Open Lands Board - Regular Meeting

We've been in Hamilton all day. We'll go ahead and call this meeting to order.

Let's start with the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty

So, roll call. All righty.

Katrina Mendry. Kate Stone.

Here.

Kimberly Richardson. Kent Myers. Kara Mapplethorpe. Gil Gill.

Here.

Alan Mackey. Here. Tonya Bloom. Here. Timing is everything. Exactly. Al Babel. Here. Bob Kron. Here. Sharon Barnes.

Here.

Penny Canton.

Here.

Cherry Fisher.

Here.

Daryl Sperry.

Here.

Paul Moore.

Here.

That timing was perfect, Tonya. I know.

I planned it. That's great. Is there any amendments to the agenda?

What about the approval of minutes?

That would probably a good one to go back to. Approval of minutes. Has everybody got the minutes in front of them?

I make a motion that we accept them as presented.

Is there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion on that? All those in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Minutes are approved as shown. Now any amendments to the agenda? There are none. Any public comment on the items not on the agenda? Updates anything?

Can you hear me now? Ooh, yeah. Jake Blessing, Pitterroot Land Trust. Just a quick update tonight. Melissa and some of our other staff are at the Land Trust Alliance. annual conference this year in Denver right now, so it's just me and Elise tonight. But I'll just go through a quick rundown of kind of where various open lands bond projects are at. Kind of in order of closest to closing to less close, Cheeseboro Ranch Conservation Easement has received the phase five approval, and we are kind of in the process of beginning to close that easement. Also close is the Bob Lewis CE. That one is working toward phase five approval. Should be fairly soon. And then there's a whole bunch that are in the document drafting phase. So that would be the Griffin CE, Erickson CE, Fox CE. And now, as of the end of August, the Lynn CE, also in Corvallis.

Sorry.

Everything okay?

I just noticed Bob, your grandpa, showed up.

I'm a little creepy.

I know.

Sorry, Jake.

You never know. I was just about done anyway. Basically, the Lynn CE in Corvallis is... You guys have been bombed.

This is a bomb.

I'm getting out of there. I'm ending that. That's definitely a bomb.

I don't know who Bob is.

That was a bomb. That was a photo. That was Zoom bomb.

Next thing you know, we're getting the bad pictures.

Zoom bomb. Been there, done that.

Been there, done that. Oh, really? Oh, my God.

And one day in the park board, we were doing. Was it park board? That we got Zoom bomb?

That was the first time I've ever been Zoom bombed.

Yeah, we got. They took over.

They took over the Zoom. We still got a quorum. Sorry, Zoom people. It said Bob's grandpa.

In the park board, we got Zoom bombed. That's what we ended up calling it. And it got really nasty, really quick. Jeff Burrows was in the room, and he's calling IT saying, shut it down, shut it down. And they could get it shut off. It got really nasty, really quick. It was probably back then. I don't know, how long ago was that, Bob? I was gonna say three or four, so yeah. So yeah, you can get, because this is a public Zoom, because it's a public meeting. So always be careful.

How do we know Bob's grandpa had malicious intent?

Sorry, Jake.

We've been there, done this, don't want that picture.

Yeah. I don't know. What do you want to do, Mr. Chair?

And if you looked at it, if you saw it, it said AI generated.

I just worry if I bring it back up that it's going to be...

I say do it. I don't really want to...

I guess we could take a vote on it.

I say yes.

That's your call. I don't care. I mean, obviously there's some AI generated thing that is logged into.

I mean, if you looked at it, it did. It said there's a little blue and white tag that said AI generated.

I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't think so.

Okay.

Or get them on people's phones. We all call one of them or something. I don't know.

I've never had this. We'll try. Here we go. I'm going to be quick on the screen if something goes bad.

Okay. Yeah, there's Kate and Sharon.

Okay. Thanks, Shannon. Let's see, guys. I'm going to start blank. Recording in progress. They're still there.

Bob's not there. Oh, well.

Oh, did Bob's grandpa leave?

Oh, here comes something. We're back. Yay, OK.

Sorry, Sharon. It's OK. Did Bob's grandpa talk to you guys?

Excuse me?

Did you guys see the AI bot that showed up on the screen?

I saw an AI something. I just thought it was my computer going haywire.

Well, we can join. I think he's gone. We also lost Paul. Maybe he was secretly the culprit. We're going to start back up. Can you hear us, Sharon and Kate?

Yeah, but I lost my video, so I might try to re-log on and see if that works.

You're on there twice now.

Yeah, I'm on there twice, but no video.

No, we have ours on. Kate, can you hear us?

I can sure hear you.

Okay. Let's keep going.

Okay.

I think I was about to tell you about the projects that are still in the document drafting phase. Those are... Do you want to hear the whole thing over again?

No.

The document drafting phase, yes. So those are the Griffin CE, Erickson, and I know Erickson's been going on for a while. We are making progress on that. They're just some things that take time, and you've got to give them time. But the Fox CE is also in that group. And then at the end of August, the Lynn CE got the phase four, it completed phase four. And so we've started drafting those documents as well. And we also have some applications in the works that will be coming to you in the next few months in addition to the one that you're gonna learn about today. And that's it from us. Thanks.

But this is the end of the quarter.

If you'll have mileage sheets, you can turn them in to me, and I'll get them to Tammy, and then I will, everybody that uses the mileage sheets, I will give you updated ones that we just received.

What did it go up to? Oh, no, it's still from the beginning. It doesn't go up until July, January.

That's all I have. All right, thank you. Moving on to old business. Education subcommittee update report.

We had materials at the fair. Thank you for those that stopped by and took a look at them. And thank you to the planning department for helping put those materials together. I did not go to pick them up.

Don't look at me.

I hope you didn't want them back.

No, they're your materials.

I did actually do it because I talked about picking them up, and they said that the map was so far out from everybody looking at it that they figured that we wouldn't even want it.

I think that was a good call.

And those were the two things that I thought of when I sat there on Monday after the fair and thought, should I try? But it's also working, so... Great. I'm so glad. I'm sure that lots of people looked at it because of the state of the map, and next year we can decide if we want to do something bigger, more, or the same.

I did have a note on that.

Did you get the Rector Farming Ranch poster back? Oh, the barn superintendent picked it up for me. I haven't got it from him yet, though.

I didn't know.

He was the one who said that the other one was.

Oh, I had a note on the poster when I went to the GIS department. So we can get a poster of all of the conservation easements in the county. What we had at the fair was just the open lands. And so I think when we got the request, I wasn't sure what you guys wanted, but he said he'd be willing to make like a map that I think differentiates them. If you guys want, it just has to come as a request. And there's a, you know, kind of like he has a materials cost and to kind of put it all together. So food for thought for next year if you want something like that.

Yeah.

And he can print it bigger and, you know, kind of higher, finer resolution because he's a professional map maker.

Did he say what the cost would be?

I think the initial, what he calls, he needs to make the map, basically. So he'd need to make the map that shows all conservation easements and then the ones with the open lands. And then once he's made the project, that'll be a cost, whatever his time to do it. And then he would print the maps. And that's whatever the printing materials is. So $60 or something like that to print the map, I think, is what he charges for materials. Yes.

But doesn't he already have all the conservation easements? Because in the Realtor's Grab Bag section, it has a thing for conservation easements.

He has them.

I have not pulled it up and looked at it all.

He doesn't have them differentiated between open lands and just general. That was the one thing. And then he doesn't have it saved as like a big map. Okay. I'm not the GIS guy, but it's totally doable. If that's something you guys want, we can put that request through. He takes his map making pretty seriously.

I think it would be valuable to have that picture.

I'll look into it and the cost to do it. I'd do it for free, but I am not that good.

Then we can make a decision, but I'd vote for that too.

I think the key is having it high resolution so that in large format, it's not like.

That was, yeah.

Well, it's understandable for what we did for the fair, but if we're going to like really make it, let's make it.

Well, what happens when it gets updated?

The Wrights at Farming Ranch, they made their poster out of some kind of thicker material. Like foam board kind of? No, you can roll it up, but it's almost like a dollar bill or something. Like it's kind of waxy or whatever. And it was really sturdy material. That poster was only a little bit smaller. It was only $26 or something. But it was really good material. Did they do it at UPS? UPS, yeah.

Yeah, whatever you guys want. That option's out there.

It might be an option, too, if the county isn't set up for heavier-duty material is to export the file, too, if that's a possibility. I don't know.

Yeah, kind of beyond my realm.

I don't think it's so much the price. It's just the material. Sounds good.

Yeah, if we get an idea what it's going to cost, we'll move from there. Thanks.

If it's saved as a SVG, then it's scalable.

Vector graph.

paper that's what the size I think it was like eight or nine dollars is copy So it wasn't that expensive.

That's very expensive. So we can update it right up to the time he prints it.

Yeah, I think the lead time's short. It was just, like, the ability to make the map project file in GIS, so then, like, every time it's updated, it's just easy for him to do it, and then he can get genuine every year.

Sounds good. Yeah.

Yeah, the old ones. He can differentiate now up till today.

Well, we could also put in five or six or nine, however many are in the pipeline somewhere as a designated color. Sure.

Okay, there you go.

Good idea.

Uh-oh. I'm just kidding. It's just Kimberly. Kimberly.

Bob, Right to Farm and Ranch board update. I don't think we have too much to report other than we had a poster at the fair alongside the lands poster.

Any idea about a website update?

No. For this? For Right to Farm and Ranch. Oh, for Right to Farm and Ranch.

up and coming project disclosure of actual possible or perceived conflicts of interest.

So this is the humble farms project owned by Dan and Joan holes. So at least it's going to give the intro. But if you guys have any conflicts, I guess I'll just tee it up, really. So we got the application in. We're reviewing it. It's not ready yet for you guys. There's a couple of things that came up in the review. And as you guys have expressed to us many times, when you get the application, you're trusting the planning department is giving you a correct and complete application. So we're just doing our due diligence. We had scheduled this meeting to have the intro So we're going to do the intro, but we don't have packets to hand out to you guys tonight. I don't have a solid timeline on when that application will be ready. It's sitting with the county attorney. They just had a question on something. So when that is answered, we can then release the application. I love these intro meetings because we can set the date. We can talk about site visits. I don't have a date for when the application is ready. I don't know if it's going to be a week or a couple weeks, so I'd hesitate to schedule anything. So we've done this before. It's not ideal, but we can reach out to you all via email and phone call when it's ready and have some proposed site visit dates. It's looking like the Open Lands meeting for it is going to be the third week in November or Maybe if something happens very quickly, the third week in October, I think that's helpful. So what do you want to do with this? I mean, we haven't done the – I always – I'm not a fan of doing all the scheduling over the phone. Bob and I have talked about this before. It's just nicer, like, being all in the same room. But we're here tonight. We're going to get the intro. So, you know, we can have another meeting for the sake of just scheduling everything if you guys want, or we can just attempt to do it all Virtually, I mean, my recommendation, and I'm confident that the November meeting, we will have everything ready. This is just the county attorneys looking at something to have to do with mineral rights, something that hasn't come up in a while. We have new attorneys. I just want them to make sure they're completely comfortable understanding everything, making sure it's all good, doing our doing our review. And so if we decide on November, maybe we could decide on some dates tonight if you guys want. But there is a chance we could get it out sooner. I just can't speak for their office.

So the board's opinion on that.

I think I'd wait until the October meeting.

Set dates in October?

What?

Set the dates in October?

Deal with this on the October meeting since we don't know.

They're going to decide.

Do we have any other easements to look at?

Not at this moment. Probably by November there will be another application in.

Okay.

Absolutely.

So what I'm hearing is I could send out dates, let's just say, like once I get the application in, what we'll do is we'll notify you guys and say, here's the application. Come by, pick up a hard copy. We'll mail it to you, whatever you need to do. And then we will propose, similar to how we do it, we'll shoot for the November meeting. So we'll propose that site visit kind of right around the end of October, Halloween time, conservation subcommittee, and then have the meeting in the third week in October. October, November. November, sorry. Yeah. And this is all pending the county attorneys reviewing the mineral rights stuff. But I think that, you know, it's something we've seen before when there's a third party that has mineral rights on a piece of property. So there's been extensive legal opinions and reviews on this, many projects that have gone through with this. and we are making sure we just have that reviewed and the county is comfortable with a project like this and given our, you know, the legal team, we have a new, two new attorneys, so kind of a pattern when we get a new attorney in, they always want to look at stuff, so I understand.

I would like to go back to the conflict of interest. I have known Commissioner Hulse for quite a long time and and I serve side by side with him on the parks board where I'm the vice president, so I'm kind of torn about whether I probably should recuse myself.

I'm also on the park board with you.

And Penny is too.

Clarification, is this Dan's project or is this adjacent to Dan? This is Dan's. Sorry, everybody probably...

I don't know yet.

I'm kind of exploring that with you. I didn't realize it was going to come up tonight, so I haven't given it too much thought, but I just wanted to be out there that I serve on a board with him. I served a long time ago on this board with him as well.

I've never known you to be a biased person. Well, thank you.

How many of us know Dan? I mean, I think it would be really hard to like.

Well, here, let's read it here. So the conflict of interest.

What page?

It's page eight, part G. There we go.

Oh.

Whoa, there's a lot of qualifiers.

Quit making it smaller.

There we go. Why don't you go ahead and read them so everyone's aware.

No voting board member direct. I hope my copy is the same as that one. Should be. No voting board member directly or indirectly shall have an interest in or benefit by any contract made by the board or by its authority or in the furnishing of any supplies for use of the board. Number two, a conflict of interest may exist when a member of the board, three, has a financial interest in the matter or under consideration by the board or one of its committees. or represents a party having such an interest or is an adjoining landowner. Before consideration of the matter, the member shall announce that he or she is disqualified and the disqualification shall be entered in the minutes of the meeting. Thereafter, the member shall be excused from the meeting during consideration of the matter and shall not participate in consideration of voting. The member may participate as part of the public in attendance in providing information to the board. So part three is financial interest. Yeah, go ahead.

Based on that, I think I'm okay.

I think you're okay, too.

I think it's okay.

Gil, you're not far off. You're pretty close, Tim. You're not quite a joining landowner, but you're pretty close.

Oh, a word. Never been on the property. I'm just kidding. Oh, okay.

I'm just giving you a hard time. Pulling my leg. Yeah, I'm just pulling. Make sure you're paying attention there. It says adjoining landowner, not neighbor.

We're neighbors. Down the road. But no interest of any kind, officially or unofficially.

All right. Here are none other. I guess we can get to the presentation of the proposal.

Here you go, Elise.

Thank you. I always want to look at this screen, but when I do this. Okay. Oh, you know what I have to do? I have to, can you escape? Because we have to share this. Sorry, Zoom.

Yeah, we're sad because we don't have a video. Can you see it now, though? Right? No, because we lost our video with the AI thing.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

In the Zoom, I thought you had where the video and the audio didn't show up or something.

Yeah, that's on ours. So we're video right now. Yeah. And we're audio, so when I click those two buttons.

Okay, so they should be showing up.

I've never seen this where their video. there's probably something that it's stealing all our video right now or something like that i don't know probably zoom is there i've never seen that with their video when it works that's our video i mean it shows us right there sharon you can't see anything on the zoom screen correct no because when i logged back in it it wouldn't let me it didn't give me the choice of video

So I could go back out and try it again, but it'd take a little bit.

Kate, can you? All I can see is your kind of profile, the county's profile picture, but we're not seeing a shared screen. Same.

I don't know.

All right, sorry, I was just going to share all of this. Okay.

Just for the record, I would like to go on the record as I hope that when these AI bots get out of control and stuff, that the companies that made them have to pay giant amounts to go bankrupt. Thanks, Alan. But you've got to be able to travel.

That was great. And that's the problem.

I don't know how to get rid of this. Oh, there it goes. All right, well, I will describe every single photo in detail. Hi, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight and taking the time. My name is Elise Fox, and I am a conservation project manager at the Bitterroot Land Trust. And I am presenting to you the Humble Farms Conservation Easement OLBP number 202603. And I also want to thank the landowners, Dan and Joan Holes, for working with us to protect their lands. You are looking at a beautiful field of wheat, you said? Great. I was like, I thought it was being great. I'm just confirming. That was an exclamation. Wheat. On a beautiful hazy day, slightly looking at the bitter roots, and I'll continue from there. It's going to be a lot of those. Oh no, okay, thank God. Oh, and I'm gonna do this. I don't do Zoom a lot, so thanks for bearing with. All right, so this is gonna be a map of the proximity to protected land to the project itself. And it is about northeast of Corvallis on Humble Lane and Southerland Lane. It is contiguous with the Bailey Conservation Easement to the north and the Popham Ranch Conservation Easement to the south. And as you can see, it's gonna be this yellow property here. You'll see a little pink dot here and that is an excluded area. And then all of these green are Bitterroot Land Trust conservation easements. These lights colored are the in progress that Jake talked about, which we'll go over later. And then the orange are just other conservation easements by other land trusts, thankfully. And yeah, so as you can see, this is an essential connector piece to about four miles and over 400 acres of protected farmland east of the East Side Highway. This property is also highly visible from the East Side Highway and other major county roads. This property is owned by Dan and Joan Hulse. They've owned the property since 1973 as it was a part of the Hulse operation. the Holst Dairy Farm operation for many years until 2020. And historically, it has been in agriculture since the 1870s when John Lafayette Humble homesteaded the land after the Civil War and grew a lucrative sheep business. There's a lot of awesome history on this property, as most of the valley does have, and it's explained in the application when you get it. So the proposed property conservation easement is 127.90 acres. How am I off already? Sorry, y'all. Here we go. There will be no building envelopes and no residential dwelling units reserved. As you can see, the pink area is a five-acre exclusion around the historical homestead area. The property has 97% of soils of agricultural importance. Great water rates from the Corvallis Canal that runs through the property. As you can see off of Sutherland, the upper lateral here. There is also the Humboldt drainage ditch that runs between the railroad and the property boundary line. And there is great wildlife habitat here and irrigated pastures and hayfields. and access to water year round through the Corvallis Canal. And this property also is leveraged by the NRCS funding by 50% with the RCPP. Trying to think if there's anything else on the map that I am missing. Nope, great. Wonderful. The property map here, you can see this shaded area is hay fields and then this dotted shaded area is pasture. So approximately 89.2 acres of irrigated hay fields and approximately 37.4 acres of pasture. The brown you see are the interior fence lines, and then there's approximately 99% of the property irrigated via wheel line or hand lines. The only hand lines really are in this area here, and the landowners hope to update the irrigation. In the future to help that area to go back to real lines, the landowner grazes the property in the pasture area on a rotational grazing grazing practices and then there's irrigation maintenance and, as I said, future upgrades as well. Great. Conservation easement values. This property supports agriculture in an area of development pressure, preserves valuable agriculture and water resources in the Corvallis neighborhood, provides scenic views of open space from East Side Highway and major county roads, and protects wildlife habitat, supporting foraging, cover, and movement. for a variety of wildlife. The photo at the top is the Corvallis Canal in that upper eastern portion of the property. And the bottom one is hay bales and hay fields. Some more photos for you. Sorry to the Zoom people, I should be describing more. I apologize. The upper left-hand corner is going to be wheel lines. This is a view from Southern Lane out to the Bitterroot National Forest. And so you can kind of see the cows in the distance grazing in the pastures. And then down here is another view that is looking south from Humble Lane at Hayfields. And then another, this is in a different sequence of Hayfields. where the hay has been cut and now it's drying, and this is looking out to the east side highway to the Bitterroot National Forest. Different varieties of hay fields, very important. Quick PowerPoint, any questions that I can address? Yes?

What's that big circular area that's in the middle, who owns that?

That is a turf farm that was sold in 2021, and that is owned by the family of Steve Daines.

His mom and dad.

It's owned by who did you say? Steve Daines.

Steve Daines' mom and dad.

It historically was a part of the Holes property, but due to just normal sales of properties in this valley. They had to exclude it or had to sell it, but they have kept this area in agriculture, which is very important to the family to keep hold of this property. Any other questions?

Great descriptions, Elise. Thank you.

Thanks, Sharon. I apologize that you can't see it all. Yes? Any ideas about what...

It was a turf farm, so now how is it being used?

It still is a turf farm, yes. What you're seeing in the middle is not owned by the landowner, and it is still a turf farm.

You said was, and I was like, there's only one turf farm that I know of.

Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry.

Can you zoom to one of the outer zooms? Yes.

Yes.

We say because it goes up front.

Oh, there it is.

Okay. And this one? No. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so all of those rectangle fields that you said you'd see that go north of Bailey's, those are all part of the sod farm there.

Yes, correct. that is all I have for you I know this is a little different because usually at this point we're planning something but once the planning department goes through their review we will start to plan a site visit and move forward with the project is there any discussion

At the time, we have not heard from the family, but due to NRCS funding, which if they were to come to us

I'm unsure Melissa would have to answer that question if they weren't to receive NRCS funding, but under NRCS funding, turf farms are not eligible for conservation easements.

They couldn't build in there anyway because the sub's too high. I farm that ground. I know what's there. The water table's too high. In fact, right now, Gingrich's have it, and they've been stuck out there trying to hay. So it's that wet. So I don't think you'd ever see a house there.

I just wanted to throw out a plug because the dates are, you know, kind of up in the air. If there was a way to have the site inspection the week of October 12th, I'm just throwing out a plug for that because I'm going to be gone the last week in October. So selfishly, just throwing that out there. Even if we were to do it on Thursday, the date of our regular meeting, Thursday the 15th, that might be nice.

Let me respond to that because we're pointed towards November in dealing with this. If we could put down that we will have the field review the first week in November, and then the score sheets would need to be in by the 9th, which is the second week, which gives Rob's crew a week, and then we would have the subcommittee meeting on the 16th, which is that Monday, which would then also give Rob's crew a time to put together the final report.

I think tentatively that's great. What I'll do is I'll call Bob when we get the application set and make sure for a subcommittee and go through that schedule again. I don't have my notes, but I think tentatively, let's just proceed as if that's the plan, and I don't have control over the attorneys, but let's just tentatively plan with that, and sounds good.

So would that be okay, Sharon? Would you be around the first one? Well, I...

You guys do what you need to do to make the whole thing work out. I'm actually going, I have a trip planned to Panama and I'm going to be gone. I've got to go see my folks in Boise first. So I'm going to see them the last weekend in October. And then I'll be back. The first day I'll actually be back is the 16th of November. So, you know, do, do what you need to do. I just was in case it works. I may, I may miss the fireworks.

Let's plan on we'll have the field trip the first week in November, then the second week we'll give Rob's crew a chance to put together, and we'll meet on the 16th with a subcommittee, assuming the attorneys come through and all that stuff.

Okay, perfect. Sounds good. I appreciate it. Thanks for working with us.

Thanks, Bob. Great. Thank you, everyone. If there's no more questions.

Thank you. Any questions?

no meeting in october you'll be hearing from the planning department as soon as possible and we'll implement the tentative schedule um assuming the application is ready thank you

With that, I would take a motion.

So moved.

Well, you're quick. But we've never heard a second. Or I didn't. So I guess we're going to have to stay here. It's been moved and seconded. All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.