New Town Forest Planning Committee

MINUTES of October 2, 2008

Opening

The meeting of the New Town Forest Planning Committee was called to order at 7:30 pm on October 2, 2008 in the Town Hall by Kristen Sharpless.

Present

Kristen Sharpless (chair), Andrea Morgante, Stewart Pierson, Jean Isham, Susan Mead

Absent

Lenore Budd, Paul Wieczoreck, Matthew Probasco

Reactions to Recreation Walk

During the course of the walk, Mike noted that the hoof prints, tire tracks etc. are not a problem from a water quality standpoint.

The management plan will need to have some criteria for bike and horse traffic since there is nothing in the easement to prevent these uses.

It was noted that there is only one place on the land where the easement allows events to be held. This is one way of preventing larger groups horse traffic from becoming a problem.

Forest Walk

The walk will be led by Mike Snyder on 10/18 from 9am to 12pm. We will make a point to invite hunters and should ask Wayne who usually hunts on the land. Also, we should post a flyer at George LeClaire’s which sells bait and tackle; Hart and Mead auto parts and Esteys. We discussed naming the event “Integrating Hunting with other Uses” and including some type of game animal for the graphic.

Public Forum

It will be held on 10/29 from 7 to 9 p.m. Publicity should include Alex’s email list, the Front Porch Forum, as well as the town website. Andrea will invite our conservation partners and experts. Andrea will ask Alex to make 75 maps of the Town Forest. Susan will make 75 copies of the vision and goals: 25 of each of three colors.

Stewart presented an outline to committee members for the format and plan for the forum. It was reviewed and commented on by the group.

Draft Management Plan

By next meeting Susan will ask Aaron Kimball to put the draft plan up on the town website.

We discussed the level of technicality in the plan. In general, we agreed that it is useful to have some broad descriptions up front followed by technical detail useful to land managers. We agreed that a detailed table of contents would make the document useable by a broad audience.

Next Meeting

October 16.

Finalize public forum details and brainstorm what we want for objectives in order to guide the discussion at the forum.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 PM.

Respectfully submitted by Susan Mead