Open Space Commission - Regular Meeting

We would ask right now, does anybody have any topics they would like to discuss that are not on the agenda? We could amend the agenda. Okay, well, let's go to now. Does someone make a motion to approve the minutes of the August 12 meeting?

Did you get a motion? Second? I'll do a second.

Any discussion, any corrections, changes, anything?

All in favor of adopting the minutes as drafted?

Aye. Opposed? Abstaining? The minutes are accepted. Okay. I drafted an annual report for the commission. I thank you for your comment. I was spot on to add Peter on there. And thank you for your comments. I will probably send it in to the editor Friday. So if anybody wants to look at it, I can finish you off the road and say thank you. It will be my third for the town and my eighth overall. So I've been doing all the gateway towns.

You must be pretty good at it.

Once you do one of our gateways, there's minimal personalization of the others.

Do you want to talk about the stewards?

Sure. So with the student reports, Peter and Jason both submitted their report. Jason is doing Bartholomew, well, very blanding. First at Creek McCulloch via Whippoorwill and Champlain South. And Peter is doing Champlain North, Ames, McCulloch, and Champlain South. And nothing out of the ordinary, some work clearing. But apropos to the third report, Jason, I mean, Peter Luffy had submitted, I think I sent you and some of you some pictures of the Jane Drive entrance that he cleared. to, for the Champlain South extension with the O-Line Land Trust. And there was some back and forth about the taser lady, because I guess that would connect to the trail that you had started to work on and expand that we walked with Edie. And that the taser lady is the woman who came out and challenged Bill with,

So, it doesn't happen every day. That's your introduction to open space.

We'll get into the trailer.

Yeah. That's just part of the story. I can just clear the opening to Jaden, which was fairly overgrown. I had walked in there a day before and you had to be like scooched down to get in there. But they hadn't done anything. I saw you do that other thing. I think it's just waiting on Sabine to say do it. I know she's had it. And I've been working on the other side to see if we can put a trail along the highway in Ames so that you don't have to do a long road walk. But as soon as Sabine gives the okay, I think she was going to do a work party. They need to have those guys that have chainsaws.

Yeah.

because it's the only thing left is about a hundred feet. I've done the rest, did the rest of it, marked it, cut it. And I think that we kind of segwayed into this a little bit.

Let's continue talking about it then. So on the Champlain South, this is the map, which shows that their trail that I believe was probably cleared Here's quite a bit away from the highway. It's almost perpendicular to the highway. Is that the one that was put in here?

That's been there forever. Yes. That's how we walked in. The one that was cleared or was there a new one? No, no, no. The other one that's been here is that I did came off of, well, you'll see it. It kind of swiggled in here. And then there's a very narrow to that back lot that they got. There's about a 10 or 12 foot like access, not an easement, but it's part of the property. And the land trust property, it comes right to Whippoorwill. It kind of goes like that with my red marker. But it's pretty much done. It's going to be tough. It's their old dead cedars and they're hard to cut. But those guys are fast with their chainsaws. So that trail is almost done. And then I've been working on one Let's see if it's feasible on the south side. It's in green on top of green, so it doesn't show us. Yeah, I have that name map here. I might ask you about that.

Are you going on state land or town land?

The town land is right here, Greg.

Before we finish, let's just finish the channel so we don't bounce around. So this is a new trail that Pierre did. He didn't do it.

No, it had been there forever. It just cleared out. It was overgrown. That was the one that you kind of walked through? My red magnet marker is what I, on the land trust, that's the land trust property. I tagged it and kind of cleared it. So this is a good way to go through it. And there's no alternative except near the people's house. Is that where you had the? I had the encounter on Wimperwill Road, so technically it wasn't there. She came out and threatened me, actually. And we wanted to make sure, and I never, I would file a complaint, not a charge, and just make sure she was on her best behavior, because she was saying, I'm not pulling my dogs in if people walk there, things like that. And I, you know, tasing, that's a class A misdemeanor, like a year in jail and two times fined for the taser. So, yeah, I didn't, I was kind of leeched because I'm going to pull out my firearm. Pulled out a taser and I kind of was laughing. But, yeah. And when I saw what they did, it just knocks you out. I would have landed like the first time.

So, yeah.

You'd have to have a firearms license for it. So I talked to the cop we get to Westbrook, and he called the local one who, for some reason, got Sabine involved. And I never heard whether he actually talked to the lady to make sure she is our best behavior. But I'm not going to go in there and dub over there. I'll have this one.

Go ahead, Pete. I heard that priorities first.

Oh, whatever. But it would be really nice, we're close to, I think, technically the Crosstown Trail is there, if she has the access easement across Cuts' property. So I talked to Edie the other day, and she didn't realize that at the end of Tisbury, Evergreen to Tisbury, which is the easiest, I've done it a number of times with my hiking group, It looks like you're going through a guy's driveway, but you're not. If the town road continues past, he's got a soccer goal in the way and all that. And then there's about 150 feet of, is it Laurel Heights? I think it's near property. And they have a trail that connects to Boggy Hole. There's already a trail system there. And that was, so that's pretty much done. And then you go to Boggy Hole to Champlain South. And then the question is, what do you do from, Our city north can you show me what what you're considering on their bill on names yeah yeah actually got one already done yeah there's another one at the top that i'd like to do, and so i'll put mark here.

Can you give me that one?

Yeah, I'm going to give you that one. I'm going to pass these around again.

That's the second cuddle here.

But those are different trails that went to put in here. Once the Boy Scouts, I think they've got a work party on Saturday. I can only be there for a half hour. What is the purple trail on here? The purple is the old blue. But I want to make it slightly different into a loop. I've been working on it. There's an old road. Oh, wait, the other one.

I don't know.

I didn't remember what colors I did. The purple was the, a lot of it was where they killed all the trees, it became like grassland in there, and it's really hard to clear grassland. It won't stay clear. So I came back into trees, but I'd like to make a loop over there and then connect the green, which doesn't show up well, but along there, if people wanted to hide from Champlain South to Champlain, Ames to Champlain South. But that's what that purple is.

It's kind of blue. So my one thought in looking at this, and I'm all in favor of a crosstown trail, it looks like you might have another possible refill with the paint.

That's actually there. I've walked it three or four times. It's marked in blue tape. I think the house owners on Worker Will put that in, and they put a board block in. It's got It's already there. And it's a really nice pine grove over there. And what that would do would eventually, if that goes in, one, it gets a nice trail. It would give them possibly access. I didn't want to do too much in one meeting, but there's a house that has stuff in our property down there. And we maybe talk to them about on the border away from their house, there's a stone wall that comes almost across from McCulloch and maybe talk to them about letting us put a trail there in exchange for tax options.

So one of my thoughts is, and I'm going to echo Evan in his absence, is that our properties are supposed to try to balance public access, and wildlife conservation. And we're starting to really fill these properties up a lot of trails. And there's not too many corners where people aren't going anymore. So I just wanted to ask folks, what are your own thoughts on and philosophy on that? Where's your demand on state?

I think, well, personally speaking, I haven't typed all of them, but I do find some of them are a little short. and having more options might bring more people out.

Well, the other issue, too, is when we start doing this, we put our maps out of date, and we start utilizing our maps. And I wanted to talk about mapping later. We might have people cross out on this event later.

I don't know what I said. I didn't cross my trail, but I think adding too many additional small loops and small pieces is detrimental to the overall property.

So we have... I don't think we're adding any small loops or small... Oh, right here. This is already there. But the reason you do that, Russ, was there's another property I don't want to get into acquisitions here, but it might be or a possibility of eventually getting to adding another way to get to McCulloch. Whether we like it or not, that's there. I've seen three or four people liking on it. This one It's right on the edge, but this one's already here. There is quite a, when you look at this map, in terms of wildlife and not using it, this whole area is not used, this whole area is not used. You look at Bartholomew, the whole, most of that is not used. It's in the back, behind Mac, next to the farm. There's a lot of them, there's a lot of little trails. I don't disagree, but they're not set up too well. Personally, I think that trail spin can apply to the glory. There's nothing to see, trees.

Well, I mean, maybe adding more trails isn't really the right thing. But like what we did at Bartholomew, I thought really that made it a whole new place to go by just having the beaver trail, you know.

It's a nice area to wind up in terms of You know, I've seen beavers like three weeks ago on the upper dam that you walk, they'll be open that trail, which they've been there for years anyway.

You know, who knows what the wildlife situation is. There's no, you know, I've seen bobcats going in and around, but they're not, you know, they're, what is it? They'll be at dusk and dawn in Maryland. Someone said there was a bear over in this area.

A couple more quick questions, Bill. So you are going to cross state of Connecticut land. Do they have any fencing in that? No, we're not crossing any state of Connecticut land because the fence, I would imagine, is on your board. You are. You are, in fact, crossing state of Connecticut land. There's a little, if you look, if you look right here, this is, this, our land does not come off to the highway, nor does it reach Wickerwell until that corner point is It's there. We figured that out when we were looking at who wanted to call them.

Yeah, I know, but I don't think we're on state of Connecticut, and I think we're on town. No, that's state of Connecticut. They're on the down to, on the, excuse me, I'm going.

At one point, there was going to be an entrance ramp at that, so they have a little bit more land, and they usually work around a town road interstate connection.

But crossing. Yeah. Okay. Because you can see where the fence is. Yeah.

I'm not saying it's a big deal.

Yeah.

We should kind of be aware of that. I don't know. I don't know.

We need to ask them if that's an issue or not. We could always move it down and make that connection point and then come across. It's pretty swampy in there. And so if the least amount you did, but if the least amount of road work would be a plus. I thought when we were doing Colbert, Colbert was on a town property. Yeah, it's interesting.

I don't think,

We know definitively who owns the land that's immediately adjacent to the clover on the west side of Wickerwold. It appears DLT in the town had a different opinion to that. Talked to a couple of times and she's not actually sure. We assume that the responsibility of that.

We are real close to either one. I'm going down slow of the culvert, but whatever. If it got moved over a little bit, the key thing, I'm two-thirds of the way to see how wet it is, and it's been dry so far. It's just tough beating your way through there.

One quick question here. Looking at Steve's map, and I'm not sure how he derived, what he derived there, but are you going to the area on the bottom, do you have a map you're looking at too? The area at the very bottom, you have an angst map. Yeah. The very bottom seems to indicate there's a wetland there. It's not that wet now with the beaver.

I'm curious. We're not going to need bridges or anything. That's what I'm checking. I just hit the, got through the jungle part. And now the fragmite part, and it's right along the fence. It looks pretty dry, but I don't want to say until next time. And I don't think we'll need any bridges. I think it's just kind of a hiking strip to connect to over this purple. Weirdly, one of those purples exists as an old road, which is pretty nice. I don't have to do much. And then coming up here, I just thought I'd loop it so that it didn't, it made that blue trail a little bit, slightly longer. I can tell you next, in about a week, I've been kind of more on the, doing the mucky bridge thing with the voice cuts, and not, and stopped doing that. But once we get through there, I think it's gonna be completely dry, and it's pretty interesting.

Have you ever done a survey in terms of use of the trails? Yeah, that would be good. I have an essential solution. So I just went online and Googled open space online.

You could go back to the webpage and you could see how many people were actually doing that. We could have a Google, I used to do it in my business, right, to track how many people are coming to our website. That could be the first step. It might not mean they're getting out of the car and going hiking, but at least you could start by saying, hey, here's the amount of people that are actually looking this up.

I see it a lot of times. They have cameras set up so they're counting the people that walk by. I THINK WE'D BE QUITE DISAPPOINTED TO SEE VERY FEW.

I THINK WE SHOULD KNOW. INCREASE IN EXTENSIVE TRAILS BECAUSE THERE'S A LOT OF PEOPLE ON THERE.

I THINK THAT WHEN OTHER PEOPLE DON'T HIKE THE TRAILS BECAUSE THEY'RE TOO SHORT, I NEVER HIKED AN ALIGN MUCH.

FUNNY THOUGH, THE SUMMER FESTIVAL, A LOT OF PEOPLE SAID THEY

hike on the trails all the time, kids. And so it's maybe depends on when you go.

It'd be nice to take one of the game cameras and put it on the parking lot.

There's also some general confusion between land trust and open space. I personally am not clear about it. I live on land trust property, so I'm constantly looking.

seeing what's open space like in some of these trails.

That could be interesting, right?

So getting back to your map there, this area in here, Bill, that is dry? Put your finger on it again. It goes through what was lunching water, which has started to become a beaver meadow.

I'm going to do it a different way. I'm checking here because I want the shortest possible hike. It's been dry, and I think I'm going to guess 100%. What's this section here? Oh, yeah, that's dry. That blue trail now is dry. A lot of the trees got killed down where it turns here at the bottom, so that's what I I came in a little bit on that. That's not completely accurate with the purple thing, but the grass grew up. I watched that yesterday.

It was interesting. I looked at that today because Mark had told me a couple of years ago, I said, I'm going to go back and find the highway. I see all these dead trees and old lives. If we could cut down those trees a little bit, it's better. I always look at it and Looks like we have more regeneration of new growth than is available on Piper's side. And also there's another section just, I guess, west of Four Mile River Road, that's the Complemore area. And that's the least, it's starting to, it's the least far along and started to recover and become a field and regrow after what was probably a beaver

Yeah, I went down and looked at the beaver steamer because it was starting to get clogged up a little bit this morning. And it was... So you're damming against the fence? No, I'm not damming. It's just like mossy stuff. I took two pictures. I was going to send it to you and John and ask him if he had any suggestions on how to... I had put a long handle right there. And I think it's basically full of logs and stuff. But it's more like... vegetation, you know, hope it doesn't block it. I'm wondering if a brush or something like every now and then if Jason did.

So when we talked about putting in beaver deceiver, we haven't gone that far because beavers have not really tried to block things. But John did tell me that whatever he put in front of the cupboard was going to need to be pair active checked because of the water flow is going to bring

to try to stop in the branches and whatever. I put a long handle, like 15-foot handle rake there, and I think Jason's done it once, but there's been nothing. I tried to see if that moved the moss and stuff he was collecting on it, and it didn't do much. Is the water flowing through that fence? It seems to be flowing through it. It just would be if it got a little bit more clogged, it could be a problem. You know, does John have to do any maintenance?

I will write to John, because we do have a maintenance contract at that site, and I know he's come down at least once, possibly twice the whole time. I'm not sure if he's going to come down a third time. The season's kind of wrapping up, and I think it's really busy trying to finish jobs before it gets too cold. Andrea? Yes? Can you check with Peter and maybe Jason, and kind of put him in touch with Bill. So whoever is doing Ames, they know to check out that. That should be kind of the steward's job. I don't want to have you going down there.

Yeah. It's very narrow. It's still now what it was for years, and now it's handled well.

Peter does Ames.

The Black Hall is... River is a stream there, so it's normal. And the vegetation, like you said, is starting to come back a little bit.

Yeah, it's... Ames, um... Yeah, the culvert, the... What would you call it? Yeah, I call it beaver deceiver, because it's supposed to... It's really a deceiver per se.

It's just a physical barrier to keep you out of the cold.

Yeah, yeah.

whatever I would call it. It's just the fence started to stir, just to make sure it doesn't collect. And we pulled out a lot of logs prior to putting it in, so they didn't come in and slam it. But I think it should be, they should just keep an eye on it. I'll see Peter. I'm going to see Peter probably in the next week or so.

I'm meeting Friday until the end of the month, but I can shoot them an email to contact and be in touch with you, Bill, about checking on the Beaver.

I was gonna see if Peter, once the boys got the, I think they're gonna put the decking and the planking down so that you can get across there without getting, walking in water. And I was gonna see if Peter could help me. I've gone where the old blue trail was, once you crossed where they're putting the new bridge and the boardwalk, and started to find the blue trail and it's, pretty much there, but I needed Peter to help me with blazes and cutting a few things.

I want to pass these around, so if everybody could take a look. Pass the two of these around, look at them side by side, so you can look at the materials that Bill suggested. And that one in the... Several directions, but on the paper, the upper right.

It gets to a really high pine grove, which is kind of great. A lot of times owls stay, I know when we've seen owls hiking, they'd be in those, you'll see them during the day, swooping around in there. It goes right behind. Where does Bucky Brook run through there? Does it run through that? Yeah, that's what they, they've got a nice system already of planks over Bucky Brook or Mall Creek, whatever you want to call it up there. on Black Hall. But that's pretty much done. It could be done better, but, and then it goes in behind, there's two houses that it comes, there's quite a bit of land over there, comes in behind their houses, and there's old roads and trails, so it would be able to add to the blue.

Did you say that it looked like a homeowner may have done something?

They've got like a birdcage, You can tell where the property line is because of their fence. And they, you know, whatever. It'd be leveraged if we wanted to get used part of their property from here, the corner of the pink. I have it in green over to McCulloch. You'd have about 150 foot roadblock. And then that would give you, if you wanted to do a McCulloch loop from there, you could add it to and come back down the other way.

which would be nice, I think.

How big is the loop play? About a mile, mile and a half? What would you?

It's probably three and a half here. And then if you had a McCulloch, you might be able to get to seven, eight, nine, ten. Oh, I'm glad you said that.

Yeah, I agree. So you were kind of like our favorite, Bill. You're like, how's the McCulloch? I mean that in a complimentary sense. No, I don't. Busy as Bill.

I think a lot of the reasons I didn't go off, because I have a lot of stuff I'd rather do, would be to make the trails at least hikeable. Micro-pikes all over the state can come to a line only one time. We did one to Duke before the Swallows and one other time when the the herring that we're nesting in. But they won't go on, they won't drive. They come from all over the state. They won't drive here for four or five miles. They'll be in the car longer, which will be the height.

I guess the question is, what's the point of your health? It comes from all over the state. I'm probably pretty good, I believe.

We tend to get a lot of requests from people that want flat, short, you know, shumps, you know, so that they can walk somewhere along trippings. They don't spend the whole time looking down. So, I mean, that's kind of what we get a lot of, you know, when they're asking what trails they don't want for this.

I'm just late. So, I just want to make sure I want to make, and I don't really have any, slung objections to any of your suggestions there, Bill, with the proviso that we're not going to run into future maintenance problems than having to build bridges if those areas get wet or not.

No, I think like with the bridge I built on that original cross trail, that's been flooded twice over four or five feet. And there's been no issues on it's done. And with the buoys, it's difficult dealing, honestly, Andrea, with Boy Scouts doing that because you don't know what you're getting into until you get into it. And initially I thought I could use rebar and then it was like, it's just very mucky in there. So we ended up with two and a half foot galvanized steel pipe jamming it in. But my main plan there was to make sure it's done and if it does flood, water comes in and goes out and the bridge isn't affected, the boardwalk. And I can't, well, hopefully it will be. We're separately within everything so that if one piece goes, the other stays, it doesn't affect it. But I don't, he keeps scheduling stuff. I'm not sure I can be, I know I can't be there Saturday. I've got a conflict. But I'd like to see how it goes. But I can always come in later and firm things up. But that area is a lot wider.

This Saturday, Jackson is having the party, the work party, with his dad and the other nurse and a group of the scouts, not just the experienced ones, the older ones. Is that right?

He hasn't talked. He's been not that great at communication with me. He didn't even tell me in the work party until I asked him when he was at it.

He needs to have

Yeah, no one. And I told him to check with me. I was wondering, I told him to check with me before you said to it. And he totally ignores me.

I can ask for evidence that he will be available to be there. Do you know what time?

I've been there for 20 minutes because I have to change something we're going to do. Yeah, I see.

One of the last emails I got from him last Friday that he received the donations from RingZent and

A second day is scheduled for the 12th at 8.30 a.m. And then you were popping on that one.

Yeah, I can.

So you, I didn't catch what you said about 8.30.

You're not going to be there? I can be there for about a half hour, but I've got my other group. Do you think it's more important that someone be there at the start or the end? I've got to be there at the start because something we were doing, I had to change. As I saw it this week, um, it's moving something, but, uh, the, whatever.

I can move my schedule around, but to be completely frank with you, Jackson probably knows more about Golden Bridge than I do.

I think I've given him a lot of notes and stuff, and he's seen it, and it's the easy part that just dropped by and gone, but one of them didn't quite line up. I'll talk to him about that and go from there. But the, uh, I've already got the, we already got the planks across all the bridges, so it's the decking, like, the kids, they can screw in things without me being there.

So the foundation is there.

Yeah, and everything's been pretty well. That bridge, I went up in a lot. We were worried, too, that the weight of the bridge could sink it, but I went in early the other time and hammered in, like, as far as it would go down.

It's weird, if you go down, like, two feet, you start getting solids. but I think it's dead trees. I hammered in a bunch of cedar, and hopefully that stays.

If it isn't, we can always jack it up later, but I'd prefer not to only do these things once. It's really nasty in there. But it's nice because it prevents that trail from expanding.

Where are the anus maps? Do you have them? I don't think they're going quite anywhere. Those are great maps online.

path it this way. That's a couple of the pictures.

So I wanted to, again, I have a more linear mind. So again, I said I have no objection to those trails, and Bill has been Great in terms of whatever he's thinking of doing some of these kind of contact with me, but I didn't know that I want to discuss with you. What should we have a more formal procedure to change the trail system in terms of you all voting as opposed to these and yeah that's fine though. So I'm tossing out the word what you guys want.

That's why I put it on the map and try it today. because I don't, but a lot of it, Greg, like the green trail, the one by the highway, I need to see if that's feasible or not anyway before I propose it, but it just happened to be on a map. And that would be a very good trail. If people want to go from Sheen and Raleigh South to Ames, that would be an important trail.

Lisa, thank you. Peter. I know our

I would probably prefer that rather than because my strong inclination is to keep you all involved with that. You know, I'm happy to make a decision. I'd rather thank you all for being involved in it too. It's all of our trails and paths and everything.

I had a question. Online, beautiful maps, those exact maps, they're all color-coded. Is there a rhyme or reason for the different colors?

Different shapes.

But no other designation. So if we're thinking about people use, people saying they don't like the Delaware trails or You know, have logs in the way, or stumps, or stuff like that. We could look at the ski, right? So everybody knows about the ski trail map. Green is easiest, blue is a little bit moderate, and black is hard. I think that one's simplified a lot. I think we could say to the public in a blind light, hey, we're really trying to get people out there. We understand your frustration. You're not knowing what the trail is like. We're adopting the U.S. Ski. I think that could be interesting. If we're looking at maps.

So let's... So we're really talking about three trails. Two, and a bridge built.

Well, the blue was there before. I see the trail closed sign right before the bridge. The boys are out there building. And the trail was already there. So we're reopening that.

which is snaps of purple. I don't even see it. Well, just whatever.

Yeah. This was already there. So this is new, this is new, and this is new.

Right. Well, this, we didn't even make, right? The pink one?

The pink one was... No, I just, it was on there. I wasn't going to bring that up. I should have taken it off so we didn't throw it too much.

But it's there.

Why don't we deal with that like a month or two from now? Okay. It just opens up maybe more possibilities. Yeah.

Well, if it's already there, you know, then that's a separate discussion. We wanted to vote on adding new trails. We're talking about the purple, the bridge, which is really just rebuilding and connecting.

That's an existing building.

And there's a dotted line under that purple. That was the old blue okay when it's not it just needed to be cleaned up, but I wanted to loop that because if that green on bottom actually ends up being. Right, the trail with it might be. So it doesn't it isn't such a long trail to get into the trail systems so and this one, then you're not even.

You're still figuring out what is possible. And how dry it is. So then we're actually down to one new trail. I'm just trying to get on my own.

It's actually, and I'm going to say it's not all that new. It's the light gray-gray, it's the blue that was there.

Just wanted to be clear on what we're going to vote on.

It's the old, yeah. It's there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to wait to take the clothes down until we make sure that bridge is, we're trying to do them so I can block on it without a spry ADR. Great.

Do you have a copy of this? That you're, for a site you're copying? No, you can keep that copy.

I can PDF that to you.

So do you, I'd like to make a motion. Please. That we approve the Revival of the former Blue Trail loop as depicted in purple on the map that will serve your- That's always been your- I'll second that.

Is this the Ames property with- The Ames, yeah. It looks like- Probably. Sorry, okay. So to reiterate for our vote,

I vote that I make a motion that we approve re vitalizing the formal former blue trail loop that is depicted in purple on the map that Bill said.

And I seconded the motion.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

So on the green, did you want to kind of? Well, let's wait until, let me get more deeper into it. I'm just kidding. I just, this morning. Yeah, I was going to say, are we ready to go with that?

Or do you want to come back again?

No, if I can't, if I go in and I start sinking in, like, and it's going to be another four block and stuff like that, it's like, no. I just don't do it. But if it's not, if it's easy and it's just a trail, let's do it. But you might want to check with, I don't know what we want to do with the state on that. I'll check on that part of all things.

So can we pivot back to the Boy Scouts on Saturday, just in terms of scheduling?

So Bill's going to try to be there for a short while in the morning. Would you want me to try to see if Evan or

Like the father's just pretty, other than Jackson's father helped a little bit, the other guy just stood there and said, I'm sick or something.

You think they're okay on their own? You and maybe Peter can go back and check.

Yeah, I'm going to go back after. It's like the water's deep and getting across there is not fun. So I'm going to wait until they put the decking on and then I'll go back with I've got some cut, pulled out some of the old metal fence that was along the other road and tried to put as much into that lock so that if it ever floated, it won't float away. So I don't know.

But through that Saturday, you feel confident that after your hour or so, the mobility...

They're just tossing plants and throwing them on and hopefully... Maybe Jackson could do that with,

Yeah, he's fine. But that's supervision because Woody Goss will be there. John Goss will be there too, I think. Right? Yeah. He's a woodshop teacher. Is that right?

Yeah, he was black. And he does his level. Or Jackson goes to his level. He's like, it's straight.

But Will, do you know if Jonathan will be there?

I don't know. No. I think his kid.

His son is also an Eagle Scout working on a, to be, and working on a project in Kia through the land trust. So I don't know if Jonathan, he's part of that group. He's one of the leaders there. But I don't know of his commitment and obligation or involvement with Jackson's project. Generally speaking, they all piggyback on each other's, but I don't know.

I think he was just there to pick up his son. So He didn't, I didn't do anything.

Who's our contact with Jackson? Is it you?

One of them and Bill is the other.

Do you want to, is Jackson going to get back to you? Bill, yeah. If you want to just ask him if Mr. Goss is going to be there. All right. So one thing, one good thing came out of this latest bridge project is is that uh or what they turn to be um i'm going to come up with the adjective for pounds like the bridge we don't have to have anyone what those do field trips anymore we could just give administrative reports what is it speed up the project considerably i think he did at least technically when we were finishing up

They looked at it. I said to Tom, Eric wasn't there. I don't know what your name was. I forgot her name. It's a sister. But I said to Tom, can we have an administrator? Can we have a bar? And the administrator goes, oh, yeah. So he just does a verbal administration all the time.

Well, I think that WWC has actually been voting on site. Okay, to go ahead and the difference is they're not going to even they're not going to go out and share what we would love to do that. Yeah. Getting back to kind of stewardship and stuff. Andrew, did you walk with the financial conservancy on McCulloch last year?

Do you recall that?

Or did you?

I didn't go.

I don't think I did. Was there a... Just saying.

I think you didn't go. I did not go. I don't believe I went last year.

What was that to do?

So PNC holds the conservation easement for the Montauk property, and they do an annual inspection. We get an email. I just got an email from a new... It seems like every year there's a new guy that he wants to set up. time to walk the property. Evan has always wanted to do that because what he does is he has his own property with PNC Eastman, and he tries to schedule sort of a guy. Both are done in the same day. So Evan will certainly want to walk.

I would be interested in.

Would you like to do that? Okay. So I will share your name and Evan's name with the guy.

Okay. I have one last sort of thinking about moving on from that just to to sort of point out. Perhaps how do. I don't know if we need to set a particular standard for trail trail clearing or maintenance that the stewards are doing that Andrew remember I mentioned to you at the hacker happy hour that they. So there are a lot of laurels and things that are pretty close in on the trails of the Champaign South. And they had been just cut and left so they were underfoot on the actual trail. And, you know, I don't need somebody to come along and vacuum the trails by any means. But I think if you're cutting, it should be tossed off to the side. So then it's not a potential tripping hazard or, you know, it also obscures the trail to some degree and, you know, could cover up a stump or something, whatever. So I just wanted to make sure that people felt that that was appropriate and we should remind our students of that.

I think what happens with it, I've seen Jason, I'm like, you know those little garden clippers your grandfather had? He has a nose on a long stick. I take my brush out and it's like, I'm like 10 to 1 on him and I'm better. It's wider. And you know, they like wide trails. It's not very, it's a weed whacker with the brush. A lot of times I switch to a weed whacker. It's not too sharp. But it would, they'd be a lot more efficient. They're heavy.

Well, that's, I think, the downside is they are heavy. These are like, I think where he was trimming was up at shoulder height, too. So that's not really as it was.

I think what he did that was, because I walked a lot on the trail before, and he was snipping just little pieces of it all. It would take him longer to bend over and pick it up and cut it or whatever, maybe a blower. But the equipment would be.

Do you guys have a standard for what we're doing? I'm not sure. Yeah.

The answer is no, because I'm one of the stewards for Land Trust, and there is no standard, because I asked the question. So yeah, I agree. I think there should be a standard, just general standard.

Well, yeah, I think it probably means we need to recommend a tool for, you know, a method.

I think now the electric ones, I have an electric chainsaw, and I had a tree come down, it was a foot and a half wide, and and no problem kind of day cutting. The new higher ones, maybe with the weed whacker, would be their binder. That might be a solution to making, you know, they can just zip by and cut them and come back with a range. What do you mean by a weed whacker?

Like a swinger? I wouldn't use a weed whacker. Sometimes you get a brush. The thing that you have.

Oh, that's a different thing. Mine is my weed whacker from my house. And I'll put a weed with a string attachment of a cutting grass, soft stuff. But if it's like, you know, finger width or something, which a lot of it are, it has a different type of blade. It's not like I have had like a circular saw blade that's a grade. Our guys have the E-Wave string trimmer set, right, Andrew? They do.

They do, but I don't think that a string trimmer is for this height. So, you know, it may be kind of tedious, but, you know, a rake, you know, go through and do a small section at a time and rip it somehow to an area where you can just push it off. Yeah, that's what I do.

And then lathers, too.

Yeah, lathers.

I have been spending the last two days working my yard that everything's just kind of got away from me. So I moved everything in May, and you would never believe I did a single thing with this. Long story short, though, I have an electric hedge trimmer. It will take a branch that the diameter of my tongue really is. That's probably the thing.

What do you call it?

It's got like a salty... Mine is about three or four years old. I can see if... I'll check on it.

I mean, those aren't that heavy, really.

It depends what you might have. It's the battery that's heavy. My wife is much more precise than I am, so I'm better screwing up our box. That's who's using it.

You're right. You're absolutely right. And how high, again, how high you're using it. If it's lower down, it's lower. But, you know, I think perhaps whatever tool is being used, just the notion that there shouldn't be, you know, a carpet of whatever you just removed left on the trail and you know we can talk with them about you know upgrading their their tool you know what tools they have available but um a rake might be the tool that we're really talking about because however you cut these things off they need to be pushed inside and um i agree bending over and picking up every little leaf is that would that would be The wrong way to go.

There's just a little snubs, you know, those pieces of.

Well, and I don't think that there are that many places where the trail is that narrow and it's that big. I don't know. I haven't run into that issue. before and and maybe it is because of the tool that these things that it makes lots of little things instead of bigger you know chunks that are easier to pick up and cross to the side um i like that i think that too like way back because you know it's gonna grow back if you can do it for it's for two or three years yeah then you don't have to come back yeah

And I know people don't like to, because of ticks, they like to fly.

The foliage growth on my shores around the house, and there are a lot of them, the hydrangeas, are looking for very comparable consistency in a model world. I can't believe how fast everything's growing.

Sure. Well, I mean, it's a green-filled plant. I'm just happy on that part of the reality. That's so interesting. I agree.

Moving on, Russell, do you have the, still have an interest and ability to work with Steve Perry?

Is he mobile?

He wrote to us that he's going to be visiting April 2027. Led to two things. Number one is his if we needed any edits on the maps. And one obviously only aims for what we just talked about. And the second would be, we never did anything with it. And that whole area around it is still in flux, but to do a new map for upper Three Mile River. And again, so if you could see what he would charge us for a brand new map for the Three Mile River, and for modifications like to the AIMS map. And one thing I'm interested in, if you want, I mean, if you want to contact him, that would be wonderful. I can reach out to him too, Russ. But what type of software, tonic, whatever is he using? So after his business closes next year and we need to basically make a change out of that, how do you do that? Because AVENZA has changed their model? I don't think he uses AVENZA for this. I think he's using, I don't really want software he's using.

I think that's, I know he had, like, I said very much. I don't know if he's got it.

One thing that would be really interesting is if he, It's going to sell or have this business to be taken over by someone that was work and who that person baby. Yes, he hasn't taken the higher level yeah he's got he's got he's got some type of template he uses because all this nasty for the other land shows i've seen look very, very similar to ours. They have the same look and feel we have stuff.

Curious what he does. We asked Essex Lancerous. Do we ask other Lancerous? What master?

Who's the man of choice? That's what I need. Thank you, Russell.

And do you want to kind of give a recap of the crazy project? Crazy process we went through in August. I will just say, to give you an idea of how crazy it was, DEEP had a five o'clock deadline to submit your applications. And I did not get information from our forester or our arborist until about two o'clock that afternoon. I sent it into DEEP at four o'clock. And just for the heck of it, I checked at 5.30, it was shut down. We could not submit. They were strict about their deadline.

Yeah, it was frustrating because, you know, I mean, August is a time when a lot of people aren't exactly super available.

So I would just say that I happily wrote the grant, but if you're not so happy, Dan's going to manage it.

Well, we'll see how it goes. I feel like we finally clarify with Eric DeForester, you know, the level of project management we were expecting from him, which was really, I think, good that we clarified that, and when it increased his estimate by five or six thousand dollars. Wow, that's not a little, you know, and I just, I really feel like We are a volunteer commission. This is not our area of expertise. We've never done a project like this. And it was going to be really necessary to have eyes on and expertise involved through every step. The grant period is super short. It's a one year, maybe 15 month grant period. And I think that we were also fairly, you know, likely to need to hire consultants after the end of the grant period as the site is maintained. But we did, I did a stellar job getting all of the blanks filled in and the keys crossed and the eyes dotted. You know it's it's it's an ambitious project, but it is a small site, I think that that's kind of the saving grace. And you know there's there's still things that didn't need to be specified in the application that we can work toward you know, making decisions about as as and when and if you get the award so that won't be until.

They will announce their decision in mid-October. In terms of the grant period, Eric Hansen, our forester, said we should really try to push deep to see if we can start some of the work both if we can contract with DEEP as soon as possible after the grant award. They're talking about between the announcements and mid-December, contracting with whoever the grant recipients are.

Well, we're going to need to have an RFP ready to go.

Yes, yes. And the main thing that we'd like to get a jump on is the palanthus trees, the trees that have them, like what I have to say. So we're going to slash the bark and put herbicide in and then up the trees and put herbicide on the stumps. And Chris Vagos at Happy Hour said, even doing that, expect three to four years of sprouts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so one of the reasons, one of the things that we heard

from a variety of sources was that like fragmites, you know, there is an ideal time to do this slash and paint or whatever you want to call it. And that is like fragmites as they are drawing down nutrients stored for their winter hibernation, whatever you want to call it. So before the grant. If we can do that, yeah.

So I had a couple of conversations with, with our forest robotic. We can do it in November. Anything that's still a company that's pretty effective, period, we're trying to do that. So.

I was very surprised that that treatment or that aspect of the project didn't seem to be super expensive.

No, and I was just going to say that we, Maria and the rest of the board of finance allowed us to carry over $2,000 for this project. And if we need to, we can do that out of our pocket.

And I think that, you know, we need to maximize our...

If it's funded, I think we have a priority for the schedules for these guys. Exactly. We have a priority for the schedules of these guys who need to work.

Right. You know, and we can't, you know, I think we might be able to, for something like $2,000, we don't think we'd have to go out to bid. No. So we can get started, but, you know, that's an example. For the rest of the oversight of the project and the major cutting and chipping and painting, all of that has to go out to bid.

But if you get the grant, the bids come in way over the grant.

we're going to hire you to do it so one of the things that i i i think i'm fairly i'm pretty impressed with the company that worked as an advisor to us and i'm hopeful that they can win this bit and one of the reasons i'm hopeful they can win it is that um there are not many companies that can come in and do everything that they're going to do that can cut the trees down that can that are licensed herbicide sprayers that can do the planting, that can put up the deer fence, that can do the irrigation system. There's a whole spectrum of work that we want. Even if this company is able to do it, they have just gotten into actually installation. They're going to be asked to put in roughly around 900 trees and trucks. And not only that, they're going to put them in with a soil amendment, a hydropotane, which is supposed to help retain moisture around your roots and your planting. So we shall see.

We put together the numbers with advice from people who do this.

I will say that there's a little bit of a cushion factor in there, which everybody told us to do. And even at that, even with the cushion or whatever, we're still only about half of what we potentially could have asked for. The other thing I wanted to mention is that the Connecticut River Gateway Commission has supported a number of different projects along the river. And it was actually pretty active in old, five years ago, back in the 70s, 80s. And some of the other towns have come to Gateway for support, All-City River in particular, Deep River in particular. Suzanne Thompson, who, and the chair of Gateway has said to me, he said, you know, if you have a project in town that you think we can support, you know, put in a grant request or put in a request. And I think to help support this, maybe all yours to keep it going, I think would be an ask I would like to consider. I wanted to ask you one question, Ken. I don't know if they could respond to it. But I was looking at the new maps from Steve. Oh, I'm on the team.

Oh, yes.

No, I think they're fine. It reminds me of something that he has very little of that time. Well, somebody pointed that out, actually.

I think I did an email, too.

That doesn't look right to me because... I've spoken to a number of the people at Duke that have maintained their areas for years. They've been much more consistent. Now that we've been cutting the fragmites, they're saying, great, thanks a lot. But for years prior to that, they were cutting all around here. And I think they were cutting on her in the pond.

Should we try to double-check that with Steve?

I think it's a question to ask, yeah, because that's not correct to my...

There's kind of a bold outline for our property, Maria, and then it looks like there's a piece of the pond that goes with the homeowners.

Yeah, so...

Yeah, yeah.

But I don't think that that, I don't know, Deep has always, you know, cared for that area.

So maybe unless they have a relationship with the property owners and that they could go ahead, but we never mentioned it to them. But then I do think that they were treating their, you know, the end of the pond that's down by their educational facility. Yeah, definitely. Because that area is way in better shape then. I think they just didn't look at it. Well, there's like steps.

There's like steps on the other side. So like, I know I've seen people ice skate. So maybe what they're trying to do is just...

In one respect, it's somewhat of a moot point because it's not our property regardless. But on the other hand, if we're treating somebody else, treating third parties.

Right, right. No, that's a good point. Now, I was, if you go on the town GIS, I'm pretty sure it shows up at the state level.

I have another memo also that I can share. I just dig it out of something at the house, so. It might be helpful to shed some light on setback areas.

I'll try to do some research on it. You might want a little note on there. Check fairly and you get to find out. I went to the Conservation Commission meeting last week. And they have expressed an interest, I think, subsequent to talking to a deep wildlife biologist or doing some type of survey of endangered and threatened species with an old line, which would be of value to, I think, to the Land Trust and to us. It would certainly help when we're looking at land acquisition if we can point out that there's endangered species that occupy a certain property that would give us acquisition points in an application, but also maybe affect how we will steward that property. However, the problem is in the details. And for example, we sprayed in fairylanding, we had to do a natural diversity database check. to see if there were any species that could possibly be located there. And Dean came back and told us there were two types of turtles that could be found in that pond. And Mike Aurelia and Joe Atwater said, no, you're not going to find them there. So we hired a herpetologist and lo and behold, he sees one of the two creatures in there. So you could go down there 20 times and stand up edge of the pond and you wouldn't see anything. So I suggested the conservation law. How would you determine what's there and how would what you create be any better or different than each database that you can use? So I think the idea is not really fully thought out at this point. So one of the things they thought possibly would be a start would be to try to come up with a compendium of rural pools around. And then we got into a discussion of how would you determine where the rural pools are. So Brandy Campbell, who was the chair, and I'm not familiar with what she was talking about. She was saying we could use different programs like, or whatever to determine, but you would have no, no way to confirm the high level, whether they're actually vermin. So you have to basically gear here and there, but you have to do this with that. I know Micah really was interested in doing that too. So he would be someone to do that, but both of them suggested interest in possibly working with them. I don't know if you've seen the emails I've exchanged with the rest. Yeah, so I'm not sure how, what your involvement would be. Because it's very much a work in progress.

I have the same concerns as you obviously brought up. You can do it by flying around. You can do it at pools. You can't sit in our own pool. Go back and see if you're there in the spring. None of us are. You have to actually

I mean, so there's a rural pool where I used to live off of 7 Maywood. And I know because there's like a spotted salamander that I saw. And I was like, what? And so, I mean, I'll probably never see that creature again in my whole life. So, I mean, how do you, if you keep going there and going there, what's the likelihood that you're going to be able to identify it and see it. You know what I'm saying?

You have to be there at the moment. Okay.

And there's definitely, I would say, definitely two species of turtles in the pond. And I would almost say there's three. Because I've seen two that come up all the time. And then there's one this past year that almost looked like a like a leatherback or something. It was just the most bizarre thing. And I was pretty excited about it, actually. That's a great idea. I'm too busy taking pictures of the coyotes. But yes, so I definitely know there's at least two, but I really think that there's a third.

I think it's still kind of continuing. Craig, I'm not quite sure. I think you're going to have to let them figure out what they're doing.

Yeah, I mean, somebody who's far more, who, I mean, I think Brandy's actually a veterinarian or something like that, so she might know what she's looking for, other than just somebody like me who's standing there going, you know.

Yeah, I don't think so.

I think that they just need to figure out what it is and narrow it down. And then, you know, then we can, you know, because it's, it's, it's their initiative. You know, figure it out.

You also sent an email to that. Yeah. They did? Yeah. A spotted turtle.

and a northern diamondback caravan.

That was the one that I saw. That weird, like, that.

Are they in fresh water? Is that fresh water? It's like glass. We saw one, we were kayaking, Fred and I, a couple weeks ago, we saw one caravan. But I didn't realize it. I thought it was fresh water.

Oh, it is fresh. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think so.

I believe so.

Sorry, I can't come up with names. In Brantford, by the water, in the salt water.

Probably fully salt.

Well, there's definitely snappers.

I don't like any snappers.

like the traditional box turtle, like the painter. Yeah, they're there all the time. But then there's also obviously the snapper, which we see all the time, you know. But that other one, I was like, oh, what is that?

Oh, yeah. If you want to look at the...

very well in consideration here. The town GIS, this isn't very helpful, this water bone, because that's obviously what a cobble's got in that. But this at once right here, if you see the shape of 24, that headland is the shape that the chin or the pragately owned land that juts into the pond. So if their property ends there, then the pond is on the other side. And it's pretty positive.

So that's, we'll cross our fingers and we'll find out. So the other thing that I discussed, well, I talked to a lot of number of things that conservationists, but the other thing that we discussed was the, The hand-picked care of which day was, I got an email from Elton Thou. I'm surprised that she's organizing things. And also from Ted Pfeiffer. And George Ryan, on his own, he's the vice chair, reserved us a table. So where else? Yes, next to him, next to conservation. So what are our thoughts on, I was hoping Christine would be here because I know that's the last email about her not being here tonight.

Yeah. But I'm happy to help out at the booth if we decide to do it.

Oh, good. Can you just remind me, what was the date on that again?

Because I was over here. I don't think I'm going to be here. I could help at it, but I'm not getting home until Friday night. So I don't want to, if someone else can like get it, I'm happy to spend an hour. I was going to go to it anyway, but.

Well, one of the things, much like mid-summer, there's some logistics to work out. Conservation asked me if we had tables. I said, no, we got them from Lime Art. Presumably, we can get them again from Elizabeth since she's organizing this, but we might not need to transport them there.

Where is this visit there? It's at the, what's the place? The hole in the wall. It's a good place. It's a good place. It's a good place.

It's a good place. It's a good place. It's a good place. It's a good place. It's a good place. It's a good place. It's a good place. It's a good place. It's a good place. It's a good place.

I have a folding table.

I could help out a little bit, but I had company there that day, so.

We don't have to be there all day. I mean, I think if we were there from whatever time it's 8.30 to 10.30 to 3.30. This is probably the most important thing on that page is Sarah Stahl is coordinating for conservation.

She does a lot of, does pipes in conserved areas. And one of the things she talks about is indigenous occupations. She's quite interested in that. I think she would be a great connection for Christine. I will forward that document to Christine. Either one of you are welcome to keep that copy.

And I'm happy to help if I'm around. I just need to double check on the date.

Did I have the line on there?

10.30 to 3.30. Will I be the benefit or purpose of having a table with 13 points?

I thought when I first got it that it would be neat if we were to have a, I don't know what Christine will think, or what Mir would think, Andrea, but do a, because we have the caves. and A's is to highlight a couple of our properties and show where we have had really efficient occupation. I don't think we have to go, you know, over the top. That would be really interesting, I think, to people. I think we already have stuff gathered, stuff we put in the... Karen, do you know if you would see your... Are you...

I know that you have people and I, you know, I'm saying, well, it doesn't sound like an event that you want to put things out that you're trying to sell and things like that. But we're just going to have maps and tributaries and stuff like that, just information.

You know, just a presence kind of thing.

Is anyone else around here? I'm pretty much out of town starting now. Friday, the weekend of this month. And the end of the month is the fine dust?

Maybe the 28th.

Okay. I don't have any answers, but I can be there for sure. I can help. I have a truck. I can help move things down. Was there a rain date or?

No, they do this every year, but this year they really, they're growing it. Probably because of the 250. Yeah. Do they want to get no presence?

One thing I would like to find out, we've been talking about this, is a key, no step in the Hantuck tribe occupied a lot of the land in this town. But going back how far, when did the Nihantik tribe really kind of coalesce? Because he's talked about people being at Ames like 4,200 years ago. I don't know that the Nihantiks go back that far. Who were the people before them? It would be interesting to explore.

He's supposed to be writing a book. For the coming years, he's been telling me it's about done. And he's going to talk about all the, you know, occupation. Hey, Gavin.

Hey, Gavin. Sorry.

Are you done?

Well, just thank you for letting me be there. I still think it would be fun sight.

And I know, I remember Rusty, it was too many signs, but it would be nice that sheep, that sheep's cliff or whatever they call it, have a sign that you can read without sitting there like in the encyclopedia. Maybe possibly talking to Annette about what did it look like when they were here? Did they have logs to protect it if it rained out? driving rain, and what did you find? Maybe some pictures of the artifacts.

Yes, I have those. One of the things I want to start doing in the next month is start to do some editing on the website. I didn't even know you had a website until like a month or two ago.

And I look at every hiking thing in Connecticut. But the... It would be nice to have something there so that when I brought my grandkids here, they were paying it. They like to dig up stuff.

I want to do the trail descriptions. We need to build up the period. I want to do something about the organization of the website. It's frankly a disaster. That needs to be redone. It's going to be I'll get a couple of days and maybe Katie, I'm going to have to figure out how we can sit around. So the last thing that we talked about, I guess we're all set to put something together for New Hampshire and start working on that. Do you want to talk a little bit about the happy hour, the last happy hour? I thought it worked very well. I just want to say that you did a wonderful job in promoting and basically discussing afterwards with the other. I love the article of mine, but the question was on the ground and everything. Good job.

Yeah, so I reached out to Mike to have him do a talk on something or another, but he wasn't going to be around. And Joni and I, when we walked in to just explore a few path options, It was just so evident that there were so many mushrooms around, a variety of shapes and colors that I then called Chris to see if she would be so gracious to speak on mushrooms. And she's so prepared, right? She doesn't just wig it. She's got her mycology book. She has a sampling of mushrooms. She shows you the gills. She has a 10-minute talk in the parking lot before we hit the road and then pulls them all out on the ground, passing things around. And at the halfway point where we could have returned, nobody wanted to. There were some, but then we went on and then did a little bit of a longer skinny trail coming back to the white trail and found Evan and others and yourself at the end. So people seem to have very good feedback. The food was good. graciously will be reimbursed for paying them for their fee for the food. There's always a bottleneck at the bar.

Hopefully now the mushrooms ended up in the snacks.

I suggest that we bring the mushrooms from the table next time. There's a bottleneck at the bar.

The other thing, too, is when you buy a drink,

It includes tacks and tips.

And they have a tip jar out there. And they don't tell you that it was only on the specialty cocktail does it say service fee or something.

And we pay for the tip in advance. That's part of it. Yes, it is. So it's a different kind of staff and money. And I don't know. It's always something that we try to approach it every year, but it's a little more delicate and, I don't know what the word is.

Yeah, it is what it is. Too bad we can't have it somewhere else.

But it was well, I thought well received and we promoted the online land trust events at the happy hour. And then in the article, we mentioned where we said it was going to be too. Which just brings me back to the Midsummer Festival that I think it would behoove us to have a flyer with the expected dates of the happy hours for our combined groups. By July, we better know. That's going to happen September and October. So that we can at least say it and put it out there.

Maybe even laminate a copy on the major kiosks.

Yeah, yeah.

And we've been flip-flopping, like the interest of the first thing we do the first, or?

We sort of, last year we did the same schedule as we kicked it off this year and last year. So we could flip it this year, I think.

I was going to say, I know I thought the year before we were doing a flip-flop.

That's all right. But I will opt for not May next year.

I have nothing else on the agenda except for executive session. Does anybody else want to talk about anything else?