Open Space Committee - Regular Meeting

Since I saw you were muted, I figed They just waved. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. Good. How was your Thanksgiving? Very nice. Thank you. How about you?

Good. Good. We went to uh visit in-laws in upstate New York. Whoa. How far? Uh just above the Albany area, so not too too far up. Oh, because that's my old stomping grounds RPI. Oh, okay. Oh, Troy, you know. Yep. Yep. My uh my my wife grew up in um Ravina, New York. Oh, okay. Cool. And uh and we were actually actually we were in Were we in Troy? We're right next to Troy where we actually visited with in-laws. So, yep.

That's trying to think what's Well, Cahose is just north of it. There's water across the river. I'm trying to remember what the other towns were. Laam. Oh, Laam Circle. Yep. We were in Laam. Yeah, it was a good bar over on Laam Circle. I remember dating myself. How were you? You drink when you were 18? When I was in college? So, Jane, do you have a big crew?

Um, no. just um you know when my boys were in high school and some of them were playing football, we kind of started together with the relatives and we just kind of all do our own thing. Um which my guys are very happy with. That way we can stay dressed very casual and uh watch football and you know don't have to worry about anything. So it was it was nice. And then um my son Zach that's stationed in Hawaii, he he'll be home for Christmas, but uh missed having him. Cool. Good for him.

He misses it here though, you know. He's He misses it. But it's not a bad place to be. If you if you have to be somewhere, that's not a bad place to be. Yeah, I've heard I mean I've never been there. My brother was stationed there for a short time and he said it was it's really nice. Expensive, but he says it's very nice.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Yep. One of my brothers had been stationed there as well uh many many moons ago and my husband and I had visited him. We got married on a honeymoon. So that that's when we went out there and I had said to my husband, remind me if I ever say let's go back to Hawaii, how much I hated the flight. So, you know, it's a long it takes a long time to get there. Things have gotten a little better because there are more direct flights. Not really direct, but uh you know, you don't have to do the day layover in California or anything. Yeah, that's

okay. Jeff, how are you? You're muted. You're muted, Jeff. You're on mute, Jeff. David, how are you? Doing well. How's that? Better. Little better. Yes. Yeah. Yep, there we go.

Jenny and Diane. Oh, wow. Evening, Jenny. Wow. Seven out of nine. Impressive. Hi. Sorry I was late. Oh, that's okay. Don't worry about it. I thought you had a meeting, Diane. What's that? I thought you had a meeting. I do. What do you mean? I I thought you weren't going to make this one. Oh, no. No. It was the last one. Oh, okay. Yeah, the last one. I had a con call at uh Gotcha. 8 o'clock. Yeah. Me, too. Yeah.

It's the the joy of actually working working for a company owned by the Japanese. Yeah. Yeah. Or on the West Coast, right? Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So, uh, all right. I, uh, like to make a motion to open the meeting. We have quir with seven people here. We need a second. Second. All in favor? I I I I

Okay, that sounds unanimous. Meeting is opened at 7:35. Thank you all for coming. Um, open up my agenda here. My lamps aren't uh well positioned for uh 60 something year old eyes. Yeah, it's why I wear glasses.

I know. So, uh, I'll start with, uh, number three because Sean, uh, sent me an update from the, uh, the land scoring subcommittee. So, we'll start with that one since you guys have some news for. So, we uh, and actually, and I saw it came in um, I haven't had a chance to download it, but I believe you just Diane, you just sent me actually 85 Green Street as well.

I did. Yeah. So that would actually say that we have successfully completed re-evaluating all of the uh all of the original properties using the updated forms.

Excellent. So, um, so the the last the last four that had not been uh that we had not reviewed and approved are all the others have been approved are uh 1445 West Street, 315 Spring Street, 395 Burnt Swamp, and 85 Green Street. And so uh all of those have uh that that would now close us out. And our next step would be um well, I guess to for you guys to vote to say that we would accept um our recommendation that those be approved. And uh and then um and then then I think our next step is to try to figure out how do we add more uh more properties. Um I tried one thing over the weekend that I can cover, but it it uh I didn't get to run it run it down to anything worthwhile. So, but how did we want to uh how do we want to move forward with the four properties that that we're proposing we approve?

Okay. So, did everybody get the um the summary the scoring summary? Yeah. I Yeah. I don't know if I got it. I responded to your email today, Alan, so everyone should have gotten it if you

So, so basically um that you had the the four scores there and uh basically it's you know we're using the same tool. So, yep, using the updated tool that we've uh that we had kind of uh finalized before. Um and uh and and in a number of cases kind of all three of us kind of double checked certain certain properties to kind of make sure we're all doing it right. Um so I think we've kind of got ourselves down into a into a pattern. Um

Okay. And uh so well, we have a good baseline now when we know that they're all exactly I mean they're scored with exactly the same objective criteria. Yep. Exactly. So, um So, did did everyone have a chance to even look at that or maybe I don't see it. Where would I find it? email. I'm looking under I usually search everything under Allen selling. Oh, it would have been from Sean. Oh, okay. That's why I'm not finding it. So,

he he did a it looks like he did a reply all to my message. Yep. Okay, I see it. Thank you. So, um, well, actually, if you got it, do you do you want to try to put it up on the, uh, the board, Sean, or let me see. I think I have to make you the host, though. Hang on. Um, okay, you're a host now. Yeah. Hold on. Give me a minute. Yeah.

You know, I have to admit Gmail is good for a whole lot of things and then there's certain things that it's just not. Yeah. And uh and I'm struggling with I'm trying to actually get to um I'm trying to get to the 85 the uh the one that you just sent me right right before this meeting. Oh yeah. 85 green screen. I just I just did that one. So, um if you need me to send it again, I can't. Um you give me just give me a minute. I'm sorry, guys. I'm uh I'm real time real time making some updates.

Alan. Yes. while he's doing that just to bring me up to speed because this is my first time really looking at all this and trying to make some sense out of what you're doing. So, I'm looking at the property assessment status sheet that was sent last updated to date and it's in three sections. There's a blue section, there's a green section, and then there's the latest ad of 85 Green Street.

Yeah. How's all How's this work? So the blue is uh everything that's been uh reviewed by the subcommittee and approved by the overall committee. So those are the scores. So the core score is based upon some

the core score is based on six criteria 10 points each. um size, watershed, uh contiguous with existing open space, uh on a major road, shape factor. Um am I missing one? Um and then the biomass. And then the bio biomass, right? Yep. Total total of seven actually criteria. The original six and then we have the bio map biom map criteria

and that's on a on a scale of what to what on the biomass is that 10 that's 10 right uh I believe we did everything out of 10 yep out of 10 okay so the so the total would be out of 70 the grand you know yep gotcha and we we um decided to keep the uh we decided to actually kind of basically have two scores. We had the we had the main score. Um so you'll actually see there's two scores, right? Core score and then biomass score. And we kept them separate.

The reason we originally kept them separate was because when we started when we kind of started redoing it, we had we weren't actually planning to redo all of them. Um and so we were like we didn't want to corrupt the first one. So we kind of went we were starting to go back through the first ones and just add a biomass. So we kept them separate in the end. Um David Diane and I actually have gone through all of them and reassessed all of them. And so technically we could have combined the scores but that actually only just occurred to me. So we're still not going to combine the scores. So I'm going to have the two scores. Um but at least they're all consistent. Good.

And we use two tools that uh that actually David brought to us. One is called mass mapper which uses um GIS data from Massachusetts. So it's uh Mass actually has done a nice job providing that tool. I can tell you I'm sitting in a house right now in Maine and they do not have the same tool. Um and Biomap which is also a tool that was actually set up and so um the uh I'm happy to actually send to you Jeff there's a there's a a tool that there's kind of a template tool that we use in it. It kind of provides guidance on which not only kind of which tool to use, but which layers to turn on. So you can like turn on like, you know, show me all the open space and it will and it'll color those in. Turn that off. Turn show me all of the rare species. Turn that on. It will actually color that. And so we can look at a property and see kind of what shows up and then and then provide a uh provide an assessment. And then in the tool, we've actually set it up to uh to have it where um have it where and I guess I could share I should just share my bloody screen, which is what Alan wanted me to do in the first place. Um but we can uh within the tool we can um uh it's actually just pull downs. So it's not even you can, you know, you sit there, you just type in the acreage, you type in the various pieces of information. Can you see my screen now?

Yep. Yeah. Mhm. Right. So, you know, so for a given property, if we kind of pick on, let's say, 2 2095 uh West Street, you type in the acreage, the width, the length that gives you the shape score. Um there's there's a set of wersheds you can pick from and each one has a score that the committee had agreed on originally. So, you just pick it like Blackthorn will just give you the number. Um water resource is one of the assessments. Um then access uh access to the property. Um and then uh and then there's calculations that end up getting being done and uh and we end up getting our our core total score and then there's two biomass questions that we answer and it gives you the biomass score.

So this So the two scores, the core score and the biomass are like a composite scoring of all those other factors that you put in there. Exactly. the the core scores which was kind of along the lines of what the committee had originally come up come come up with um prior to my existence and then uh David guided us into also adding the biomass score um which looks at kind of specific specific elements around the um around uh well actually David you probably best can tell what it what it's what it's around um

yeah it's based on the ecological value you know is there high biodiversity university things that might be unique, rare, uncommon to Massachusetts, our town, and just gives a more informed view of what the environmental landscape looks like. Yeah. Right. And it and it lets us look at it either at a at a local level, a regional level, or a um um or a uh is it a state level? Yep. State. State, local, or regional.

Regional. Right. And then we have we basically give a score based on whether it's within the property or it's adjacent to the property. There's there's like two scores related to that. So at this point what we now have because Diane knocked off 85 Green Street after I sent out my update which is awesome. Um we now have all of them done. These are these blue ones were already pre-approved and these green ones are the ones that we're uh we're proposing to uh finalize tonight. Thank you.

Yep. Sean, one uh I think one thing that's important to note is people might gravitate towards what is the top score or top percentage and each each property is ranked or evaluated based on the set of criteria and um you know so yes you can look at the the highest score as a starting point but it may not be the full story. So, if we do have an opportunity in the future at any of these properties or more, be good for the the committee to like re re-review the actual uh score and see if anything has changed since the last time it was evaluated just so we can make the best informed decision possible, whatever that might look like. Absolutely.

Yeah. and all those all since I'm kind of novice at using both of those um the mass mapper and biomap it's a good thing to have someone else look at it because you guys catch like a little thing here and there that I missed. So I did the best I could. So hopefully you guys will have time to review. Yep. And catch something that I I missed. Right. And we we actually looked at I think we all double checked these two. Yeah. I think the top three actually all three of us I did you checked. It's just 85 Green Street.

Right. Okay. So, so I guess uh I would make a motion that we uh vote uh to accept all four of these scores and add them to the completed pile as we call it and then we can work on getting them put up on the town website to so that the rest of the world can see them. If we do that and then there's a change, how how does that work? So, if if um Dave and Sean go in to 85 Green Street later tonight and they look at my scores and then redo a couple and then there's like four or three or two more points that we could have on there, can we easily correct that if it's posted up?

Um, well, I don't think we've posted anything on the town website, have we, Sean? Not that I'm aware of. No. Oh, okay. Good. Okay. Okay. So, we can make edits then. Yeah. Okay. So, and I think as long as you told every after we, you know, if we approve them all tonight and then you have to make an edit, you just send it around to everybody and okay, you can reapprove it the next meeting or just let it go. That's, you know, okay, that works. Yeah, that even when we've adjusted things, they've generally just changed a few points. It's not like it's it's not dramatic.

I mean, but it's just to give us a a more objective picture at these properties, right? So, um, one thing I was just thinking of, um, and I don't know, uh, Daryl, um, should we include scores of our existing, um, open spaceconervation areas that the town already owns. Might be interesting. I think that's a great idea. Yeah, that is a cool idea.

I mean, do we have is that an easy list to Yeah. Well, I mean, we know what those are and we could just run them through the uh through the tool. It'd be certainly be an interesting uh set of data. Yeah. Because you got I mean you have you got Joe's Rock, you got um what's it call it farm out there and the uh you got Wala Malipog and you have several others. Yeah. Birchwell while I'm on a pod crop pond. Yeah, all of them.

So I would imagine you know they would they would score pretty well and it be interesting uh exercise for for us to understand. Well, that's something too I don't know if we should uh look at in the future is uh in the past and and Jeff kind of goes to your question. Um, one of the the the underpinnings of uh the scoring system was that we were primarily at that time before we put the biomap stuff in there was looking at the uh drinking water uh potential and uh we therefore as you look at the scoring you'll see that anything in the Blackstone River wershed which we didn't have a well in although we still don't now but we're working on it but uh that got scored pretty low because no drinking water except for private wells came out of that wershed. But now with the new well uh in the future, it's something maybe we need to look at.

I have a question. And for these properties that we're looking at today, are they um how are those properties selected? Are they properties that may become available for conservation in the near future or

These are all I believe the original list we went from these were all chapter 61 uh properties that uh at the town had right of first refusal on and those were the ones we focused on first because those would be ones that we would actually have a level of control, you know, if they ever went up to put on the market. So, that was our first priority was to do all the chapter 61 properties. Makes sense. Thanks.

Yeah, I was going to ask the exact same question, Jenny, because because that all happened before I showed up. So, I was like, how exactly did we end up with this list? Because it kind of at my the next thought that we had, you know, I think we were chewing on is like, all right, well, like, where next? Um so so certainly reass you know assessing the ones that are already within our possession is a great one. I was also saying they check the tool a little bit. Um but then the a thought I a thought I had had and it may not this is one I couldn't run to ground was you know on on mass mapper you can you know you can turn on like open space and then just literally go through and identify all of the properties that are that are attached in some form to existing open space. Wow.

Whatever whatever form that is, right? So the that that ends up creating a a really big list, right? That's that's uh that um of properties that are that are out there that are attached to open space. So that was that was one thought that I that I had of like well how do we go after the next one? Well, let's just pick ones that are already continuous with existing open space. That's a a big one just given what we saw in terms of getting money for 2095. I mean, that's probably one of the biggest reasons why we got the the DCR money. And you know, I'll bet you um that that paid a part in uh Paga Water Supply giving us that money, too. that they, you know, they looked at a map and said, "Okay, it's where it flows." So that would be a valuable that that would be an interesting analysis because otherwise we're we're going back to um Heather and getting lists of open parcels of land and trying to parse them down and you know and some the list is difficult to work through. It comes as a spreadsheet and you

you go through this thing and some of them are listed as big plots, you know, 20 acres and others are 22 acre lots, you know. Right. Right. Right. With separate addresses. So, you know, you're you got to do a lot of, you know, manipulating and studying to get to figure out what you're looking at. So, but that's What do the notes mean? On the 175 Ellery Street property says removed and then there's tie into Pucket Water and some other notes there. That's one approved.

I think it's because it's already protected because of the P the um uh that's protected by um TA water supply. Yeah, protected. It's a protected water supply. So, it's already it's already kind of we don't we don't need to do anything with it. Okay, they own it.

But we did put notes in several of the evaluations. Not that it was necessarily a scored uh comment, just more notes to the file. You know, things that might be relevant when it when the time comes. I do think to the earlier point about looking at parcels that are adjacent that we either currently own or adjacent to to open space can be helpful for things like grants, even grants on our own properties. if we can make a compelling argument why say we should get a trails grant for example, right? If we did and it lines up and it might score high because it it accesses open space as an example. Um what would be really interesting is and this is maybe a bigger question is obviously big parcels adjacent to open space are kind of like the the traditional fit but makes you wonder are there smaller parcels that provide strategic access that might actually rise to the level because it provides accessibility to a parcel that otherwise doesn't have it and that might be harder to to to screen for. But it makes you makes you wonder too, you might have other circumstances that might be relevant in the future.

Right. Right. Which might because if you think about the one that just went through the uh White Barn Farm that that opened up access big time. Yep. That parcel that the town just agre agreed to preserve. I'll I'll I'll use that term.

Right. the um yeah, so it's the it's um you know maybe maybe I don't know maybe what we do David and Diane is we kind of like I don't I'm not quite sure exactly how we carve up rent them but but we somehow like carve up the fact of each each one of us focuses on a given area um and uh and just kind of identify identify the plots because in certain cases right what you've got is a nice swath of open space and you've got like seven parcels that are attached to it. They're all small, right? They're all they're all touching it, right? And so each one of those should get and then you actually have, like you said, David, some big ones that are that are um that are that are touching it. So, but that's just a thought on on how we can we can kind of move to the next to the next level um and in the end kind of assess pretty much all the parcels of interest that we've got in the uh in the town. So, I mean, there's still some nice There's two Chapter 61 properties just down from 2095. Uh, right across the street from you, Diane, right? The uh 2661 and 2663 that you know, and I think they're both farms, right?

I believe so. Yeah. So, we've scored them. We've already scored those. I believe they're both in there. I think so. One's done. Yeah. I don't know if that was scored. Was it? Uh I remember it being on the original lists. Okay. Is it on there? 2661. Yes, it was. Actually, we used we used it as an example in front of the CPC. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's Dunve. Which which street are we on? West. That's west. West. So, we have 2663 West Street and we 2095. Do we should we

thought we had 2661 cuz that was next door. Unless I'm getting my numbers. Is 2661 the one that has the one house the 60 acres that um Oh, yeah. The old um Askin property. Yeah. Is that is that 2661? We we do not we do not have a 2661 in our list. We have a 2663. Oh, was that the one that was Larry Johnson's farm? Dunve Vegan. Yes. Yes. Larry's. That's was Larry. And he moved to Maine, I believe. So, yeah. And I I from what I heard, the people who own the the house on the end of that street bought that Oh,

that that's what I heard. I I don't know if that's true or not. Do is is there an a copy of the Chapter 61 properties? Um, I can give Heather a call or Daryl. You can you ask her to Sure, I'll I'll ask tomorrow. Yeah, I'll be seeing her tomorrow. So, maybe maybe that's maybe the maybe the first thing we do. Well, so two things we've kind of agreed to do. So, one, we'll review the the chapter 61 properties against what we've scored and if there are any that we haven't scored, we'll score those. And then we'll score the existing open space. um

conservation right so is does someone have that list all the conservation properties I'm working on that uh yes we do have a list okay yeah that's one of the you know like for instance Crocker Pond that Diane mentioned uh that actually consists now of about like seven or eight different properties uh that have been kind of all conglomerated so do we do each one of those properties or do you just take them as a unit and say, you know, I I'd say if they're conglomerated now into one, we would do just one all together because we like we have an example of that. We have one where it's two two properties that we assessed together. Okay.

So, I'd just say let's just combine them and say this is what it added up to. So, give me a little time and I will get you a list. You got it. And I'm in favor of uh you know, let's not evaluate seven properties that really aren't seven properties if they're all conserved. We you know, let's you know, let's take it easy on ourselves. You know, let's just do one if we can get away with it. Okay. So, okay. So, back to uh my uh my motion that went into discussion. So, uh, I make a motion that we approve all four of these properties as

done, for lack of a better term. Okay. All in favor? I I Awesome. Okay. So, that's approved. and we haven't made any progress on loading these on the website or is there a way that we can just talk to um um the assistant town manager there um Greg. Yeah. Yeah. Gregos. Yeah. Okay.

I think Rachel's been doing a lot of that work as well. I could talk to her about it cuz you know it doesn't really matter. I mean it doesn't have to be an interactive tool that's on there that somebody can fiddle with. It it could just be the sheet, you know, with the scores, right? Right. And I mean that's pretty benign. Yep. It's just information,

right? Do we do we kind of provide just kind of the different things we'd assessed against? not the individual scores but like like assessed against like like you said shape this type of stuff. I could I could write up a little blurb and then we just have the you know this is what you know the things that make up core score you know overall property shape which is acreage this these types of you know but not getting exactly that you know this wershed gets more points than that wershed but at least say that we wershed that type of thing. Um I guess maybe if we just broke it out into the individual scores that they got. Yep. And just, you know, the simplified version of the of the big form.

Yep. So, how about how about I I'll take an action to try to kind of to create that kind of simplified view with a little blurb at the top. I can send it out for us to approve to say that's what we want to go up in the site and then and then we can make that happen. Okay, that sounds great. And Sean, we should probably have some type of introduction to explain like why we're doing it and what does it actually mean or does it mean and obviously the scores that then follow. Yep. That's a good point. I'm just wondering uh playing devil's advocate here. Can we put it on the website if it's owned by private, you know, private individuals? Is that appropriate for us to um

I've gotten I've gotten in trouble for that before and you're right it's probably better to just do map block lot and just you know leave it or I guess I wouldn't even go as far as address maybe just map block lot and that way if you want to track it down and find it because I mean you go on the everyone can get onto the GIS uh site and you can see everybody's name that way but you know that it's a handy tool. Yeah. I I just, you know, I I think we have to protect people's privacy as far as like the exact address or the name of the property owner,

right? We should I I did that on one of the open space and recreation plants like back in 2000 or something. And uh Mr. Snow got a little animated over me uh putting down calling it the snow property. Yeah, we had Yeah, because they didn't really yell too much at you and I when we were doing the uh acquisition fund um presentations because we had the list with the addresses, but we just had the addresses and I think we had the acreage and the scoring. That's about all we had.

Yeah. Yeah. But but people like people didn't know, you know, when they uh you know, nobody knows what the address of the Big Apple is cuz people would say, "Oh, what's that one there?" 186 acres. I said, "Oh, that's the Big Apple." They're like, "Oh, we didn't know that." You know, people So people are more ignorant than I think you realize. And I think keeping it to something agnostic like a lot number it it's regardless of ownership. It's just saying this is the parcel that exists now, right? Exist years from now could change hands 12 times in between, but this is what we know, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's perfect.

That's a good idea. Okay. So, with that, um, with that, I will also suggest that I modify the tool so that it actually requires us to put in that information from the get-go. Um, and uh, oh, right. So, be so it won't adjust the score or anything, but at least at least up up where it has address line, I'll actually add in an entry that says you actually have to put in the lot the lot information. Um, so I'll make those modifications so that we can easily do this so that we don't have to um

so whenever we do future ones, we don't again end up with a uh uh a list a list of properties where we have to go all the way back again and go through them. So I'll go through the 20 the 20 properties and add in their lots and I'll update the tool so it's got it built in. So, okay. Of course, you'll have the fancy decoder ring version that has the addresses. So, we can we all will actually if we could ever get the town to let us have a a a a cloud system, we'd all have. So, I guess they're afraid we're going to break their computers. Yes,

which we might, but that's too bad. I did, by the way, try to use AI to see if it could use the GIS data to just do this for us, but um I wasn't able to at least make I wasn't able to make it work. So, I will play around with that again as well, right? Because if it's public data, I'd love to get it to the point where literally actually AI could just run through and assess every single property and rent them, but it couldn't actually for some reason it couldn't actually access at that level. I'm not quite sure why, but guess it's not there. But

at some point, at some point, I'm sure we'll be able to do it and then all we'll have to do is ask AI what property should we buy and it will tell us. So, yeah. So, okay. So, we've approved the four properties and we'll figure out how they go on the website.

Yep. And uh and then the next step I guess the subcommittee would take as an action item is to uh to see if uh you can use that um biomap overlay to uh find the contiguous properties. And Daryl's going to work with uh Heather or Rachel to get a new chapter 61 list so we'll have some more things to look at. Yep. And Daryl's also going to get me the list of existing of existing um open space properties that we that we have in our possession. Um

and I'll and I'll create the the summary blurb and lot by lot information for the scores. Okay, great. Wow. Okay. All right. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas. And that's about when it's going to happen, by the way. It'll be part of my Christmas holiday. Yes. Okay. So, um I guess I'll go back to number one, um which was to discuss possible educational events. And which reminds me, I have to do the sweat application for uh for that. I think we we still have quite a bit of money. So, and I know we've had lots of ideas about things we could do. Uh, but we just have to pick a few and then spend more money because we still have all this money that they they rolled over last year's money. So, we have 15 we still have 1,500 left, which is more than they used to give us. So,

we can't seem to spend it fast enough even though we've had I counted it. We have five or six events we've had in the last year or so. So, you know, we're trying. So, um anybody uh have any hot buttons? I know I know Lauren was working on some of this, but uh do we have any other ideas? What's that? What's on the list now?

I don't have a list actually. I had one before. I know invasive plants was, but I think we had one of those last year, but we could have another one. I know that was a Okay. Okay. Here's a list I had from uh two meetings ago. Adult audience invasives family turtles from the uh the rescue um people. Yep.

Back to the wild. Uh bird boxes and bugs. Um, under also under family, we had orientering and animal tracking. Oh, those are all really good ones. Yeah. Yeah, those actually are. Yeah, those are

Why don't we just pick uh I mean a few to re Do we know how much it costs for uh each um thing roughly? Uh, I think the invasives I think we did one through I think Mass. Was it Rhode Island Autobon? May have been I think it was it was like $250 for them to come in and do it at the the library. So that's, you know, and uh the um I know the lady who did um Back to the Wild, she did two of those that those were $200 and that's a a donation because it's a nonprofit. So, right,

the town gives them a $200 donation. Did we ever reapproach that one that uh Maria Jites brought to the uh board about committee about the uh beavers? I have that list. They had wait I had Beavers. I don't know where it is. Yeah, it was some organization out west. I I don't I vaguely remember it, but that would probably be an interesting one and something we haven't done. No. And that's uh appropriate with Wala Malipog because we know they're there. Yep. And there's and there's and I can tell you there's one in Trout Pond and there's if you walk around it, he's

he has done a very very good job Awesome. of taking down trees. I've got pictures. Nice. Yeah, they're they're at Joe's Rock now, too. So, there's a nice den in the middle of the pond. That's awesome. It was my school mascot, so I like beavers. Oh, there you go. Yeah. So, we Yeah, if you can get that uh whoever the outfit is from. I'll find out the information on that. I think it'd be a good one. So, I'll take that as an action item and I'll I'll find out who she uh suggested we talk to and all that because that would be that would attract that would be a big audience. People would

I would think so. Yeah. So, that's a great one. Okay. Okay. I'll work on that one. Okay. Do we have to use the money by a specific amount of time or do we have does it matter if we run into like mid next year for it?

They they told us we we're supposed to spend it and then they they sort of go, "Oh, you still have the money. Just keep spending it as long as Okay. But should we should we make a cap?" like say we really we want to use at least half of that by by half of the year kind of thing. Um yeah, I think if we did another back to the wild uh one that would be 200. Um I know I know the um Rhode Island Autobon stuff runs 250 to 400. You know they have all different programs. So yeah,

there's we have some flexibility. I mean, if we did three things, I think, you know, we would make a little dent in the money. But did you guys get a good showing? I think I was away when they did that invasives one last year. Did you get a lot of people to that? Do you know? I didn't go to it, but Yeah, I wasn't here. Yeah. And I Yeah, I was away, but that I understood they were pretty well attended.

Yeah. And I think the when I brought that one up the last time, it was uh thinking that we could change it up to do one specific invasive. I don't know if that would be enough material. Um or maybe take one or two of them instead of covering like a huge swath of them. Um just as maybe to way change it up. But there's plenty of others on that list that we don't have to do that.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, also if we if we do an invasive workshop or something, I think it would also be a good idea to have a brochure or pamphlet or something that we can put on the website so that people that may not be there can still get the information. Yeah, there actually is one. Uh, conservation did one. I don't know how long ago was that, Darl. Um, yeah, two members of the uh conservation commission put a whole booklet together and we have like 600 of them left, I think. Right, Darl? Like 600 of them. Quite a few. Yeah.

Yeah. So, that was one of the things we're saying. Do we want to use those books up, you know, on the website for one of our things? Yeah. Yeah, it's on the website, too. So, the commission's website. Okay. There's just there's too many areas to I see now in spaces invasive species guide 2022. Okay. And then if you go down to the town hall, I'm sure you could take a box of them with you if you want. Take the whole box. Well, I think insect invasives are kind of rising as a new thing, too. So, I don't know if uh Oh, yeah. Agriculture. That's a nice twist to it. Yeah, I'm putting that down here. That That's a good one because Yeah.

Yeah. All the talk about those giant bees from uh those murder hornets. Murder horn. That's right. Yeah. The lantern fly. And then what's that new oriental something beetle longhorn? Asian longhorn. That one's been around for a while. Worcester basically they cut down all the trees because of it. But uh yeah, I worry more about it's not poisonous, but the Joro spider. I just don't like the idea of a spider that big around uh hanging out. But oh my god, I I didn't know about that. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I've killed a couple of those lantern uh lantern. Maybe they'll catch lantern flies.

They're everywhere, too. They're everywhere. They're hard to kill. They're hard to get. They're really quick. Yeah. I mean, they're so bad. I was at the gas station and there was a couple of them on my windshield. I had my husband get out of the car and kill them. Well, I know I know that MDAR was in town doing some of the early detection work and so Mass Department of A resources. I suspect the town probably has a point of contact there because of that survey work. Maybe they have an extension that can do a presentation on it, especially going into

next year where people are going to be seeing them flying around a lot more during the, you know, summer and fall. That might be that might be a good one. That's a study through the town hall. Well, no. Uh when they first got reported, I believe MDAR came down to rent them and other other towns were experiencing the call outbreak or early detections. I'm pretty sure there wasn't posted on one of the town Facebook or website talked about, hey, MDAR is gonna be looking at this. Oh, you know, that kind of a thing. So, the point is I'm sure there's someone that knows someone there who can probably find us the right person to do some next season.

Yeah, the website has a tracker thing where they show where they've been. Okay. So maybe one of us can uh look into that as well. Alan, I know you've mentioned bird boxes on the list. I wonder also about bat boxes.

Oh, that'd be awesome. That's a good one. either either like a workshop to tell people about how to build and install them in their own homes or maybe like a program where we can have volunteers come together and and build some or or buy some and install them like around town buildings or open spaces that might be good candidates for bat boxes. Yeah. Uh Birchwald has some um I just replaced a bunch of them uh for a stewardship project recently at Birchwald. So there's uh four boxes, bat boxes up on the 121 side of Birch.

If we do bat bat and bird boxes um April 17th is bat appreciation day. So in and around April 17th might be a good time. Um, and it gives us enough runway to plan it, promote it, figure out where I get supplies, and so that'd be a fun one. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we could make it people could build them themselves and go out and help install them or something like that. Yeah. In our maybe in some of our new conservation areas. Yep.

Does anyone know if like uh KP has a wood shop? I I didn't go there as a for high school. So if they did, if they do, they could potentially cut the pieces for us and that way you only have to assemble the day of. Probably not. That's a good idea. That sounds more like Sounds more like something Tri County would I say Tri County definitely they got to Yep. AP doesn't have any trades. Okay. But Tri County that's Yeah. So that's a really good idea.

Where who is who has the the somebody else was working on the list, right? Yeah, Lauren was working on the list, but I had a list here that I had taken during the meeting. Okay. So, she hasn't made any calls or anything that we would be overdoing what she's already done kind of thing. Um, I think she has a list and I think um I think she's probably just waiting for a chance to, you know, put the list out for everybody to Okay. because I think she was following up on some of the specific outfits that uh Okay.

I remember both Rhode Island and Mass Autobon. So those were two key contacts we were using and uh Okay, that made the information on Beaver. Should I send it to her or should I send it to you? I sent it to everybody. Everybody. Okay, got it. Let everybody. Yeah. She was working on something with orientering with the scouts.

Yes, I had that here. Boy Scouts orientering, which is Yeah, that's that's what they do. They usually get lost though cuz they're 11. So, okay. Right. Um, second item I had here was, um, do we need to revise the, uh, goals for the other subcommittee that was working on the uh, open space and recreation plan, which I think we talked about last meeting where we were, you know, or do we sort of repurpose that subcommittee? because we have five years of runway now

cuz I know Daryl, you'd suggested that some of the other um well, we redid the we've redone the goals and the uh accomplishments the chapter nine, but section nine. Yeah, we updated them. I mean, we didn't really add any new ones. I think we took away a couple that were complete, but otherwise we we just simply basically uh we might have in some places uh moved a couple of the um the uh things around of who's responsible uh but otherwise we just push dates.

And that should also Rachel is going to put that on the website too. Uh so that way it's not lost. uh too many of these reports go to sit on a shelf and uh get dust. Yeah, you're Yeah, you're right. Okay. So, but yeah, that was that was just something I had down here that we, you know, kind of want to keep our eye out for that and we probably have to go start thinking about in a year or so about finding another consultant or entity to help us submit it

because Gino is retired and you know it seems like most of the work is already done though, so not sure you'd really have to hire a consultant for that. Um,

I haven't read through all 77 pages of it, but I read through a lot of it and I'm thinking that most of that remains the same. Well, then because the way the process worked originally or when you started it is you you start out with a survey and then you take the results of the survey and you publish them in a public forum and then that forms the basis of how you set up the goals. So we had what do we have thousand responses Daryl? Do you remember something like that from that? can't remember. Yeah.

Yeah. I have the I have the report upstairs, but it says how many people responded to the survey and we got a lot of I mean community thousand people I believe it was just over a thousand responded you know out of what what do we got in this town 12 13,000 so that's pretty good. Yeah.

And that formed the basis of all of those tables you saw in there. I mean the the history and the uh you know the physical makeup of the town obviously those things will just transfer through but all the goals and everything is supposed to be based on the inputs of the survey what the town's people want out of the town.

Yeah. But I'm just thinking that, you know, you have an active open space commission here and since most of the um the the bulk of of that, you know, 77 pages is are things that aren't going to change. So, I I'm just saying I think you have a capable group that I don't know if you necessarily have to hire a consultant at this point because it seems like

um the people that put together the original one, which was, you know, several of these members, I wasn't on the committee at that point, but I know Daryl did a lot of the work and the consultant and there were other people u my predecessor as well. Put all that information out there. I don't know. I'm just saying I don't know. Daryl would have a better idea. I don't know if you really have to spend thousands of dollars that we could use towards different purchases when you have most of the work done already. We're still talking four years down the road, but

right. Yeah. Perhaps that's perhaps that is a mission of the working group is to figure out what we can do, what we can't do and rel relative to any new updates the plan may require five years then might figure out if we need what we exactly need or don't need. Yeah. So what happened is we tried to do it ourselves back around 20 we started in ' 07 I think. Uh yeah, but we submitted something to them around 2015 or 16, right? And the comments that came back were longer than our entire

thing that we had them review. Seemed that way. Yeah, they were expensive. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, okay, every, you know, every page we wrote, they wrote a page of comments. So, uh, that's why we hired Gino.

Yeah, he he he knew there were a couple things that that had to be, uh, tweaked a certain way that he knew this how the state liked it because, yeah, we had comments that were fairly daunting, like not back to the drawing board type, but, uh, certainly, and he just polished it up a bit and uh, and address some sections better. And he did I mean he did a great job when he he ran the survey and he interpreted the results for us and put it into nice action items. You remember that? And he ran the forum for us. Did he? Okay. Yeah.

I would hope so then because that would have meant we would have had an updated uh updated survey because otherwise if we did one earlier it would have been valid. Yeah. Yeah, because we didn't do I know we didn't do a survey when we submitted the prior one. Yeah. So that uh Okay. So that's so I think Dave's suggestion is good. Uh trying to map out what we what we should be doing over the next five years to to get to where we want to go.

Okay. And uh the only other thing I had is sweat fund application and uh I was going to work on that. Um and I'm going to I'm just going to list some of these other ideas in there, you know, which is usually how we do it because it's uh I just want to put a placeholder in for the um sweat fund for the educational projects. They always seem to be willing to give us money or or let us keep the money we haven't spent cuz that's what they did last year. So that was nice of them.

Yeah. Unusual for they want you to spend it which is you know like Right. Well that's all I had. Does anybody have anything else? Thank you all for coming. By the way, having an eight out of nine and I'm impressed. Um, so I I was just looking at the RenaM open space and recreation plan report because I hadn't looked at it yet. Um, and there's a page in there that's a letter from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that has been changed

that is like, "Thank you for submitting this plan for rent them to this office for review and compliance with open space and recreation plan requirements. They approved the plan and the town is eligible to apply for DCS grants through December 2027, right? So, do we do anything to extend that beyond 2027?" Yeah, we did the that was the uh what this subcommittee was actually set up for. Okay. If you go in there under section nine, which is all of the charts for the action items and uh yeah,

goals and implementation plans. We had to redo that section and we have a new letter which I guess we're going to make sure that that gets put on the website. It's it's in the um actual the section 9 update that Rachel will be putting on there. It's that along with the town manager's approval letter and Melissa Cryan that was a person at the state. She said yes, we'll be eligible for grants through 2030. So yeah, good point. Great. Yeah, that's the one that we got in 2020. Yeah. What she's reading. Yeah. Yeah. The the original one.

Okay. So, they basically let us re redo one section and we got another three years and we said yes, we'll do that.

Let me So, it did that. Okay. Uh, anything else? Okay. Uh, well, that was good meeting. I'm really impressed with how we've uh gotten those uh all those scores lined up and and we have a nice plan going forward. And I think we going to get a good handle on uh if we when we have to redo the 2030 plan, we'll be in good shape.

Oh. Um Okay. I was just going to send that uh report around. I just noticed uh uh Jenny, I don't have uh your email on here. So, if you could just uh send me uh and I can add you to my my list and I'll send that section 9 update out to everybody. Actually, you can just reply all to my note from today, Darl. Oh, okay. Got everybody's on. Okay, better. All right. Gave you some. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks for asking. Good pickup on that. Okay. Uh I'm going to make a motion to uh close the meeting if there's any second.

Second. All in favor? Bye. Hi. Hi. Thanks. Have a great holiday, everybody. All right. Take care. Bye. Bye. Merry Christmas. Bye. Bye. Merry Christmas. Bye. Bye.