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Open Space Planning Committee
Minutes – November 12, 2008
Meeting at Town Hall convened at 8:30. Members present: Betsey Harris, Henry James, Jack Lewis, Joe Cavanaugh, Anne Anable, Bill Barker, Bruce Simpson and Sue Yarger. Absent: Mike Walker, Ed Germain.
The minutes of October 29 were approved with edits.
OSPC member names were submitted to Jeannine; all members need to be sworn in. Betsey will check to see if any members are outstanding and if so will ask Jeannine to come to one of our upcoming OSPC meetings to swear in those who need to be.
Henry and Sue reported out on the Land Conservation Leadership Training, “Landowner Outreach” session that they attended. The Dublin OSPC are already doing many of the outreach activities talked about at the meeting and need to actively continue to nurture relationships to achieve the goals of protecting our priority areas.
Meade Cadot, from Hancock, spoke regarding proactive vs. reactive outreach. The proactive method the Hancock OSPC utilize is to map out focus areas that they want to protect, making sure that the areas meet certain criteria before a project is started. Reactive is working under pressure. One of the best documents around that Meade and his team use is the Natural Resources Inventory (NRI); finding out what’s on the ground. Another proactive method is to work a neighborhood; leveraging one parcel in order to protect others.
Amanda Stone spoke from the UNH Cooperative Extension on the details of the NRI and how to utilize it. The NRI include tax maps, water resources, unfragmented blocks maps, wildlife habitat maps, etc. An important note is that maps are very useful but do not need to be formal; hand-drawn maps work fine too as long as it gets your message across.
Amanda suggested identifying land owners from NRI maps and developing an outreach strategy with perhaps invitations to workshops or information sessions as some land owners are intimidated by 1x1 talks.
It was suggested that Amanda come and talk with us and some of the landowners, should we have a workshop; Betsey is pursuing. Our next steps should be to agree on which area(s) we should focus on. By land or people? Should we focus on priority area of vulnerability? We have information – how do we disseminate it down to the individual land owners. We need a communications plan so that people can understand; we need to set a stage for conversation. One priority focus area is water.
We need basic marketing. The town appropriates money for studies – we need to regularly report out on what the study did – what the current status is. How do we get the message out? Articles in the Dublin Advocate? Joe will put together a list of what the town has accomplished on in the last 10 years.
Henry continued to report out: Relationships need to be built over time. Try to get land owners excited over the process. Hancock has celebrations for people who conserve land. They have a gathering for every successful transaction and it seems to get others enthused.
Amanda stressed that being prepared with maps and a strategy are key before approaching land owners. We need to listen to landowners and what their land means to them instead of just doing all of the talking.
Jack indicated that the Southwest Region did have NRI maps done and he had one set with him which he shared with the team. Bill did not know that we had this available to us and said that he could use them in his Zoning meetings. Bill borrowed Jack’s copies for an upcoming meeting. Sue volunteered to have copies of the study completed for each member of the OSPC.
Bruce, Anne and Jack will be attending the next Land Conservation Leadership Training meeting “Priority Setting”.
The Dublin OSPC appropriate use of the site, environmental concerns. Will all of the equipment be stored inside the buildings? Probably not; there will probably be spills, etc. Soils in that area are super permeable and are not suitable for development. No consensus re the Tolman property was reached.
In addition to the Tolman issues for Mud Pond, we should also look into runoff from horse manure on the south-side from the horse farm and if it is affecting the water quality. Test wells were put in to check for issues and none were found. Perhaps we should do the same for the Tolman property.
Mud Pond has been designated by LCIP as the most important place in Dublin to protect.
Upcoming sessions of Land Conservation Leadership Training. Initial preferences are:
November 19: Conservation Planning and Project Evaluation and Selection: Jack, Bruce and Anne
December 3: Stewardship: Caring for the Land You Protect: Jack, Bruce and Henry
January 31, 2009: Land Conservation Summit Funding: Ed, Joe and possibly more (a $20 fee applies here)
All OSPC meetings will be on a Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. The future meeting schedule:
December 10.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:30 a.m..
Respectfully submitted,
Sue Yarger, Secretary
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