did plant the rye grass and then we planted again the next season, but it didn't rain. So it didn't really germinate.

It did actually too. He just came later. It came after.

Yeah.

um so the goal for to your idea what you're talking about kate so if we take that one section that we're planning to plant this fall that's not going to be a winter grass that's going to be a mixture of warm season grasses like little blue stem switchgrass really whatever yeah i mean a monoculture is never the answer right so

So why don't we stake areas, define them, so that people can see that there's a reason that it is what it is. If we have to put signs, we put signs. And then the question is, along the perimeter, which is where people see and object to, I would say, You know, do we take a slightly different approach? Are we going to put these tarps all on the outside of the property?

No, no. When Mark and I met and we talked about it, we actually talked about using a tarp in one section.

But then what are we going to do with the rest of it that we're not tarping? Mow it?

No, we're going to do vinegar and mowing. Actually, sorry, there are going to be two tarp sections. So we talked about one tarp section, which has no vinegar. And then another tarp section is where you spray it, you mow it, spray it with vinegar, then put the tarp on it. And then a third section is mowing with vinegar. And then one of those sections we talked about, whoops, sorry, since... Since we're going to do the meadow in one section and Matt does have to come in and he has to plow that before he has to break up the soil. So since doing that costs an X amount of money, I forget what it is, we thought why not combine doing the shrubland area at the same time. So along Nostrand, so there'd be another section, I think it was like 50 by 100. where we would do that. So that would be, we'd have two sort of experimental planting areas starting this fall.

I like that idea because it's accomplishing the goal that we intend for the property, which is, so does it need water?

No, actually. However, having said that, I don't know if you remember, but I think it was two years ago in the fall, we had a terrible drought. Yes. So Matt and I sort of discuss, okay, should it be spring? I mean, he was worried about doing the spring because it was already getting dry in May. So that's why we didn't do anything this spring. I mean, ideally you don't have to do it, but you know, it made me that things germinate later.

And my next question, So we have the one area by where the house was that we're talking about planning. And then you're talking about this other section along Nostra. But 50 by 100 is basically the size of this building.

Yeah, actually, I don't have... Should it be bigger? Yeah, no, I'll send all of you the... I sent to all of you, like, months ago, the actual plot size of all of these. Yeah. And the town board also saw it when they voted. So I'll send them back out again. So you can see exactly what the areas are.

Okay. And what should Ken do next week? Do we order a 50-gallon drum of vinegar or cases of vinegar? I'm going to say this.

I'll maintain the perimeter on the road, and I'm going to leave West Neck Preserve to the CP.

I don't have, I can't be mowing and spraying vinegar. It's right.

I can you guys do it.

I'll lean the shoulder around it and I'll leave the rest of it. You guys figure it out.

No, Ken, I would, we would not. I, it was never my intention to ask your crew to spray the vinegar.

Well, that's fine. No, but I'm just saying, I think you parcels and i would rather just i'll keep the perimeter of the road you know that road that cuts through all the stuff that we do and we'll maintain the parking lot so that stays clean i'll make sure we get that cleaned out so that it's got a lot of weeds in it stuff i noticed but and then you guys just figure it out and hire a contractor to me do what you're gonna do okay If you want him to mow it, then you can let him mow it. I'll leave it alone.

I think that sounds like a good...

Yes, that's what I think would be the best way forward. Do you guys want to maintain the trail, at least just do the loop?

Yeah, I mean, the trail, I mean, it really only... backwoods property in the other one. We maintain that. So there hasn't been much of a... That sounds fine.

That sounds fine.

I mean, if it changes, if something changes along the way and it's about just specify to someone like precise areas both this don't know that yeah you know it's not realistic right it just becomes a lot because you know my crew changes on different days you know if we're going on a cycle and the guy that normally does it is on vacation and now i'm sending somebody else you know what i mean i know i get it no i know it's not rocket science but if you understand what i'm saying it's like we're trying to maintain a you know a thing it's just easier to but I think it's just... No, no, no.

I'm not unsympathetic to your concerns at all. I just want to be clear about that. And I know that your crew has a lot to do. So whatever works best for you, and if the committee agrees to working with a second contractor, then that's fine.

I'm fine with that.

Okay. I also think, though, one thing that would probably be helpful for everybody is to send out the paper around, but also if you could get some stakes, the mapping that you were talking about before, but if you could also get some stakes and plot out the areas.

Yeah, I think we should do that. And I think we should use sign-in. So for instance, by the... Between the house and the driveway, we can put stakes up there and then just have sign explaining. This is what we're going to do in the fall with this section of property.

Correct.

And then on the Nostrand side where whatever the size of it is, we can stake that out and explain what that's going to be. And then if we're going to go with tarps and do all that stuff, we explain what those are going to do.

Okay.

And again, I would put on the signs if anybody has any questions that they contact us or me and Mark. I don't want people complaining to Ken. He should not have to deal with that.

We'll put that on the signs. Don't call Ken.

That's nice of you, Tim, but I think people are still going to go.

No, no, no. You shouldn't be put in that position. Well, that is his position.

It is my position. I'm from the territory.

Yeah, yeah. No, I believe, man. I understand. Whenever I go out in my Tyvek suit, people pull up and immediately start either asking me questions or complaining to me. And I'm fine with that. But again, we're the ones who are undertaking this project. And it's... And I think we should be the ones who should be answering the questions.

Yes. I would suggest a couple of things. One is maybe write either a letter or an article for the paper that talks about what this is and admit that some of the original plans were a little, weren't working. But here's the plot. Here's the program. We're doing a couple of different things in a couple of different areas. Again, I'm going to reiterate my concern about putting a bunch of tarps along West Neck and Nostran.

Okay. Well, we can talk more about that.

Maybe we cover them with chips. I don't know. I'm sure Ken can accommodate us with that. We've got plenty of chips. I'm sure you do.

Okay. That's a good idea, the article.

An article... plot, plotting it out, you know, maybe with different colored stakes or something that show what it is.

Include a photo of your construction.

Tim, I have a question. Go ahead. Can we, you know, live with this mugwort, perhaps maybe grow other things with it? I'm reading here that mugwort has actually got some health benefits. You can't eat it.

We should sell it. Farmer's market, we should sell it.

Is there other things that we could plant instead of trying to get rid of it? Just plant other stuff to go with it.

You mean within it? Within where the mugwort is growing?

Yeah.

No, because it's like a...

It becomes a mat.

It becomes a mat. And the reason, for instance, Matt Daly has to go in there and plow it is because he has to break it up as well as breaking up the soil. You know, one thing that's been interesting is that an islander, George Hewn, who has a piece of property on... Smith Street. Manantick and Smith Street.

Manantick.

And he and his wife, Julie, have been working on that area under the guidance of Andy Senesac. And they're trying a different method to work with their mugwort. And it's a slower process. And again, for him, it's, it's, it's, it's an ongoing experiment. Um, and he's been doing other sort of restoration projects on his property, actually not restoration at the moment, mostly getting rid of all the invasive stuff. So, you know, it, it just be interesting. We have two sort of projects working with the same tapping, the same problems. Um, I just mentioned that. And Andy actually gave a really good report at our invasive species forum in July that we had. You know, one thing we could do, there's chips you could put up, but Matt talked about also he has ground leaves, which probably would blow away actually. So maybe that wouldn't work that he could put on top of the tarp. That's something, it's something that we can talk to Matt about. Does he have any suggestions for what he would put on top of the tarp to sort of disguise it?

Okay. All right.

And again, I understand everybody's frustration with this. I get it. But Mark and I have talked, and Mark, I'm not putting words in your mouth, I hope, but this is- I'll let you know. Okay. This is not something that you can just solve in a couple of years. It's like Mugwort is a monster. Yeah. And it just takes time if you want to get rid of it. If we decide we don't want to get rid of it, That's something that everybody can decide to do. I think at this point, it's just like, it's like one of our preserves, it's not like we're trying to do that every single preserve we have right now. And I think by focusing on this one preserve and really trying to sort of tackle this problem and hopefully succeed, you know, it could be an inspiration for other people to do something in their property And the other part of it is the whole thing with the meadows. I mean, you've got some people with really, really huge lawns that they could convert part of that to meadow. And so the other part of this is that this could be an inspiration. And I know some people may not understand what meadows are. They think they're maybe unsightly. But, you know, when I see when you see a meadow in full bloom and we would sort of emphasize the flowering part of this, it's really beautiful.

hundred percent the problem the the reason we took this challenge on is because how visible the property is the challenge is how visible this property is and and that you know and it's frustrating five years later to be looking at i know erratic, erratic attempts.

But you know, when I first looked at this property before it was cleaned out, Gordon, you know, walked me through it. And my, my first thought was this, this property is a mess. So either you decide, you know, this is something to think about in the future with properties. It's like, if you have a property, it's a mess. You have to make a decision. Okay. Are we going to leave this? Are we just going to leave it the way it is cut a trail through it? And that's it. In this case, we decided to try something different.

Yeah.

And it's challenging.

Yes. Right from the beginning, we all said this was going to be a five to 10 year project. So we're about halfway there anyway.

Right on schedule.

Right.

All right.

Westnick signed. Does Ken have that still? Do you have the West Neck sign?

Oh, didn't it get knocked down?

Yeah, I thought maybe somebody said you took it away.

I think the sign is up. I'll look.

Somebody ran into it. You know the sign?

Yeah, I remember.

And we couldn't remember if just the post needed to be repaired.

I thought we repaired it. It's not there. I saw it yesterday. The back holder is gone.

We're talking about West Neck. There's no sign. Forget the map holes. There's no sign.

I'll find a sign.

Thank you. That was a rumor that you had it.

I close my eyes when I drive by.

The sign will help you find it.

On to the next. Okay, so we're going to send the map around so we all remind ourselves of the picture. We're going to have Matt come and do this meadow area with, I'm going to say where the house was.

Um, and a shrub area in the other section, it'll be a long, a long string, right? Yep.

And also a meadow area there, but we're, uh, we're just going to, are you going to tarp it?

we're not going to we're going one meadow area by the old house and the parking lot area and then the shrub land is separate there's no meadow area on the other side right now okay all right all right got all that chess huh i might need to take minutes of these meetings

Okay, any other stewardship acquisition?

Can I just finish this since it's related? At the Silver Beach General Meeting, I asked a steward volunteer and I got one here.

I have another one too.

So he's going to do Crab Creek and West Neck.

This says station Xanax, but I'm assuming this is actually the nursery woodland Xanax?

Oh, that's probably it. Whatever we walked, Joe.

Yeah, that was the nursery woodland Xanax.

Okay, nursery woodlands.

Okay. Yeah, so good report. Let's keep moving on it.

Did we line up anybody to clear the rest of the bamboo? I'll talk damp. Okay. then uh yeah yeah again this is another it's a multi-year effort yeah you really can't do much in there until that is depleted and gone yeah so it's you know we talked about planting a few trees in there uh That could work. I mean, just to make it look like something other than a bare dirt wasteland.

You mean where we took the bamboo out?

Yeah, and where we're going to remove the rest of it. Get something there. But it needs regular attention for a while.

All right. Thank you. And does that require more vinegar spraying?

No, I wouldn't bother with that with the bamboo. It really is a timing issue. Like you want to. Get the main colony down. And then when these sprouts come up, you can knock them over as soon as you see them. But ideally, you would wait until they start just about to drop their leaves. They've expended the most amount of energy into this new shoot without actually getting any return from that new growth. And lop that off and you can just leave it in place. It's not going to sprout from that. So you're just stealing the energy over and over and over again and not letting it generate any new growth. resources for the rhizomes and, um, it'll weaken the colony and, you know, depending on how big it is, it could take.

So Penn's guys are mowing those trails, right? Nursery. So do they know to look at this bamboo and whack it down at the point that he's talking about? Yeah. Whenever they see stuff like that, they. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So if you guys are mowing it sort of on any kind of regular basis, I bet that would work. And, you know, um, You know, it's actually kind of therapeutic to go in there and whack those things down. So I might just find myself out there.

When can you eat them?

You can eat them before they get too tall, you know, maybe 18 inches or so. But in my notes, as I was writing them this morning, I thought, you know what, I don't know what was there beforehand. So I don't know what's going into these shoots. Yeah. It was nursery. Is there a history of chemical use on the property? They are delicious. But I wouldn't recommend it here. At least to the public. Not because I know something is bad. It's because I don't know there isn't.

Because you don't know. Right, right.

Yeah.

Okay. And, Ken... When you have the guys cut the path into Stations Woods that goes down to the Stations Annex, can you have them just cut the section that goes to the right into the Stations Annex? Yeah, it's the new one we just had cleared. Okay. Yeah, it's just like from the main, yeah, off of right next to the... Bob and Heather's house. Right. That main trail, there's a right-hand turn off of it that goes down to the annex. I just haven't hit that area because that gets pretty heavy with grass.

Yeah, we didn't have that.

Thank you.

Anything else? I have one other thing. I did reach out to the county again on the bridge and artists to get their input. I haven't gotten a response, but I think I included you on that. Yeah, I received that too. No.

So. Why do we have to ask the county?

Because we have partners with us.

You brought that with us?

Yeah.

Artists. Yeah.

Artists 100%.

I totally forgot.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, we'll talk about that later. Okay.

We need to talk about Craig Creek. That's on the back of the page.

It's on the back.

Mark, you wrote this up about Craig Creek as well?

Yeah, I did. I mean, I was just out there and... you know, noted the sort of documented the trail situation and the whatnot. I mean, I, it, the place looks great. It's except for that, the deer area that, you know, that woodland to the east, you know, between the meadow and the Huckleberry peninsula, I'll call it. Um, you know, there's nothing going on in there because there's a lot of deer pressure. Um, I, I see that there's been some deer management efforts, um, They haven't paid off yet. I don't know if they will. And then the photo is just an example. I don't know how this came to be like this, and it doesn't really matter, but it's just a note that cutting trails without planning can sort of set an area back. I agree that people should be able to enjoy these places, but maybe we just consider... more planning in path rooting and width and whatnot in certain areas.

What's wrong with this?

It goes right through the huckleberry patch, I'll call it. It's like a community of lowbush, blueberry, and huckleberries. These things are locally quite rare. There's this one. There's another small patch near... The pond area, I'll call it a pond area, but it's like a little marshy area there. I know another one out by along the edge of Cockles Harbor. It's not a common area. It takes a long time to grow and establish. And it's sensitive in that if you go through here now, the biggest plants that are regrowing in these path areas is bayberry. And once the bayberry gets taller, it's going to crowd out the Huckleberry. So you wouldn't have, you know, so it's very difficult to reestablish that. So there could be ways going forward to just sort of walk the area, figure out, okay, well, this, this path could go over here. People could still see the huckleberries and pick them, but we're actually cutting down bayberries, which are, you know, they, they grow everywhere. And just so minding a little more of the exact rooting of the path is, is all I would want to consider.

Okay. Thank you.

Sure.

I've always discouraged opening up a big path right through that. That's too pristine of an area.

Maybe we could put crime tape.

Chuck and I looked at going around on the actual shoreline.

I would have walked down this path. It looks like a path.

I was done with it here. Yeah, it's basically like hunting. We never actually made a path there.

Somebody did. This is mowed. This is not like a deer trail or anything. There's other areas. The contrast wasn't good enough to include the photos. It's much wider. It's got to be four or six feet wide. It's definitely chopped top. It goes all the way out. There's a little duck blind or something out there. Not that the two are related at all. I'm just pointing out orientation and location. And it goes all the way out and it loops through just kind of like 20 to 30 feet back, maybe more, from the perimeter before it drops down to the shoreline. Definitely not deer. Okay.

Thank you, Mark.

Sure. All right.

Anything else? Okay. Stewardship plan, Tuttle Creek. We'll put a hold on that for other purposes. Cedars. Tim and... you and i going to work on that we always do it in september right um yeah i can't do that right now um september okay green expo august 22nd kathy has the keys to the garage and the pile of stuff that i moved out of my garage so it's all in one place

Um, uh, Joe, I guess they're setting up. So I have a strength class that ends at 10 to nine.

Okay.

So why don't we meet at the garage? have to add some things to the signs we're not putting up those little wooden things um i'm going to ask the historic society if they have easels to put these maps on you know anybody blowing off out last year you know what i have to get tape or something i don't know where we're going to put them if we don't have easels to stand them on i know i don't know where we're going so i'm going to

Sometimes it works to get duct tape and taping signs to the legs of the tent.

We have a couple. I don't know how big. These signs are kind of big. I'm going to try to get some easels. If not, we're going to have to use duct tape. Oh, do they? Yeah. Oh, okay. Good. All right. So I'll.

Usually you tape anyway, though. Yeah, yeah.

Usually bring tape.

Okay.

string and tuli's tent is there too yeah pop up that's easy to do right it is easy to do all right ideally and i'm going to ask all the committee committees to come at a certain time so everybody's there to help put up tents and set up and also when the event is over they do take everything down we'll do that yeah

We need some more volunteers for that day because I have to go over.

What time of the day are you doing that, Tim?

Well, it starts at 11, so I'm trying to think if we want to start at 9 or 9.30.

I can help set up, and I have to, like, later go to the fire department and help on a country fan.

The cough was on the same day. yeah the member guest yeah i'm not going to can't go to that that's the third thing i can't go do you know when we start that cake uh probably in the email no i i think it's like the same time as the green expo which is why don't you have your oh the tennis thing isn't that week it's this saturday tennis all right let me just say if um if if i try to end up early in the morning it will help out all right maybe

Maybe you can meet him then.

Yeah, sign me up for an early shift.

All right, so we'll send out, well, we probably need somebody.

Yeah, we'll figure it out.

Okay.

Okay.

Old business, new business. Do I get a motion to close the meeting and go to executive session? for a minute.