New Town Forest Planning Committee

MINUTES of August 26, 2008

Opening

The meeting of the New Town Forest Planning Committee was called to order at 7:30 pm on August 26, 2008 in the Town Hall by Kristen Sharpless.

Present

Jean Isham, Andrea Morgante, Kristen Sharpless (chair)

Absent

Lenore Budd, Stewart Pierson, Paul Wieczoreck, Matthew Probasco, Susan Mead

Public Walks

The Bat Walk was a success! 20+ people – including several children – attended. Andrea collected names and email addresses to contact people about upcoming walks and events. Kristen will enter the names into an email list.

Checked in on dates and times for upcoming walks:

Wetlands with April – Saturday, September 21 – 2-4pm. (Andrea will confirm the time with April)

Recreation with VLT’s Stewardship Forester, Dan Killborn, and Mike Snyder – Saturday, September 27 – 10am-noon (Lenore has confirmed)

Forest Integrator walk with Mike Snyder – Saturday, October 18 – 9am-noon

Forum – Wednesday, October 29 – 7-9:30pm

Kristen will email Jeanne and Rocky to reserve the Town Hall

We agreed that the forum would include a slideshow overview of the BTF and plan, as well as refreshments

September Record Article

Kristen will put together the following for the next Record (due Sept 3):

Vision Statement

Highlights of bat walk (plus photo) and our other efforts so far

Upcoming walks – dates and times

Forum date, time, basics

Tax issue

Jean suggested the article be submitted by the listors after the forum in November around tax time. We agreed that we can be prepared to address the issue at the forum and the Record article would be a nice follow-up.

Website

Kristen will send along materials she develops for the Record article to Aaron to put together on the Town website.

Planting Plan

Andrea is meeting with Danny Peat soon to discuss this and will get recommendations on how to accomplish the planting. We discussed timing of the planting (400 trees/acre on 20 acres) and whether to contract the work or enlist volunteers or a combination of both. Kristen suggested partnering with the 9^th grade science teachers at CVU who do a quality unit on Lewis Creek and have expressed interest in a planting project before. No decisions were made. Andrea will report back after talking with Danny.

Interim Plan Modification – SB approval

Andrea indicated that a motion to approve in the minutes (which exists) is enough of a record to make the modification official.

Town Forest Designation

Kristen reported that Mike Snyder has passed on the Town’s request to the Commissioner and is working to get approval. Stay tuned…

Haying

The SB approved our proposal to ask Wayne B. if he would like to hay the field and Paul W. will be talking with him. Jean indicated that since it has been such a wet year, it is not too late to get value from the hay.

Vision Statement and Goals

We reviewed and revised the vision statement and goals and will revisit these to approve them when a larger representation of the committee is present. One question/concern: Is there a priority – explicit or implicit – to the goals? Should they be numbered or bulleted? They are not separate, so may be better as bullets, but some also seem to have a weightier importance than others.

Next Meeting

Moving ahead on the draft plan and planning for the forum.

Thursday, September 4, 7:30

The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 PM.

Respectfully submitted by Kristen Sharpless.