##VIDEO ID:8I5-OPCUNpc## all right hi folks we're to call the meeting to order first this meeting is being recorded by the open space Task Force if any other person's present are doing the same you must notify me at this time all right uh I would like to start just by inviting uh Patty and Pat to participate throughout the meeting as non voting members of our committee um and we'll do a uh roll call go go around introduce yourselves P Santino uh Mary chman I'm the chair of the uh sustainable grainfield committee and a public member P O'Neal Emily boss uh member of the conservation committee and Task Force member oh here I can I commiss can increase the value um and Joon a keen I'm the chair of this task force and on the on sgic as a public member great thanks everyone for being here um we'll jump into our agenda with approval of our minutes from October thank you to Mary as always for great minutes uh I move that we approve the October minutes I second all oh discussion looks good to me yeah all in favor hi hi all right um okay so talking about our our task force I still I left the task force membership on here as a topic for a couple reasons um oh whoops okay there we go um one because thinking about Ro Mary is is outgoing from sgic hopefully remaining involved here at the task force but um so we are going to be looking for someone to help with minutes um and Mary suggested I point at somebody and say you are the one we can designate franois because she's not here uh but um we should uh think about think about that we don't have to decide right now unless somebody is excited to jump in I think our nonvoting non voting members would be welcome to participate in that way if you're still inclined I guess just just so people know I've done that job for a lot of other organizations so I feel like I'd like to not do it again yeah because I've done it quite a bit yeah no problem y um I think also in addition to fact that I take minutes we are you are going to need another actual voting member right yeah from the yeah yeah I suggested to Patty too and and since we were communicating but if you're interested we we will have an opening an sgic maybe more than one sustainable Monday day meet it's the um typically the fourth Thursday of the month at 5 o' four o'clock but it has changed over time too so it could change again that's the recent the current yeah and I think that the mayor's office has somebody in mind or maybe are already in process to replace me but then there'll be another um in June uh there'll be another public member whose term is expiring so there would be a chance for other people to express interest at that point and that process is just is writing a letter to the mayor to express interest in participation joining have time yeah um and I think I mean also on this note I I said at the beginning of all this that I'm the chair because we needed somebody to start it off but I don't have a ton of time either so as we're thinking about um the future of this if anybody's excited to take on being the chair we welcome that um or if we have other ideas of people to invite that might be interested in these roles to be a part of this this group that would be great um you know on that note if there are just in general other people to include we're still a small team and if we know of other people that are interested in town um it'd be great to reach out to them and just ask what their interest might be um all right anything else on membership of this group en roles a moment great okay um Emily did you have a you have a chance to discuss with uh the conservation uh commission I did oh great you want to summarize how that went sure then so I walked them through the most upto-date tab on the um priorities spreadsheet yeah um and basically asked them um um three things if work had been done in that area already that they knew of um if there was if it seemed like a high priority looking at it from the conservation commission's point of view and then if they felt like the committee or members of the committee um would be likely or interested in participating in actions towards that and then sometimes we talked about you know who else might be the appropriate entity um so overall um things related to conf conservation obviously were a high priority um when we talked about the initial priority of um finding other and identifying um land for conservation um there are conversations going on about the ridge Parcels that are adjacent to um uh conserved land both Recreation and conservation land um that were the only active ones other than actually the the parcels that you had um brought up as an example um Mar I think in our last meeting um out by shelburn Road um but those were the ones that came to mind initially um um another item that they had actually done was um a map that Jonah I think you shared uh with Travis recently that was right colored and um we have a little bit more information about that it was made by our former conservation agent who has moved on to greener pastures Mitch um um so we don't actually have a legend for that all we have is the image that you um yeah shared um and if we Circle back around to look at that again essentially well I'm sorry there is a legend of sorts on it there's a list of the priorities that were looked at they were the the items that the former constituents of the Conservation Commission who worked with Mitch to create that thought were important and then the darker the red the more of those items a parcel has on it so it's at least a starting point it is a list of of um priority values and then um it was a review that was done by the Conservation Commission at that time so um we didn't go over it in too great detail but we certainly hope that might be useful as a starting place um some of the things it looked at was adjacency to existing conserved land um types of resources on the parcels and then um it's sort of scored them and this informal away um and also the current conservation agent is going to look through the computer that she has which might well have that actual file as a GIS file um maybe more information so if anything gets turned up about it we'll we'll share that that position has been filled it has oh great excellent uh um and this is an area that definitely Conservation Commission would want to be involved in as it goes forward um and we felt like we had the capacity to to assist or be participating um and suggested that CPA funds could be used to support conservation of properties in the future and um Travis pointed out he's also on the conservation the CPC that there's the opportunity for the Conservation Commission to request that a certain amount of fund be moved into the conservation fund from the CPA fund annually I think it was $5,000 um and so the commission supported that and we're going to look into doing that the difference there is that funds in the CPC funding go through the process of being voted um uh like any other CPA funds would once it's in the conservation fund it can used more at the discre of the Conservation Commission for purchasing or costs related to conservation so it just makes it um um maybe a quicker more straightforward process um let's see some of the other things that have been done let's see um looking at priority 2 which was sort of stewardship and and work on the the land that's H and conservation um boundary marking has been done recently Again by the former conservation agent um it's still sort of in process um there was a safety sign put up on the love joy property by Murphy's field um and then there was pretty extensive math and deed research that was done by Travis that is in um the conservation commission's Online files um that's pretty good information I think maybe you knew about Jonah or I've seen some of it talking with Travis yeah he shared it with me I have all all of it actually it's quite a lot of info yeah fantastic yeah and that seemed like some action steps would be um that I suggested were to take a look um because Travis did that research at the properties which maybe are held by the Conservation Commission but the means by which they were acquired don't necessarily ensure that they are held for conservation purposes and I would just enourage us to make that final step for them because that's another lay of protection you know either by having legal counsil have the appropriate deed or put a conservation restriction on it whatever is appropriate um and this is definitely a high priority for the Conservation Commission um but um could take time to do um let's see actually maybe I'm gonna throw ones um oh I see moving on to the other priorities um um we were talking about the um the review of storm water and flooding in the town and that I'm sorry that's what I was made my note about that it is a high priority for the Conservation Commission for these things to be dealt with um but is a big project and um can take can be expensive on long term um we have had some complaints from land owners um about issues with flooding particularly near Arch Street um Travis in some past work had had some experience with this kind of review and planning and there's a lot of tricky stuff involved um and U the commission supported um uh planting trees um wherever possible we talked about the work of the Greenfield tree committee um as well as green and greefield and um those groups were mentioned by the commission members as entities that would make sense to be involved in that process as so going on to the tier two priorities um we talked about the possibility of having volunteers um that didn't feel still as much like something that the Conservation Commission would be likely to um organize directly um we mentioned Greening Greenfield as a a potential entity that could you know do that sort of thing and that presently does that sort of thing um and then we talked about some sort of areas where there are volunteers like um there's a Butters by Highlands who sort of unofficially help out and I'm not sure what that situation is but um um it would be great to have a coordinator and a website which are some of the actions that are listed on our spreadsheet and um um again we mentioned maybe that would be a good thing to coordinate with green and Greenfield um the Conservation Commission we only have a part-time conservation agent presently um so we're not sure that we have the resources or the poll to be able to get a volunteer coordinator to do that work as pres at present um and then we talked about Farmland protection certainly we support it but again it might be um more in the bwick of the Agricultural commission um but we again mentioned that CPA funds could be used for that we certainly would support that um and then in terms of overlay districts the zoning board seems like the entity that might be more involved directly in that um though we would support a river Corridor overlay District definitely um and then we talked about um ADA compliance um we definitely encourage having accessible Trails on conservation land and we would likely be involved with permitting or Trail sight for for trail sighting um and um I asked if there was a checklist for the building permit to see if um you know just as a way to make sure that when building um projects happen that the Conservation Commission is consulted appropriate and um just our conservation agent will check on that so um that's basically that was basically our review that's great yeah thanks Em I'm glad that that worked out to spend that much time talking about it with them and that was really helpful extra time yeah so I have some questions I do too yeah go ahead um so the so it seems like the first one is where there's the most overlap for us to be really working closely on things um is there is the Conservation Commission you said that there's look at the ridge Parcels um how how active is there what's the involvement with that is there is is that a high priority that's a lot of times being spent on or it's more sort of a wish a wish list the ridge property is something something we're being consulted on but it's more led by the land owners um and we've um encouraged the administration certainly to support the project um but we aren't integrally involved in it presently my understanding is that what they're looking at is a trail easement rather than conservation per se right for one of the parel um but whenever it does come across our Des to make a request or to um accept Land We it's a high priority for us um and trying to remember exactly where that project is the last that I had heard about um one of them was it was a trail easement and then I'd have to Circle back around to see if there was another parcel that was being potentially um Acquired and so it as far as in general the commission is more responsive to people coming to them about as opposed to actively like approaching potential yeah definitely yeah okay at present we're not seeking out any properties we're just responding to requests right so the main my main questions are thinking about trying to make sure there what our role where we fit in and I could see that being a good place for us is to be more on the proactive side side as we make a map um and say oh here's our top priorities let's reach out to some land owners and start to have conversations uh Mary did you I was just curious if any there was any additional information about the shelburn road property when I last spoke with I think Mitch several months ago there was a property visit scheduled or t about but it didn't happen we um at this session we actually did talk about the two Parcels um they were a little different than what you had looked at um so so they were the more Northerly um rather than the wed shaped one that was being talked about right now um and um there was positive discussion of it I mentioned that it had come up in the task force as an area that we would you know that there're interest in conserving land um and um we are going to make a site visit as a group as a Conservation Commission group um because um it does appear that there are right of ways but it's unclear whether they're actually maintained in any way or or you're able to access them um they're deeded right ways and we just want to have seen the property before we recommend that it be accepted as um on behalf of the Conservation Commission so that's I think that's moving forward and has a positive trend as far as we're concerned we just want to make sure that there's nothing we're missing yeah so both of those Parcels both of those donations are still on the table then it sounds like yes and it sounds like we should talk with Jess um in regards Jess that's the new agent her name is Jess Jessica seagull okay um s i e g do you know if if she T I think Mitch was Tuesday Thursday or something like that do you know her I don't know her schule that's a great question I can reach out I touch face with her outside' be nice to invite her to a meeting but it may not with part-time hour she may not be able to make these meetings but um I can invite her and if not I can just chat with her a bit about the next steps with the with the mapping too that'd be great yeah great uh anything else on this yeah um in terms of the comments you were making about requesting the Conservation Commission requesting funds get moved into into that um conservation fund is that something they're planning on doing yes we realized we could do that so we said let's do that um and so far there have been no uses of CPA funds for conservation purposes it's only been around for a couple of years nonetheless um so those funds are acur what is the balance do you know I don't know you know the combination of that fact with the fact that we have not applied for a land acquisition Grant from the state and those two can be paired together to acquire land it just feel like we're primed for using those both together for an exciting land protection project in town we just got to figure out what it is so yeah um em I just had a question because I I don't don't know if you mentioned this as far as you know Trail maintenance I'm not sure if the Conservation Commission get involved that much with that like say for poet seat or Highland Park yeah my impression is that it's more of the recreation department yeah okay but I think I would like to learn more about how um what funding is used for that kind of Maintenance and what the process is I I've only seen it sort of minimally done it sounds like there's not a lot of activity on conservation properties as opposed to recreation properties um but um but that would be really helpful to have that process outlined for everybody yeah thanks great anything else on this all right thanks Emily uh the next thing on our agenda is just the the finalizing of what we've been talking about to as our Focus area um I just made a few small adjustments based on uh our last meeting all right you can see the screen Emily um so what I what I did so I um took our tab that we were working on I made some small adjustments based on our last conversation around um sort of expanded on this first this top goal of been working to make this map and acquire new Parcels um also to bring together partners and funding sources um to facilitate the process sort of seeing that as our as a key role for us that there's we're not the primary players in the protection of new land we're not going to be the entity that's holding new land or anything but we can really facilitate it happening and so seeing that as our role of moving things along um I think that was the main edit that I made to these I can't remember now so I'll say that that's the case uh and or maybe I add that same detail to number three here to um secure funding for uh you know help helping them to find funding and move that forward so the the last thing that I had that I'd done to make this a document to help really guide us is I just add one more tab to our tabs here um and just broke these out and started to list under them what we're actually going to be working on beside the actions that are listed in the um osrp are still kind of for the most part they're kind of big things like maintain and improve Trails um so I started to put down some like actual to-dos for us what we actually would be working on to help guide us um and this was just sort of off the top of my head so very open to folks thinking that things should be different that I wrote down uh but I thought we could just quickly look at what I put down for for our action steps and I only did it for these for these three the top the top priorities um so for this first one of this this uh mapping and acquiring new land and bringing Partners together um I thought our next steps were determining criteria that we've start that Mary's done some great work on that I Shar that we'll talk about in a little bit um working on developing that map in conjunction with Conservation Commission and the new conservation agent uh using those criteria building relationships with our regional land trusts I thought that that you we've talked about doing that more and I think that involves um inviting their staff to to our meetings you know just starting to have conversations um and talking about what the details of you know we're we have a and we're looking at these parcels and how how can you be involved and what would the process look like and um just starting to have those conversations um and I thought creating a timeline would be helpful looking at the different funding sources that are out there they're all on you know or annual Cycles so looking at uh at the next at the coming deadlines for different funding sources and uh what a timeline might look like for for protecting when and um using those funding sources so that those are my thoughts I don't know what what are folks what do you think on those sort of next steps that we'd be actively working on to make this this Happ good I for the criteria I feel like there's um that's an area that I think there's a lot of little details but i' like to like I'd like to um get more complex with it yeah see what other possibilities that may not be quite listed yeah great um I was just thinking about it would be uh relatively easy to develop a little timeline look up some of the grants that we want to potentially you know have the city pursue yeah get those I think you just said that but that seems like a doable task right that's what I'm going for I like doable task see what we can actually do yeah yeah great um anything else in that category anything that I missed some sort of doable action next steps for us to move this forward I just want to clarify um so Mitch on the Conservation Commission is who is working on making that M so Mitch was the the previous conservation agent who was left yeah so apparently he he made a map um that we can look at um in a minute that um we don't know all the details we know some of the details that em was talking about we don't know we and we don't have it in GIS we just have this picture of it so it's a starting yeah we're Jessica seagull who has taken Mitch's Place is going to search to see if she can find the map as a file and that would be a little help helpful but def yeah right um so I think I I would see us working in conjunction but J I guess it depends on her experience and interest in having us help with this um but I would I think I would that's how I would see that un fold um another item which would happen at some point would be to contact land owners um probably working with the land trust staff or other conservation St great oops conduct not conduct contact like I have a um a thought but kind of ties that with a tier 2 priority which is the volunteer program to maintain the open space um and I like that is a an important part for I guess any land that would be a card and I would want to think like at the same time how that could be managed and what kind of funding could be possible for these areas that we're mapping out like yeah um yeah mapping out what the funding will be for the long-term stewardship of the properties probably should be another bullet point and you know that goes along with um if there are efforts to have volunteers be coordinated around certain Properties or more generally there's that's Crossover with the here two priority did I hear that the Conservation Commission it's just the agent who is kind of doing a stewardship by himself right now uh that's the person who has done it um we uh um Mitch had been working on doing some boundary marking um Travis had done some mapping so actually he'd been doing that work um but it's a little bit catch as catch can it's not um you know mostly the Conservation Commission tends to do the regulatory work so I think that um putting things in place to have that be done more regularly or have more resources to do it you know we didn't have a CPA fund or or many funds to hire people um so it'll be nice to have some um income for that purpose yeah I'm curious if the CPA funds would be appropriate for using something like the long term um this this coordinator um position or even just like they wouldn't really be adequate or or suited to that they're oriented towards acquisition of land and stewardship of land um they're not typically used they could be used for administrative costs but they're not typically used for staff and salary for a long term right but even even like the Ono cost of a project a stewardship project I wonder they could be used for due diligence like surveying um probably for trail maintenance but I think that there's some limitations in terms of whether the property has been acquired using some of the funds um buter conservation land um um typically it's used for the acquisition and the related costs that's my understanding it'd be great to have um Mary are you on the CPC committee as well you wear so many hats no okay it'd be great to have Travis come and talk to us uh or someone from that committee to help us make sure we understand um how the funds can be used that's a good thought yeah my and to hear you know just what the the amounts are and um that' be that'd be helpful if they wouldn't mind yeah great um so if folks like this concept here I I didn't it's not formatted very helpfully um I was thinking I would make it a little prettier uh and add in some more details that we could start to think about who's with each of these next step think about who's who's doing what and what some time frames are and so I can I can do that after for our next meeting thank you that'd be great John uh and then C so for maintaining improving city trails uh the I added and he said for our next steps the issue that um came up when I was talking with the recreation department is that there was permitting challenges for a lot of Trail maintenance that's held them back um so it came up last time for us to think spend some time I'm determining which city trails are within priority habitat and which are within Wetland buffer zone and which are free free of Permitting concerns um so we could make a we could make a map of of that and that could be quite helpful in thinking about where how volunteers could be sent out more freely versus with some permitting and also um well I guess this is down there as well I added the third one is thinking about if we could actually assist the recreation department with some of this perring if that's been a roadblock something that I've been involved with you know doing Wetland permitting so it's not a it's something that we could do obviously Emily's been on the a lot on the receiving side of that so um so something that we could potentially assist with if we wanted to put our energies there yeah I would just add the word map to the first detailed instead of determine or determine then map or something right and also I'm wondering I seem to have heard that Ryan at FKA may have done some updated mapping of trails so that be something I could look into if you want that would be great um that's what I was wondering because I go in high Park a lot and um you know there's a lot of trails in there plus people you know have gone in and made Trails yeah right a lot of Rogue right so yeah so it's it's it would be you really have to know which you know which are the actual trails to work on versus the ones that people have put in um so and not other places right griswell poet seat I know I think has some too that I haven't been to griswell in a while me neither last time I went it was so overgrown I turned around and went somewhere else yeah wow um I see that as a good thing in a way because I know for a while I think the city was using was logging yeah money so which I'd rather they didn't were they using sustainable for stre practices there is no such thing but really hey I disagree maybe we can move on from that okay that's a Bigg e Well yeah if we started talking about climate smart forry and all of those other it was mentioned in the in the Conway School update they know I didn't finish shoting that yeah I think it's really important for us to think about um encouraging you know inventorying planning for all the the lands that are um held by the town and I'm sure there'll be some disagreements but I'm sure we can find ways to to do um informed planning yeah um so you were saying Mary that um that that Ryan for had done map mapping I think I had heard there was some project underway in the last year or so so I can look into that great um great and then and then just explore doing Trail maintenance on Trails where perming is not required I know that Lee is interested in this committee but exclusively around Trails um she emailed me yesterday saying that she's not going to be attending but as soon as there's action on Trails she's ready to jump in um and I know you're for interested in Trails as well Pat right and and fruis is interest as well we have folks who are very interested in that direction um so I think we can once we have a sense of what's possible we could start to organize any other thoughts on this one um just circling back to to funding that might be available for this kind of thing um there are um Community forestry grants available from DCR um that we could consider um it would require some um for management planning so again there's differences of of feelings about that but but that is funds that people use for um a variety of things on their towns that could be used for trail Improvement as well you're saying yes yeah I'm sorry what what funding was that again Community forestry it's um the service forestry program in or Department in DCR yeah that could sounds like it might also be possible to use for stewardship of conservation land open space yeah yeah absolutely great again probably not staff salaries but contractors and work or inventories that kind of thing and out yeah excellent no other additions there and obviously this is I this is a working document that next meeting we'll look at our to-dos and think oh here's another to-do for us to do so um and then this the third and last one is trying to move forward this uh analysis of impervious surfaces and slopes storm water drains um so I think we we had talked about having a conversation with fov around this around tools and resources that might be available to the city that the city is maybe not exploring yet just um starting to have those conversations to help be the facilitator again on this one um I'm not sure do we know who the who at furog is best talk to about this Mary um probably Kimberly Kimberly mCP okay or uh maybe Jess maybe Jessica Atwood is the person to talk to about that one okay great okay so um oh any other thoughts on that anything in their action steps I'm not that one as we've talked about sort of a little little less that we can actively work on it's more just the facilitating of it so if that seems like a good process for us I think I I guess I would like to see us um think about which of these folks would like to individually have a role in and if if you have the capacity to to say oh yeah would I would work on that between meetings or over the next few months or something like that um seems like that's the way that we're going to go about checking these boxes off of getting these done um so I don't know if we want to have that discussion right now or it's also the type of thing we could it could be our homework where I add a couple columns in here and people could write their names next to next to todos that they're willing to have a role in um any preference between those two approaches um how much time do we have well we don't have any of the public here so that we have a little more time since we don't need the public comment at the end unless somebody hops on um so let's see we are so yeah so we're moving in this is a part of this next this next step so we have basically the rest of the meeting um to to talk about which is what 45 minutes or 40 minutes um to talk about the next steps here and looking at the tools that you develop Mary um we could come back we could move on to couple other topics of this and come back to this to see if we have time to start to take take things that sound good sure so the the the tool that Mary created thank you so much Mar this is an awesome I think this is an awesome way to start to be thinking about the various criteria um I added a little more color coding uh so um you had color coded the top the criteria that had that were in the most plans um so I added a little bit more uh to that but so for if you haven't looked at this yet across the top of these various criteria uh and across the the B column here are various plans that have that are in existence for Greenfield and so Mary went through and checked uh Mary thank you oh sure yeah it's really cool thank you um in some cases there were clear criteria spelled out in a plan in some cases I kind of went and looked for them some were more inferred some were um so for in the case of um oh like the vulnerability preparedness plan that was relatively easy because the plan is short and concise and easy to out you know there were cons there was a concerted effort to prioritize things other ones were a little bit more difficult like the hazard mitigation plan that's like 300 pages long right so you know yeah yeah um so it's not you know it's not a scient don't ask me to defend this but I the best I could to get the sense of what the priorities were for each of these either plans or mapping efforts right yeah and I think it's probably worth noting that it's not like we're going to pick one or two or three and say that's all we're going to focus on it's just a way for us to prioritize all these various things that are all valuable I think we would all agree right like none of these are criteria that we don't think are important in some way uh but there are things that are um that the town considers important because they made it into a plan so um so these green ones are the ones that were mentioned the most um raran areas and River corridors flood storage capacity and alands and then wildlife habitat mentioned in four plans and I just added these orangish ones as the ones that mentioned in three plans carbon storage environmental justice migration Corridor priority habitat Urban forest and wetlands um so I mean obviously the more plans it occurs in is not doesn't necessarily mean it's the highest priority but it is a it is a indication that various people and various planning groups have given it thought and yeah people put effort into thinking about it and coming up with you know criteria or rationale for why they prioritized yeah so I think it is a nice way to reflect the larger communities reference in a way since it's been since those are things are represented in so many different plans I think it'll be really interesting to see how this looks on a map because a lot of these seem like they would overlap and and provide different opportunities for different things like and like we'll have like the more opportunities overlap on one kind of area will present one kind of priority because of that and then we'll have different kinds of overlapping on another area and we could they could I think we don't know until we can see it overlapping Al together looking it out separate to me doesn't like say too much um without like being able to see how it's how it's looking yeah yeah well the things that stood out to me from this well AGS are are maybe a standalone to some degree uh of a a category um and as well as River corridors are very distinct I mean there there is overlap of course with other things on there but that's um that also overlaps when you put it with prity habitat and when you put it with uh wildlife habitat and corridors uh the river corridors that is all lines up in Greenfield you know it's all it is all the same area um so I think you're right looking at that on the map does bring that to light that we're looking at a lot of the same Parcels check a lot of a lot of boxes yeah like for indigenous lands I mean technically that might be everywhere sure a um um part of stewardship there are some stewardship um laws that um could enable them to use um uh parts of conservation land and that could be an opportunity for some some good stewardship so yeah yeah I just can't wait to see on the map yeah well and so maybe this is a good time just to share the the existing map um that Mitch created and so this map the criteria that were used is up here in the top left corner um priority habitat Wetlands streams Riverfront no buildings FAL pools and adjacent to conservation land um of those I thought the no buildings was an interesting one if that means any parcel that has a building on it was not considered is a little interesting because some will have a building on the Frontage and then a lot of backland that could have great conservation value so I'm not quite sure how that worked um so we don't know what any of those colors mean no we know that well green is existing conservation land I believe in some way uh and then the darker the pinkness or redness the more of these criteria um so this you know this is the Green River Corridor that is obviously the most red and pink um and then brige of course in this uh border on the on the east side definitely stand out I'm curious about when this was created because I'm looking at a permanently protected layer on my screen which looks a lot different has a lot more green on than the green yeah I agree the green is strange yeah so yeah I can't Point obviously because right but if you move your cursor up to there's a big white blob to the right to the right yeah right there I mean that one shows us being permanently protected uh oh as that's a that's an APR yeah sure what the deal is so maybe maybe the green is only forested well is the green at the top Griswald maybe the green on the top right up here I'm just guessing that might be Griswald um yeah oh yeah that's what that one is but that one you just had your cursor on that looks like a long sock there that that's uh says it's wi in woods so that's mysterious so it could be forested maybe so this doesn't include maybe it includes protected land that also meets these criteria another option but hopefully Jess will get to the bottom of it we'll find we'll find the source document and we won't have to ponder um but this this style of map I feel like is helpful it does it does have a categorization right I don't know what the number of shades are looks like three or four Shades so it's like you know it is prioritizing in that sense where there's the Dark there's you know five or six dark red Parcels that are the highest the highest priority to work on protecting uh and then these next next shade down so I think this this to me seems like a nice approach to folks like like this concept of the like the parcels that have over have a lot of overlapping criteria yeah I think it'd be helpful to have more information about what kinds of values are there this is helpful just to say oh well there's certain concentrated values in the properties but it also kind of loses some of the information so it'd be nice to have a map that you know just shows more of the layers um as well yeah like separate separated out yeah yeah yeah um you know priority estimated habitat that's a layer you know there's multiple layers from biomap that could be gone Wetlands streams um yeah it'd be nice to know what what re what is calling it out and I think that there's probably other uh values that we would want to add to this list um you know this was is a nice snapshot of what the Conservation Commission at that time thought about and then there might be other things that we would add to this right yeah and I guess this one is for properties to acquire I think to protect just protect yeah um I think we're considering conservation restrictions and aprs as valid for these as well as well as acquisition um yeah and I think this is also focusing on conservation land it's interesting that Agland was one of the things mentioned in most of the other plans so that's a sort of a a tier two um high priority for us but you know given that it's mentioned so much by in in the other efforts it might be worthwhile to to tap that up and I I'm not sure exactly but the the area in the north west part of the town that has so much red area um good chunk of that might well be Farmland too there you know there's that side of town has a lot more Farmland so those things could mesh as well but again I'd love to see like where are the farm soils and where the existing Farms or where the conserved Farms there's a lot of information we're not getting by looking at the map this way right yeah and I know um Franklin Land Trust has had a focus on egg and on egg lands is that correct Emily we began as um you know specifically to um help conserve Farmland but we don't just do that but we AB have done a lot of Farmland conservation right I feel like more so than Mount Grace when thinking of sort of the two bigger Regional players here I don't I don't think of Mount Grace doing as much in the APR front but I don't I don't know for sure they certainly do and they work with you know just roots in town here in Greenfield too so okay yeah and yeah I think both organizations do both do both yeah okay great all right so yeah so as far as this map I think to well I'll reach out to the new conservation agent see what she can what she's finding and we can either use this as a starting point or not if it if if this is all we this is all we have it's not very useful to us to uh St um so yeah I think another there's other tab that Mary made on here is conservation tools I think that's another element to this that it is uh like the for example flood storage capacity I don't know that there's a tool that uh would highlight that for us on a map um it's not a it's not a layer that I'm familiar with uh I don't know potential conservation tools do you mean like a conservation restriction or do you mean mapping mapping tool yeah mapping tool yeah just just thinking about if we're going to be making a map using these criteria um or some of these criteria we need to be able to map them when flood storage capacity is one that I don't know about other than the FEMA Maps there are some updates that have been done that furog has access to working with folks like um field geology um uh to look at different River systems and I think they did the Green River um to see about um uh flooding issues re more recently um and showing flood storage capacity is one of the things that I think that they would hit on okay great I also think USGS did some work on that um looking at the Green River excuse me flood zones so yeah um that's something I could check that'd be great yeah some that be different than the the like hundredy year flood zones a lot of overlap that would think it wouldn't the river Corridor kind of be those um flood storage capacity areas well I think this is the flood storage capacity is saying yeah places that have high flood storage capacity which I don't know that all of the the river cord were necessarily does uh I think this is one that Emily you brought up you have anything to say to Enlighten us on this at all yeah I can talk about it a little bit um so the mapping that's been done of the different reaches with burog has looked at the the the hydrology Dynamics basically um of certain rivers and to uh like I was saying you know the the flooding maps that FEMA has are very out of date they're not up you know they the hundred-year floods that we have we have far more commonly um so um Nick Miller has worked with Kimberly MC and and others um to do analyses of the rivers to show when there's been uh flood events um areas where there's a lot of conflict um and um um I to do and they've done actually some prioritization and and identification of areas and properties that would have potential for flood storage capacity so it's not the kind of thing that you could just download from massgis but there are analyses that have been done and the grant that we have applied for would help us be able to do some more of that work in Greenfield and um you know hopefully maybe Identify some properties that could provide blood storage capacity to help reduce the um uh the impacts on the city center yeah yeah great yeah excellent so Mary has also done a little bit of mapping thinking about this do you want to look at that yeah we can give it a try yeah oh I'm not on the call so I can I can unplug and you plug do you that will we lose Emily if we do that though no Emily's not via this this is just my computer sharing you have HDMI on that oh no no so then we can't do um I could log on to the meeting but there might not there's time to do that or not yeah or you could or you could send it to me oh it's not it's just it's a live RT right can't send to me um too much technology we'll see if you have the ability to share well I'm not on the call so I need to get on the call that's what I'm trying to do right now right we'll see if you let you do if you have the ability to share or not sure what it says Glen right now but we we'll know who you are just um okay so you share screen does it let you sharing is not turned on host isn't allowing multiple presenter sharing for this meeting are you trying to share a mapping um tool is that what you're doing Mary yeah joh is just trying to figure out F out how to allow me to share it's just I think I can wait I'm I can make you a co-host you should be able to share now hey all right this little screen okay so just okay looks like you can see that that's good get rid of this so I was just starting to look at what's going on in Greenfield and I'm not an advanced rgis person so you know that's my disclaimer but I was looking at um this is all permanently protected land so this is all in perpetuity so you can kind of if you remember what that map looked like that Jonah just shared there's quite a bit more like up in here none of this was shown as protected some of this wasn't shown as protected so this is as of 2024 and this only shows this is the open space the uh massgis open space layer but it's only showing the stuff that's in perpetuity um let's see in terms of existing uh land that's currently being farmed in Green Field if I zoom all the way out for some reason you can't see this layer so let me just shut this off for a sec so this is all the land that under the land cover land use data uh from map massgis these are all lands that are classified as agricultural land now this is different from uh Prime Farmland soils obviously so these are the the properties that are currently being farmed and we can turn the permanently protected layer on on top of that um and unfortunately the online version of of rjs doesn't allow you to do hatching so it's a little bit hard to see but um so the the blue is the current agricultural land and then anything that shows up um sort of this color green here means that it's both both AG and permanently protected so that's where those two layers are overlapping which seems like a pretty decent percentage of total egland yeah exactly yeah you want to hit the um Farm soils Mar Yep this will take a minute there we go it's not a very good color but you can get a sense but you know much of this Farmland soil is under buildings and right Artscape and Roads and all that right yeah something that I Came Upon that I was pretty interested in is I talked with one of the planners at the furog and they mentioned the new biomap and the local uh components I don't know if anybody's familiar with that I haven't got to check it out yet yeah and it kind of made me think oh maybe we should just use this yes because um they've done the work of taking the biomap core habitat and what's the other one critical natural natural landscape yeah and uh analyzing what um what of those elements are particularly um important at the local level so I looked at uh I was interested in this biomap local Landscapes so local Landscapes let me just HP over to this other screen they identify the most intact natural areas in each city or town mosaics of forests wetlands and streams and then they go on to uh describe in more depth what that is um but it's sort of a shorthand of you know where are the places in Greenfield where the most intact systems natural systems are still in place um it's interesting to see how it sort of almost ran Rings part of Greenfield and also interesting to me to see that this is this area here the Rocky Ridge is not classified as such right yeah I was just thinking the same thing that's really odd well wa which one did you click on which one is this this is the biomap local landscape oh just local landscape y okay and so I can start turning on some of those other layers this one was kind of exciting to me just because I don't know cuz I care about those areas that have the most potential for being protected and being most supportive of you know wildlife and all those important things right um so no I'm just curious so is this on from Mass mapper too can you get this on mass mapper no if the local uh it is actually I was playing I was I was playing around with it this morning I saw them I didn't click on all there's just a ton of options now there's lots of different yeah which I didn't I didn't realize so I and I haven't looked at in a while so I was thinking I should really get on mass mapper again and play around because so what I'm trying to figure out is I guess this local landscape is that like putting together you know biomap Wetlands aquatic habitats no these are all separate layers they're separate so okay so it's not like cramming those together and saying this is you know what you should you know what you could look at so they're all still separate they're all still separate so for instance um here's the biomap the local rare species Oh weird wonder why that I don't know why that labeling came on so there's you know some areas up in here in particular and then little bits here and there hope those don't all do that I was kind of puzzled by this Vernal pool thing because they's such large areas that doesn't well but you know what's weird is it doesn't show the ones that have been certified right so there's more investigation is needed to understand what we're looking at for sure right um and then you know there's Wetlands that they show with the buffers around the wetlands and then aquatic habitats would be or whatever reason it's interesting to me that they're not looking so much at like the Deerfield River or the they don't have the Green River right um well oh yeah they don't have it for that layer that's right but the the pink layer they've got the pink layer right in the middle which I think is is a Green River at least the north part right well my understanding is that because the Green River is so compromised down through Greenfield itself that it does not meet the this level of okay being because of dams dams and other issues yeah degradation yeah so there's a lot you know I mean this is just a little bit of messing around I did um and I didn't delve deep into the local components but I think it would be worth looking more carefully at what that's about and whether it could be you know of use to us right so yeah there's one other um component uh um I just want to raise I went recently to the lien Master planning um committees group when they were starting to talk about conservation land and give sort of an overview to them um and got to hear some of the issues they were talking about and you're probably aware but the the light and Glenn Reservoir is a source of a third or more of the drinking water in Greenfield um and that's a resource we might want to I don't know if it really fits into any of the priorities we're working on right now but to keep in mind it's a resource that we benefit from that doesn't bring much benefit I think the way it was negotiated a long time ago um it's at a very low cost to Greenfield and there are there are a certain amount of burdens on lien for maintaining that so um uh just when we think about what's important to Greenfield we might want to think about our drinking water water and other resources that are outside of the the town boundary um and as we move forward with priorities maybe um spare a thought for how to support those resources and also think about our neighboring communities that are helping to support our our drinking water and other things that we benefit from I'm glad you brought that up up Emily because as I was looking at the spreadsheet that we priori spreadsheet not your priority spreadsheet but the one I worked on yeah um I noticed that maybe there was just one check mark there for drinking water supply and I thought that that was um not a good thing you know yeah given especially with droughts and um and climate change affecting our our you know both floods which have caused um serious health hazards in many many communities um and then also droughts which reduce the amount of drinking water that we have it's a pretty serious issue so right one that Bear's thinking about yeah I really wish we could think more along side or along the lines of watersheds like planning all together absolutely outside of the Town boundaries yeah yeah it would be it would be interesting to see how the other towns in our Watershed are are doing this too and maybe there's like another level of um coordinating the could possible which yeah furog is able to coordinate at that level and so it seems like that would be our best bet talking with them also looking at the I I didn't look in depth at the Deerfield River Watershed whatever it's called that plan that I actually worked on many years ago I don't remember it anymore but I I looked at the local just at the recommendations around Greenfield we could zoom back out and see I mean that might be something you'd want to look at that de field with the water shed the analysis they did at that broader level see if there's anything yeah where is that um it it's linked in that in Mary's document in that spreadsheet that spreadsheet you have up I think it's over yeah oh this one okay great so we are we only have 15 minutes left um I guess I just want to make sure we were talking about our our next steps and moving things forward here is there anything else that we want to add to this sort of General conversation about the mapping and criteria I think we need a full list of the criteria that we want to look at um and maybe we'll be basing on what was used in the open space plan but I think we need to go beyond what in that initial Conservation Commission map right so isn't that what we were doing by prioritizing seeing what was prioritized in those plans yeah that was helping helping to inform that yeah perect yeah helping to inform that but not we haven't like yeah gotten to a point of saying these are right the priorities we want to use um you know so in to Mary's Point she was saying you know the biomap is intended to be a tool to tell us where to conserve land particularly when thinking of habitat and the wildlife side of things not not as much on the um flood storage or environmental justice or other categories uh that we're considering um but the thought of maybe we look we take biomap and think about what we want to add to that if we say that checks the box of wildlife habitat priority habitat um various other elements core habitat that are on there um you think what what are the other important elements that we want to add to that does that seem like an approach to take sounds I mean I mean it is an approach to is a good one something that I just flashed on when you were saying that was you know we were just looking at some of those biomap layers and the fact that the Green River the lower reach of it is not you know doesn't get captured so then that would be something we would have to add in because you know it's not like we're going to turn our back on the Green River just because it's you know not part of biomap as a matter of fact yeah we should be doing probably just the opposite trying to figure out we'd probably be looking at restoration opportunities yeah well flood storage is important through a forest whole length of course exactly oh I'm sorry the Miller Meadow is actually a current project it's a conservation property that's already owned by the the town and held by the Conservation Commission and green and Greenfield is is really involved there's a grant that's been approved and that's that's potential of fledge storage and definite um Improvement through tree habitat and through tree planting and and um so anyway that's a that's a current project that's going on right yeah I I went to the field trip for that um last Monday and um they were saying that that was a good flood storage possibility and um would be related to um what the dam removal projects might look like further up the river or or below the river um and I have a lot of thoughts about that but I'm not sure where they go yeah yeah I wanted to bring that up that with the dam removals well partial removal and a full removal going on the the lower deer field I mean the lower green will be hopefully a lot you know more interesting place than it is now Al I guess people would debate that yeah people de debate most most things um yeah it's a good point so do we want to try just our last little bit of time here to to think about the elements that we want to add in using using this yeah that' be great um so if we say um and maybe the best way um sorry what are you suggesting just trying to hone in on that CR criteria that we want to use to to include in in this mapping right we can't really include each of these some of them we don't even have the layers a layer for I guess um but if we wanted to say this is what we're going to is I guess starting to form that list of the criteria we're not finalizing anything um yeah I think some of these things we won't be able to capture through mapping but if we use the things that we can if we associate these values with map layers yeah and then sort of have a priority hierarchy y um or waiting process then we when we look at the individual properties we could then assess what elements of it like for example for carbon storage we could look at is it already forested it could it be planted what species are there that kind of thing right yep yeah and it might not even be like an entire parcel I'm just thinking of like where the like if we had the flood zone it might just be part of a parcel and maybe it'll overlap a lot on one like absolutely part of a parcel and that could still be helpful so if I were to say start to oops just turn some of these and say what color we're not using your colors colors so say yeah you know we definitely want to include biomap uh in there we start we could just start to turn some of these um top criteria to this colors River Corridor to me seems like I mean it's overlaps a lot with the biomap but as we said not entirely uh it does seem like that's that does catch the box of flood flood blood storage to some degree as you were saying Patty do that make sense to include we want to include what we doing in saying which which of these categories or do we actually want to start to use as the criteria that we're going to make a map with so if and I'm GNA turn them red so biomap I think we discussed and we seem to agree that that's a good one to include I'm suggesting River Corridor [Music] M other thoughts well I would put sorry priority habitat because that's I mean I think that's kind of goes with biomap some of these are and the same with wildlife habitat and wetlands right so they s to all get right exactly some will get just get lumped in so we can think we could try to like pull out the ones that cover them all like biomap does cover the wildlife habitat m so we can just say that that will represent it um yeah do we want to hello how's it going this is zba meeting no that's in um starts at 6:30 yeah yeah thank you yeah I I would just suggest that we highlight the ones that we think are important even if they're Incorporated in bi map just okay because if I end up doing the mapping I might not remember remember which parts of biomap we are particularly interested in okay I can do that um we said those two and to Habit that you said Pat yes adjacency to protected land and migration [Music] Corridor and urban Forest seem very similar um or unfragmented Forest good well I think Urban Forest to me feels like it's outside of the realm of the picture that we're painting and I'm all about Urban Forest but it might not be what we're talking about as we're trying to prioritize if we're thinking to me Urban Forest means Street trees but maybe you you think of it um yeah I mean I'm thinking about how Wildlife corridors aren't haven't been prioritized and they are pretty cut off still and maybe we for what I mean it would depend on what the parel is being used for but maybe there maybe there is a good reason to um to create more of a corridor like if we were to undevelop it like I think that's important for resiliency so I don't know it's it feels very hard to to make a decision without seeing um where it's where it's at I would like to see how everything looks yeah I about approaching this somewhat differently and I don't know what the possibility of us all being together in a room is but I think it's hard to look at Maps I mean it's fun to look at maps online by yourself sort of but to really be able to start to get a handle on what areas we want to concentrate on it might be nice to have some printed out maps that show some layers some of these layers combined together that we could work with I did make a map like the the red one when I was at Conway the overlapping oh yeah thing um and I just want to brush up on my GIS skills so that I can try to do that again yeah and uh overlap a lot of things yeah well well I I'm totally open to that if that's of interest to folks if we were it would be another you know the next step we could prep we have to do some prep for that um I do think we could also um play like if we were to select some criteria that were prioritizing play around with maps a bit on our own or on the screen next time as well okay um I mean I don't mind going home sometimes I just go on I use Google Earth a lot and just look at it with leaves off photography I don't know if you're familiar with that so I can see the wetlands better and the conifers versus because I I did Wetland mapping oh cool so leaves off just means it's it's well it's col it's not always color infrared it's just leaves off just means you pick a um you pick a Google Earth um map date that there's no leav it's fall or spring yeah and then you know because if you don't it just looks like all green but if you do that you can see where your deciduous trees are and your conifers I mean Emily you probably use aren't you a Forester so I assume you use that because I'm not a Forester I'm know wild like e colist but I you know overlaps you can see Wetlands better and it's it's wonderful to look at and that's what I use when I'm trying to assess something or look at something and that's something you can do I assume maybe most of us have Google Earth yeah and you know plus you could go around Greenfield all of us live in Greenfield I assume probably people like I might be more familiar with Highland Park but someone else goes to Griswald or someone knows the Green River Corridor better or you know what I mean right if we're all together with a map you can say oh yeah here's such and such right yeah I have observation to make about the categories that might be helpful but I feel like there's some of them that are really really distinctly related to like finding the conservation areas that make sense to work on conserving and then a bunch of the other ones are maybe they they're not quite as um mentioned on as many plans um or as related to conservation per se like um environmental justice or um you know I'm not sure which you know like the drinking water is only on there once but they're really important values so it seems like maybe some of these are things that we would use to just make a map that says these are the areas in town that make sense to look at these properties for conservation and then we would use the other categories to help us prioritize which ones like conservation Readiness isn't really checked at all but that's going to be one of the most important things in terms of us picking projects to work on right good point so so as we do this it might make sense to sort of look at different buckets where we're just getting a profile of the kinds of lands that make sense to to conserve because they're high quality uh unfragmented you know have lots of resources and are um you know have resources that are important to the town and then we'll be looking at some of the other adjacent values to see um you know like is there a historical significance on this property so maybe that would bump it up because there's two pools that could be used for CPA funds or something like that right yeah I think that's a good point um so we're out of time I think that perhaps that we will then just table table that for our next conversation because we're we're running out of time here so I guess my thought on where we leave this is that we can um if any of us that want to start to play around on maps a bit can I like that idea a lot Emily you know Mass mapper um is very you know you can hop on here in all these same fields that we're just looking at are on there so you can go through and start to add those you know play around with Ms on there you know addition that' be other options um I will send around uh the this um with some modifications for us to make some to add on where you individually think you would want to start to put some efforts um and maybe I'll throw out a couple thoughts too on the on the mapping um that we can give some thought to before the the next meeting my it's okay we're just wrapping up and as uh the nail Checker I'm going to send around a list of to-dos because I Tred to do that I was hoping we could capture those but we didn't really but there were a number of things that we were like oh we should do this right but we didn't put a name on it so yeah that' be great I'll send out that because I can capture it thankk you yeah sorry we got a little tight on time here um but thanks everybody for your thank you on this uh we're Mak I think we're making some progress you know few small people making progress in the world all right do we have a motion yes I I second it and yeah all right 're favor all right [Music]