good evening everyone we're going to get started it is it is 6:33 6:34 now one of the um items we received from feedback from the community responses is that we should start meetings on time so we we
should do that so let's let's get started so thank you for for joining us this evening this is a a community meeting focused on the nog hill orchard which many of uh members of the community know and love very well this is the second of a two meeting series so
uh we'll be reviewing that i think it just goes to the to the video so this is being live broadcast with lctv so we probably have some people joining us at home as well and that's what the microphone's for so i'm going to try to project i don't
think i'm maybe i am amplified in the room sounds like maybe not you need a little feedback okay great so our agenda for this evening we're going to do a brief recap and introduction for those who you uh who did not join us at the first meeting so
you can be brought along with that okay we're all set now the feedback has subsided and we will uh go through a recap of the context just so everyone again is on the same page we'll spend a fair amount of time going through the feedback that we received from the first community meeting and a follow-up survey
and then we have um the results of that summarized in what we're calling a community- based evaluation matrix for some of the decisions that have yet to be made as the process moves forward and then we do want to go through some of those details and talk about the next steps as well so we have a fair amount to cover we'll go at at the pace of the
room uh and and you all can um we'll have plenty of times where we stop and pause and you can all give questions comments etc throughout the presentation so let's get started on the introduction so you might be wondering i'm not sure if i even introduced myself to start but i'm josh fiala of the
metropolitan area planning council we are the regional planning agency of the greater boston area i'm joined by my colleagues emily wanzer lindseay randall javier gutierrez who has stepped out and courtney lewis here um and so we are um
planners by training and provide community assistance to those within the greater boston region you can see that region on the map here roughly within the 495 belt littleton's right on that edge uh so we're out with you this evening and happy to provide this this type of assistance we provide technical
assistance to the 101 cities and towns within the greater boston region and we're happy to do so and have done so in the past with littleton as well so we're happy to be a part of your community processes and help in whatever way we can so why we're here and the purpose of
these meetings really has been to convene community conversations around the orchard property gathering feedback and documenting that feedback from you all members of the community with the hope to define shared objectives and criteria that will help the town to evaluate future options for the orchard
and then we also want to discuss those future options and get your opinion about how those outcomes might be shaped so we have a a presentation that we'll be walking through to guide the discussion we do have uh post-it notes on the tables and some pens if you don't want to share verbally we invite you to
please do get your thoughts down and post-it notes as we're going along and we'll collect those at the end of the meeting and uh combine those with all the other responses that we get so you're welcome to share things verbally we'll take notes of what your verbal comments are and we also invite you to get things down on post-it notes um i think we'll probably given the size of
the audience tonight we'll probably just stay as one full room we don't need to break into smaller smaller groups to discuss and we invite you again as as we have points for discussion to chime in and and provide your thoughts and or additional questions at the end of this process and i'll be talking about this at the end
too uh our culminating uh document will be a memo documenting our process documenting everything we've heard and presenting that back to the community and to the leadership of the community and providing that so that you can all use it moving forward so last meeting we have presented some
community norms just that we can all be on the same page about how to discuss some sometimes what can be a challenging or charged topic we've heard some frustration from the community of course in this process that would be to uh you can see those on the screen things like being fully present presuming that people have good intentions in their
comments and thoughts uh speaking one at a time listening for understanding using eye statements so things that you think not necessarily representing that you are speaking for another group and if you make a mistake or say something that may be offensive to someone then you can
use an oops or an ouch if that statement was offensive to you so those are the types of community norms that we introduced people were on board with them last meeting we'll use similar uh norms for your comments and discussion this evening but we asked in the feedback this is one of the things we talked about uh both in the meeting last
time and through the survey if there were other community norms that the community would like to see and we did get about 30 responses on that item so you can see some of the quotes here and this will be a a common feature of our presentation tonight i'll be showing you direct quotes from the community and then we'll be um pulling out from those
quotes and give you some larger themes so these are direct quotes that your fellow residents uh provided to us in uh thinking about how meeting norms and this is not only applicable to the orchard process our meeting tonight but we're thinking this these could be things which could be applicable to
other community processes there are a lot of discussions a lot of important things happening in littleton so if we shifted the slide which we had of which were our community norms for you this would be more reflective of what we heard in that feedback so these would be littleton's
community meeting norms for your community meetings and that we would uh always have a virtual attendance option like we're doing with lctv tonight we'd have clear communication and data for the topic at hand a safe and respectful environment and these are words again from the community members time limits
for speakers if need be hope hoping we can all just be respectful of time but if need be i can start a stopwatch tonight uh we respect gender pronouns provide equal time and attention to people in the room we have respect for others perspectives start and end on time we were pretty close to that we'll
try to end on time as well be conci concise and on point i'll try to follow that as well honest and transparent communication have outreach outreach and inclusion in our processes and be considerate sensit so these are from your community this is the type of thing
that we'll reflect back in the memo that we produce and hope that they can be useful to the community as you move forward with this work and others all the questions that we'll be asking tonight we do have another online survey so people who are either at home watching this live or watch a recording
you can go to this link or you can scan with your phone the qr code and it will take you to the same link and it will provide the same questions that we asked in meeting and you're welcome to provide those through the survey and we had a tremendous response to the follow-up survey from the last meeting so uh people were connecting to this and using
that so that's excellent so let's talk about a brief recap in context about what's happening on the property so in our last discussion and meeting the um there was discussion about the apr portions of the land and that those apr portions of the
land were under consideration a lease negotiation was underway with a uh tree company called bransfield um they um that lease negotiation has now been concluded and the lease has been executed on the apr portions of the
property so that has been um through the select board and that was decided we i'll have a moment for some clarifying questions i just have clarification signed sorry we we should take the mic over for the questions yeah
hi so the the lease has been signed by both parties we have not yet heard back from mdar but john has been speaking to mdar directly and i see no i i would be very surprised if they had any issues with it i would like some clarification as to
what his conversations are in regards to mdar and how that pertains to lease because is he therefore altering his management plan at the request of mdar or is and will that have an influence on
the lease that we've signed no the lease or like what his conversations with mdar so i think it was he was describing to mar what he was going to do and what his plans were according to his the management plan in the lease and discussing with them and they were in
his words enthusiastic about it i don't think that that mdar has not to my knowledge asked for any changes and i haven't seen there shouldn't there will be no changes to the lease and the management plan as they were presented because that's what we signed and john signed it as well yeah and then is there
a certifications type of thing from mdar to say that this lease is approved like how does i don't know i i know that they have the right to say no but i don't know if they need to formally approve it okay so well i could ask that's a good question yep and i guess the other thing
too is is that if john's making clarifications about what he's planning on doing with the land that's not actually spelled out in the management plan and that's what mdar's like is there documentation of that and if that's part of mdar's approval i don't i
don't to my knowledge there's none he hasn't made any changes to anything any of his plan with mdar he hasn't he hasn't deviated from it he's barely started it yet well i'm not sure i understand what you're concerned about his the management plan that was presented is pretty generalized and
there's not a lot of specifics in terms of what he plans to do and there was a lot of specifics that came out in his meeting with us um you like you know that he's going to need two years to build soil like there was a there was different things that came out um as more
specifics that were not included in his management plan and so therefore i'm just curious as with his conversations with mdra is mdar approving his management plan based on these specifics that are actually in his plan i don't think that he's being any more spe i
don't know but i don't think he's being any more specific with mdar than he was with with us and there's no documentation for that in what he was with us in his management plan either so there's nothing we yeah we that's correct the management plan
has not been spelled out in that level of detail okay but it can be it can be altered like yeartoyear so like i i would suspect that it once we do the annual report every year there may very well be mutually agreed upon changes to the management plan
okay and i appreciate that i'm just bringing this up to everybody because i think that there's some need in terms of um what's actually happening with the lease what it john bransfield's plans are with the property and how do we as a
town hold him accountable in terms of is he meeting the management plan because it's so generalized like we don't know where he's going to be planting we don't know what his time frames are for any of these things and so this was a point that i had concerns in terms of signing
a lease without you know goals that we as a town in progress we as a town um and bransfield it creates a um tool for dialogue to be like oh are we meeting these goals or not and is there reasons
that that we're not meeting them because we're bumping into different obstacles or the plan needs to be changed so it provides a a baseline tool and that's something that i felt like was missing and it seems like it's been a part of our conversations but there's no
documentation of it so great thank thank you for that and just so that's that's a very sort of i think detailed window into the discussions that are going on um but just to maybe step back because i feel some of people in the audience might not be as familiar as as that
exchange indicated but there so the lease is a 20-year term uh with two five-year extensions it applies to not the entirety of the orchard property but the apr restricted portions of the property uh and there the discuss the
detailed exchange there is really focused on the fact that there is town oversight built into the lease and that oversight would be through a third party over uh on an annual basis uh but i think some of the details of how that might actually mechanically function
need to be worked out what's apr uh agricultural preservation restriction excuse me that's a the what the apr is i apologize for not clarifying that and that is the the portion of the property which has to is restricted to have commercial agricultural occur on it and
that's uh the oversight for that is through a state agency the massachusetts department of agricultural resources mdar you also heard mdar in that discussion and mdar is would hold the town accountable for having that property be commercially viably
farmed and we jumped the gun a little bit but i knew there'd be discussion comments on this but are there any other comments or questions clarifying comments about uh the lease itself just to make sure that we uh share information about that yes well it's
okay probably not really about the lease itself but um i noticed that trees have been cut down in the last couple of weeks so is that um by bransfield tree company or is it you know someone with
the town has cut them down so so i can answer that there are there were there was a um a few months ago the town cut down um some trees around the house at 91 nag because those trees were diseased and they were in infecting the the trees
on the on the private property and now john is removing trees okay which was always part of the plan the trees are the trees are not commercially viable many of them are diseased and um they are also if even if they were viable from a fruit perspective it's not
varieties that people would ever purchase so so he's he is going to leave many of the trees especially along the edges of the property um as a sort of a visual you know representation of the orchard and he is going to try to retain enough to have a pick a small pick your
own perhaps in the fall but most of the trees are going to be um cut down okay thank you other questions or comments about the lease specifically yeah there's just one more
for the mic thank you um this just brings up the whole point of of well as um folks are watching things happening on the property if there was a spelled out plan or understanding you know
what john was doing on the property then folks would have a better idea of what's happening and also having a point of contact if they have questions who they can reach out to because we don't have a newspaper um somebody asked me on
facebook what was the update with the orchard because they saw the trees being cut and i was like well you there's all these different places that you can go to but there isn't a designated spot and i've talked with matthew and mark about
this being an important aspect because all of us in town that especially that we if we drive by that a lot and live in the area we're going to want to know what's going on and to make sure things are following along because we don't want a repeat of what happened last time
so i will reach out to the next few months as it comes out there he does a regular newsletter already for his tree company which is a variety of
things including interesting trees that he takes pictures of i mean he's he's a nerd so i think he would probably actually enjoy writing uh writing up information about what he's doing and where he's going with it but that's a great idea
great well we'll continue on and just um now shift to the community meeting feedback that we've compiled from the first session so you all can have the benefit of that and it will inform our discussion this evening so we did have a community meeting the first one was on march 6th 2024 we had a little bit larger audience in that session than we
have in this session about 40 or so and then um following again we had a follow-up survey as as as i just advertised for this meeting and we had a remarkable turnout for that survey we had about 375 people open the survey not all those people responded to the survey
of course but i do the same thing myself open open and click through and see what the questions are uh but we had 375 open it had in the neighborhood of probably a hundred or so for any given question respond and provide answers to those questions we do um it's if it's a good
thing i guess it's a good thing to um cross te's and dot eyes but we do check for like duplicate ip addresses just so anyone's uh out there wondering about conspiracy theories about ballot stuffing and things like that we do check for those things and we didn't see any funny business in this case as we usually don't um but just wanted
everyone to know that as well so we can trust these results are community members in the in the town and uh that it's not a single member who's got these opinions it's spread across as you see here 85 combined responses both from the meeting responses and the survey responses so these were just general
questions i'll go through these relatively quickly because they just set the stage in context for why people were joining us either in the survey or in the meeting lots of concern about the property itself a worried observer i think some frustration expressed about the process and that the the decisions
that are made for the property have a longl lasting impact on the town and that that legacy is important so those were the quotes just to remind you of that so the first slide of each of these questions those are direct quotes from the community
responses in meeting and in the survey and then across all those 85 responses you don't see 85 quotes there of course these were the themes in priority order so the top bullets had more um frequency of response amongst the 85 so we see
preservation of the orchard in the land was why people are interested in participating support for the nishoba prey and indians was the second most of why people are wanting to attend and participate in these processes the community and local impact interest in the orchard's future and its status in general and then its cultural and
historic importance to the town uh so you can see some of those but also process concerns around transparency in this process uh being able to be involved lots of people have a personal connection to the property as a neighbor to the property or a personal connection just growing up in the area and concerns
about the future of the orchards management which which we're hearing this evening as well we asked people also what question what one question would you bring into that session and those are uh some quotes from that meeting in the survey uh what
is best for the future for the town of littleton i think that was a common question uh some questions about why our particular meeting wasn't scheduled earlier more more uh soon after the may 24th uh or may 2024 uh town meeting of
last year uh in the decisions around that and um again concern for a path forward for the show indians that that's what you see annotated as npi as a way to shorten that just to clue everyone in and uh what is the best outcome imaginable on this property some quotes
for that and you can see here some themes starting to resonate across questions and you'll see that as we continue but the themes uh from one one is one question you would bring into this space that a lot of comments around the praying indians involvement in land
rights on the property preservation and protection of the orchard and land and transparency and decision-making processes so those are really the the resonating questions and themes from that so we had also in the meeting uh
clarifying questions we did more of a a presentation on the existing conditions of the property than in that first session than we will do this evening we will um make sure that in in the spirit of getting all this information uh placed in one place on the town's website make sure that everyone can see
the link to the previous meeting if you're interested in doing a more of a deep dive into those existing conditions these were some of the clarifying questions that came after that existing conditions presentation again a fair amount of quotes around the nohoba praying indians um and the uh sort of
trajectory of ownership that has occurred through from pre-establishment of littleton as a town in fact so you can see all of these in this case are quotes i don't think through our uh there's some questions in here
which are more rhetorical in nature i think and some that are probably impossible for us to answer given our knowledge and background and context but as i mentioned we are putting together a memo as part of our concluding piece of this document we will try to get a a faq
that responds to many of these clarifying questions built into that memo but just foreshadowing that we probably will not be able to answer all of the questions uh given uh the nature of some of them but you can see again each of the questions that have been asked of
those clarifying questions i won't read each one of them but you will see a list of them i will mention actually this is a on the top of this slide has caught my eye we talked some about the zoning restrictions on the property and there was questions about the aquer zoning in
particular and we have taken a look at that and the uh town's aquafer zoning overlays and watershed protection areas do not are not colllocated with these properties in fact so they're in other parts of the town so those restrictions do not apply to this particular
property so then we focused a lot last meeting on the uh establishment of community shared objectives and community shared criteria and we went through some exercises some small groupoup discussion and then again had the follow-up survey responses and you see our our responses
here are are combined at 114 uh responses about establishing objectives in the community you can see these are direct quotes again so uh again focusing on stewardship and relationship with the noshoba praying indians long-term sustainability
agricultural use on the property complying with the agricultural preservation restriction these are all objectives which the community finds uh to be important and then if you look at organizing those in accordance with the
frequency of how they showed up across those responses you see by far and away an opport opportunity to recognize honor and return nohou pray indian stewardship of the land to that group is the leading frequency in terms of objectives people the shared objectives of the community
here that's followed by long-term sustainability and viability of the stewardship and agricultural uses so not wanting to see uh another failure on the property as we've seen in the past and fulfilling promises of to honor the legacy of the land the legacy of
littleton's agricultural history the role of apples specifically on you know it's on the town seal and there's a strong history there complying with requirements of land i think it's it's interesting to see complying with the requirements on the land a little bit lower down on this list because that was
i think one of the primary objectives that was driving the decisions to the point today and then uh restoring protecting maintaining the orchard as a fruit producer so those were the others there were a lot of other comments as you move down but each of those were
less frequency than these i've got a few of them here um but they start to get a little bit lower in priority you see like maybe three or four neighbors coming together and then of course there's a fair amount of responses that were one-off so a single resident thought a certain idea but they were didn't hold frequency across other
residents so we tried to focus on those which are shared uh across littleton residents and you can see some of those less frequent objectives here uh engaging a partner or partners to manage the property as an example and having strict and formal oversight of the property so you can see some of these
objectives are being met for sure uh by the uh current trajectory of decisions that have been made we also talked about the criteria so the the way that we described this and facilitated the last meeting is that the objectives are the the larger
broader outcomes and the criteria are the more detailed metrics by which you would uh determine if it was a successful outcome uh relative to the objectives that were established so the criteria are a little more specific um and we had a similar level of responses
uh from this question in in the discussion and you see similar themes show up so respective sacred places acknowledgement to the land uh within the show praying indians creating an overseeing body that manually monitors the site and uh having previous
experience operating an a business so those are some of the quotes and again we've organized this and looked at the frequency of the responses you can see that the top criteria is to have an indigenous connection to the land uh and acknowledgement and support for the npi
those were similar uh ideas but there was some distinction there having the town monitor activity closely to make sure a plan is adhered to lots of frequency there and we're already talking about that tonight the details of that experience with sustainable farm management pesticide certification
native crops organic farming we clustered some of those ideas together some people would mention just a single one of those but saw that there there was a larger umbrella there of sustainable farm management interest in the historical background of the property uh in making sure that the
applicants or outcomes are consistent with that history and that i think this was a good one that there would be no harm to the land and that the the resources the land would not be stripped and that you wouldn't have uh be kind of going backwards in terms of that that stewardship
process and then again some lower uh level criteria maintaining community access this was there were a variety of ideas inms terms of maintaining community access some some suggesting that there be pick your own access others thinking that there would be an opportunity for
some sort of educational center or educational opportunity on the property itself preserving scenic views those views views had some variation in terms of what people would describe specifically but the idea was shared amongst quite a few uh protecting and conserving the soil and water resources
pesticides could have gotten drawn in with that other previous sustainable farm management item but this was more specifically comments very very focused on pesticides and pest management and again we see the apr show up on this on this list but again not till uh later down in terms of
frequency as well as agricultural business experience resources and training then we rounded out that feedback from the first session with a more general call for other questions and comments and we see uh a returning to the theme
around support for and honoring of the noisha indigenous people and here you see the themes from that larger quotes that we just touched on and these again are or organized in priority order with the
frequency very similar to the themes that we saw in the other questions and then on the survey i i think this was general touched on in the meeting as we talked through in in discussion in small groups but we offered one other opportunity another open call for what else to consider so
these were survey responses only but the themes were uh resonate with everything i've just covered so pretty resounding and consistent feedback from the community about the themes so i guess i did not put a pause
in here but i'll just pause here to see if anyone has any reaction or thoughts about all of this feedback we've gathered yeah so just um i just just a general impression here which is that um it it seems that for the most
part what people are wanting the different things are not incompatible with each other so i'm i'm wondering i i wasn't part of that process but you know if things were you know grouped as all
of these could compatibly be included in a plan you know um you know it seems like you'd get an a large buy in you know so i just you know am i missing something were were some of these uh
points actually at odds with each other in a significant way or did it i mean it seems to me like there ought to be a way to pull all of that all together in one plan i i would agree with that i think that the
um i think there are complicated i think the thing that i would describe as complicated is the arc of processes that were underway and how our process overlays with that arc of processes so um i think there were the wheels were
set are set were set in motion and have been resolved on the bransfield lease and so i think that there are now in what we're going to talk about in this meeting more squarely is the portions and we have a map sorry we we should have showed a map previously but we have a map um the portions of the property
which are not subject to the bransfield lease and the apr restriction i do think that all the themes that we see in these uh in this feedback could be resolved you're right in a more cohesive manner and vision for those portions of the property i think that the how that
relates to the bransfield lease is another question something that can be explored uh and there i think from what i have heard are open to a partnership of some kind if if that were be were to be um sort of meaningful address the community's ambitions
it it sounds like it sounds like um yes that would be possible but that hasn't um nobody's specifically trying to pull that together at this point yet there's some other priorities is that
right i think we in our process will be trying to point in a direction but then it will be um the responsibility of other parties in the town to carry that forward so we're going to basically mirror back to the town what we're hearing through our process but i agree
like i don't know that there's an established party who will be tying all of the aspects of a vision together and then putting together the the plan to get to that vision okay seems important agreed
um i asked the question at the last meeting how was this criteria from this meeting going to be um influenced in this current lease process and mark and
matthew both said that they were going to be and correct me if i'm wrong in what i say of what i remember what you said that they will be taking what we said at that meeting into consideration when they put the final lease
together they signed or approved the vote on the lease on march 24th the survey didn't close until april 1st so from my understanding with those order of events the lease process was well
underway before all of this information and from my perspective they were not able to take in all the criteria as they said that they hoped they would be able to for
that survey because they voted and asked for a vote on that lease before the survey was closed so um yes it is very confusing and yes the process could have been done differently
and could have been done better and that would be um ma if matthew and mark want to answer to that but yeah so a couple things um one of the criteria that we were um
absolutely required to complete were legal requirements ments for how the how the land would be operated and maintained under the apr because um we were already out of compliance and the massachusetts department of agricultural
resources ultimately has control over the land and could in theory take it away and and offer it to another third party it was an unlikely event but the longer that it remained out of compliance the the more problematic the
situation became and so even though none of the criteria up there it wasn't that that is almost not represented at all that was almost the most important thing for us as a policy board that's trying to take care of things from a legal framework which i understand is not like
what we're talking about here and that's that's fine but that's that's where we were coming from and that's where the lease originated from i will also say that in the process of doing this lease i became disillusioned with the inequity that was present and the sort of the way
that the the tribe had been sidelined and i think it was a combination of you know prejudice and cultural differences and the status quo so when josh and mark and i were talking about these sessions
um i think josh suggested that we because there had been so much talk about the tribe that we actually focus more on you know how can we be more culturally sensitive how can we um address the issues that we're seeing now in the future and i think that it's
unfortunate that you know this came a little bit late but we're this is the best thing we can be doing right now to make things better in the future and it's not just 20 30 years from now when the lease is up there are things that we can do right now and we are doing to try
to um get things started in a more equitable way great the lease has nothing to do with the tribe though is that right is it that's correct i've got a lot of catching up to do i went to the the town vote where they voted down to lease the
land so and that's the last meeting i've been at so what you did went ahead and leased the apr and now we're talking specifically about the remaining is it 70% or 60% oh it's it's it's a little i think it's roughly half i think it's
like 80 acres and like 42 of them are in apr or something like that so the lease is done talk about the lease tonight we're here to talk about the other half of the land well i you know john has has said in publicly that he is willing to
work with the tribe and you know share i don't know i don't know what what that takes it could be that some of the least land is you know if it's not especially useful for him it could be given to someone else so i that that door isn't closed either but i think that you're
right like probably the most likely course is that the non-apr land is the things that we can be talking about next makes sense and you obviously you tried to lease everything and you didn't want to lease no no no no we only ever we only ever the the apr land was the only
thing we ever leased that's the only thing the town was interested in leasing w with the yeah with the exception of the barn yeah so in in the past with the previous tenant charlie auger he actually had an agreement to lease some of the the self-help land and we
actually originally in the lease had those as potentially things that would be included i think that's like field two and seven um we a based on the feedback we were getting we intentionally pulled those out of the
agreement with bransfield right they are not covered at all that's what we're talking about today uh based on the feedback we also pulled out the lower barn which is in section it's in six there as something that the the tribes expressed interest in we also added
clauses to the lease that we and by mutual agreement if brainsfield doesn't um like if he wasn't interested in one of those fields like we can pull back the lease from him from that specific field by mutual agreement so there were a lot of considerations that were put in
based on the feedback but right now we're focused today on the non non-hashed areas basically up there those are covered by the lease right until they're not right so until by mutual agreement the brainsfield decides
they don't want them then we can do something else with them and then what's the status of the house the house is um not covered by any agreement at this point it's it is considered uninhabitable so we cannot lease it and it's it's owned by the town that that the house and the acre and a half or
whatever it's on is municipal property which the town can i think with a vote would have to be a town meeting vote to declare it surplus but we could sell it we could rehab it at tremendous cost i don't think any of the voters are going to be interested in that um so that's
where we're at right now oh and then yeah the upper barn is technically not part of the apr land it's that little yellow square right next to number three however we included that in the lease because you can't have
a farm without a barn um but we're looking at historical restrictions on both barns and the house yes to make sure that they stay intact and visually you know the way they are now yeah apologies we should have introduced
this earlier in the presentation but this this might be easier to everyone get the orientation but so all of the um i guess tones which are in an orange or or red color on this map are town owned so the portions that have the the red
cross-hatch line here are subject to the apr restriction and subject to the bransfield lease those portions which are highlighted in yellow are portions which really the conversation we're having tonight and the conversation we had last meeting to talk about what are the community's objectives what are the
community's criteria those that's those are decision processes that still need to continue and that need to have a resolution so we're what we're hoping is that the discussion that has been documented which i just shared with you the discussion which we're continuing this evening will then be reflected back to town leadership and they can use that
to think about how to uh frame those future decisions for the portions which we've highlighted in yellow here and as was just described there's you know more detailed considerations it's not to say that the red hatched
apr/bransfield lease areas are completely off limits there might be some way to have some sort of partnership there but we know that yellow portions there there still needs to be decision um what we also hear in some of the comments and see in this process is that it would be nice to have
an overall vision for how all of this works together and then how that overall vision is informed by these community objectives and outcomes that you'd like to see um so that hopefully helps orient people a little bit to the conversation we're
having as well and and in the the comment i made about this the processes and the overlap of the processes being a little complicated i think the more succinct way to say what i was trying to articulate is that the the apr restrictions and the fact that they were
not in compliance did apply did place a time constraint and pressure on the decisions that needed to be made and i feel like now that that has been resolved the town of littleton and the community and the leadership an opportunity to maybe take take a moment
and actually feel like what what it what is it that we want to accomplish on the other portions which don't have that time-sensitive pressure that the apr lands do or did the the time-sensitive pressure has has been alleviated so let me go back and don't
be scared by the amount of slides i'm skipping um but we tried to summarize the community feedback that we heard in an evaluation matrix and these are the types of things that we'll be pulling together i've described this to you the objectives are the desired results the
criteria of those measures to evaluate how well the objectives are met we had described in the previous meeting some shared objectives which we heard which have been mostly for the most part um i think confirmed by the survey but you'll see that these were um from the
community's perspectives priorities which are much lower on the list so i i don't think the objectives that we had heard from our conversations prior to the march meeting are um out of the consideration of the community but they are a lower priority
from the community so if we update the community objectives with a bullet list from the community's perspective from what we saw in all that feedback and information we just had this is a more aligned list with the community's objectives so an opportunity
to recognize honor and return to show pray and indian stewardship of the land the long-term sustainability and viability of s of of the stewardship and cultural uses of the land and you can see you can imagine how these objectives could apply to all portions that were on
that map fulfill the promises to honor the legacy of the land littleton's agricultural history the role of apples comply with the apr requirements which is basically a check mark now that that is done uh restore protect maintain as orchard fruit bearer there are
potentially ways even in bransfield's lease and portion of land that a small section of that type of pick your own fruit producing area could still occur and then making portions available for public access use or passive recreation and again i think those opportunities exist as
well the ones i'm highlighting here in bold are the ones that i think are more mo more the most directly addressed by the current lease with bransfield the others that are not bolded here have been left unadressed as as of
yet i guess we could ask question on that sure that last bullet what about the lease makes that the least land available for public ass access and passive recreation that is not addressed by the lease correct i was thinking more on the aspect of the
small portion that's would be potentially pick your own orchard is the type of public access that was requested in the community feedback but if there are other i'm not sure if but but you're right there there is no expectation that the orchard at least will have public
access going to put a bransfield's management plan has like a walking trail around the perimeter i believe okay um so all right so but but not a free-for-all like you know he obviously doesn't want people just walking through his farm willy-nilly so nor would i i
would just maybe question the the bolding on that other than that little bit around the edge so thank you for that and then secondly josh if i could just by your norms ouch you a little bit on the earlier comment about having addressed the short term the short
shortterm time restrictions i think we should recognize that that was addressed by creating a 20 to 30year hurdle for the npi to regain access to some of that
land the short-term hurdle you're you're correct but it's worth acknowledging that it actually removed a short-term hurdle and increased a 30 in introduced a 30-year one or 20 to 30 thank you yeah thank thank you for that comment
yeah so um at risk of really seeming stupid i i just haven't heard anyone say this person this company that the land's been leased to cuz i wasn't at recent meeting what are they doing with it are they just what are they doing i'll give
you a 30 second version so john is a um he grow he's a tree he grows trees arborulture is that arborulture is that the right word anyway um he grows trees in giant pots they're all native he doesn't use pesticides herbicides
fungicides they are intended for um landscaping around here then they obviously don't need any special treatment in order to survive it's an opportunity that um is booming because a lot of people are moving to native plants there are a lot of native plants that can't be transplanted easily and he
has a system of um giant pots which are transportable so what he's going to be doing is literally putting making soil like bringing in wood chips and making soil filling up these giant pots planting trees letting them grow for two to six years and then selling them
okay thank you and also his other parts of his plan include restoring native habitat restoring native trees um building um um food uh permaculture food gardens so he wants to grow paw paws and blueberries and raspberries um all
native um and um do other things like cpposing and um windrows and um a variety of native uh not native but natural um alterations to the terrain to make the land more productive and return it
closer to what it should be as native land instead of a an orchard which is a really um chemically intensive sort of like not a very nice place for um flora
and fauna thank you that was 30 seconds i'm sorry no i needed to know that thank you yeah no i apologize we uh we know that there's an unevenness in terms of how involved or not involved people are so we'd have skipped some important things so just
continue to clue us in if if we feel that you've missed something um so we did want to pause here and just we've been talking about it some but just hear your reactions in the room to the community objectives that have been recorded here that we presented back to
you and do they do they fit with your understanding how are there any adjustments or or uh reactions to them yes what does it mean to say what does it mean to say that the ndi won't have
access for 20 or 30 years why is that and what is it about yeah so on on the portions of the property which have that red that had the red hatch the apr restricted areas that are under the lease um if one of the outcomes desired
by the communities to see the land returned in some way either as a steward or returned in um ownership to the nhisha praying indians then that lease would be an obstacle to that type of outcome there's potential to have an outcome like that not defining exactly
how that outcome might be i don't think that's necessarily our role but to say if that type of outcome is desired within a show of pray indians on some other portion that wasn't in the apr restricted red hatch it could still occur on those properties but for those portions it would be an obstacle to that
outcome but that was one of the main objectives correct so that isn't pay much attention to i i would say that's where the difficulty of these overlapping
processes has is really coming to to show other thoughts or reactions okay we're going to do the same on the community objectives and so the or sorry the community criteria so these were
criteria uh that we had presented at the last meeting that were from our initial conversations and they were very focused on the types of conversations that we had been having to that point which is about the commercial agriculture as a focus on the property and so you see you're seeing a theme here that there
was processes underway that were focused on the commercial agricultural aspects of the land and the community's desire in that same time frame has been growing in a support for the show praying indians i think those two things are happening were happening in parallel
can i say something to that in regards um i attended a lot of those meetings and brought up the concern and the importance of the nishoba praying indians being a part of this process and being on this land
um back when the orchard working group started getting back together after that failed lease so it's not like this is a new concept that people are that all of a sudden got a support i've been at meetings consistently bringing this
topic up and it has and even though they were a part of the initial um uh you know interest of um do you want to lease or fund um and then they also were a part of the um what is the
rfp process um so they've been a part of this process for well over a year two years however long it's been going on recent so okay appreciate appreciate that um clarification and expansion of our of our
context um so again example criteria that we have seen these were criteria from the uh lease uh which was the resulted in the bransfield lease this was from the rfp which was released in september of last
year 2024 and so you can see that these these were very focused on those agricultural commercial agricultural aspects of the property and if we shift to community criteria which are more responsive to
the feedback we heard from the community at the last meeting and at the through the survey responses you can see that the the shift here which acknowledging that it it was uh years in the making and part of the
process uh before our involvement is number one criteria indigenous connection to the land acknowledgement and support for the nisha prayan indians planning to monitor activity closely with clear metrics and
benchmarks experience with long-term sustainable farm management and native crops and plantings with restorative land practices plan to engage the community and history on the property and minimizing impacts to resources views
and neighbors this included things like traffic impacts or noise impacts and mitigating those so these were items from the community criteria that make it clear that a different type of outcome may be preferred
so this was um putting those criteria into more of an evaluation matrix and we were thinking about in this option one column thinking about other portions of the property which we have not filled in that might be other options but in option one thinking about how uh
potentially the um bransfield lease may be respon have the opportunity to be responsive to some of the criteria and it doesn't oh i guess it shows up okay on the screen some of the there's a heavier stroke on planning to a plan to monitor activity closely with clear
metrics and benchmarks i think that opportunity is built in to the lease with bransfield experience with long-term sustainable farm management native crops plantings restorative land practices i think as was just described in their approach to the property that's rarely accomplished and accommodated in
that lease potentially the the um criteria of minimizing impacts to resources views and neighbors i think that can be accommodated uh maybe not from all property adjacencies or perspectives um but i think there's so we've put a lighter tone there so there
might be some impacts but not it's not the worst possible outcome for sure and then there's potential in the continuing discussion with acknowledgement support for the show indians even on the bransfield properties to come about they expressed an openness to a partnership
as on those pieces of the property as well so again that's not resolved and concluded but his potential as an opportunity there and i would add he has said he very much wants to be an educator and an outreach so i think you could put a gray check mark by the
second to last one as well on plan to engage community engaged community not not history necessarily but he's he's eager to talk about native plantings arbiculture sustainable practices etc
and uh josh i just um i question yes there is a plan to monitor the farm activity but i'm not sure how closely and is not clarified and clear metrics
and benchmarks those you know in our conversations haven't been spelled out it hasn't it hasn't been implemented that there's a plan to make a plan we're waiting i know i'm working on it
so that hasn't happened yet so i would just yeah we could amend that to also be gray in tone as it's not fully resolved that's a good point other thoughts on how this uh in feedback from the community resolves
itself in terms of an evaluation matrix if i may i don't i don't mean to sort of argue with matthew about the point but the community impact on that is to engage the community and history on the property if you're not doing both i wouldn't call that a check mark fair
enough all right so yes yeah so um i guess what i'm missing is you know this it sound this seems a bit like a to-do list and it's sort of like um whose name or department goes with
these things you know who's going to be responsible for what so is that even in the workings is that something you guys even are going to have anything to do with it or that just comes back to the town and the town has to sort that out
but it just seems to me this is all kind of you know vague and dreamy unless it has a a a person's name and you know the accountability who's going to be responsible for this and when are they
going to report on the progress and blah blah blah so that's that's that's what i'm seeing so so my name is matthew nordhouse and i'm going to be responsible for monitor activity closely with clear metrics and
benchmarks i've already committed to that thank you so write that down somewhere it's actually a good a good segue into the next portion of the meeting uh that we'd like to have too where we talk about concretely with your feedback what
what is what kind of more detailed outcomes with specific potentially responsibilities would you like to see on the portions of the property so thank you for discussing and reflecting on the objectives and criteria it sounds like you you all are supporting the fact
that you know your neighbors have have weighed in in this way and uh we've reflected that back to you appropriately but we wanted to shift to some of those details uh with the process moving forward so there are a few things which uh not completely setting aside the apr
portions of the property but focusing on the other portions of the property which do have substantial processes and decisions continuing and need need to be continued so defining as matthew just suggested monitoring monitoring for the land the criteria and metrics for success what triggers corrective action
we will ask all of you for feedback to help inform that if you would have any thoughts about it we have received some feedback by the way in the previous meeting and survey responses and we'll be compiling those uh in that same answer um having an inclusive discussion
with the show of praying indians and how the contours of that work might be framed and we invite your additional thoughts and feedback again we have a lot of feedback that we've already gathered but if you have additional guidance we would love to record that the use of the land not subject to the
lease of course is a focus we've mentioned briefly historic preserv ation restrictions if you have thoughts about that and then uh we've touched on this in the conversation too just the overall vision for how all together and we we've picked up pieces bits and pieces and we
can articulate that vision through our u summary memo but if you have specific thoughts about what is what's the through line for each of these portions of the property and how they work together we'd love to hear that so we're going to shift to the maps
again in a moment but wanted to think of just pause first on the idea of monitoring the land and the criteria metrics for what would trigger corrective action if anyone has thoughts about that um we'll take notes for for
yeah um i'm wondering what might be helpful um especially for folks that are just joining the conversation is to explain a little bit more of a difference between the apr land and the nonapr land because
there's land without restrictions and then there's land under conservation and i'm wondering if that jurisdiction may come into play as to what type of monitoring and criterias are going to be needed for the
management of those lands um also i'm wondering too um because it will be on a town meeting in may um i believe if it's moving forward with the lot six the division that we may need to as a group
just talk about that as well um just so that folks have an understanding of how that might come into play with this whole conversation too please yes sure uh i can do a brief overview so the the
hatched areas are the apr areas um mdar will do an annual we'll do an annual review to make sure that we are in compliance my intention and the select board's intention is to hire a hire a professional to come and monitor based
on criteria that we all decide and based on the management plan that john has provided us and this is a common thing that is often done for conservation restrictions they do an annual review of the land they come and survey it they check out all the um criteria all the
all the um conditions and they present a report so we have not um found someone to do that yet although i'm already talking to mdar about it and we have not determined what the criteria are but that is definitely in in the process
field one two and seven were purchased with a grant from the state in 2000 and um as a result they are uh they were called self-help at the time i think it's it's under article chapter 97 of the constitution it's very restrictive
the uh the terms of that grant mean that it can never be um leased it can never be sold um and it is essentially in conservation so we are able to enter into a long-term management agreement with someone but that's the most that the town can do without with those those
those lands and they could be used for agriculture or they could be used but they can't be they're they're restricted they can't be built on they can't be developed in any way and i don't think they can be subdivided field six so field five is wetlands i don't think anything can be
done there um field six is owned by the town it is not restricted right now um it is um going to be divided roughly in half and the southern half is going to be taken over by the conservation commission there's gonna well if if it
passes at town meeting because the conservation commission wanted to have control over that portion because it's rife with invasives and it's very sensitive watershed area so just to add a little bit um to what matthew said the apr land will be
monitored and has to be monitored and it has to be agriculture the other lands the one two six and seven we don't have to do anything with we i mean we can leave them as uh native tree we can
leave them i think two and seven have apple trees on them now we can just let them go forever until they die or something happens to them we can turn it into uh conservation land like sarah dublet we can have someone actively
farming it um as matthew that six is going to be subdivided the piece that the town controls has no restrictions on it we can do whatever we want with it it's wood mainly wooded we can have it farmed we can have it in trees we so the
question is what does everyone want to see done with that and then once we know what people want then we can determine how to monitor that plan once we have uh someone that want we find someone that will implement what the town is asking
for there's just one more piece about lot seven that's the parking lot no is that it's not the parking lot is i thought the parking lot was part of lot 7 part of it is for part of it for um the sarah
double parking lot across from so that's just just so that folks know have a reference yeah that's and that's not the same as the sarah it is not the same correct
it's on land but it's a parking lot that's used for the to access the trails and double door sarah double it is controlled owning owned or controlled by the conservation lift and conservation trust not by the town
so maybe i'll just keep this map up on the screen and and cycle through some of the questions that if you have specific feedback for but the first was if you have thoughts about the um monitoring of the property the town's monitoring of
the property which is separate from mdar's monitoring of the property what types of uh criteria what types of triggers what types of actions would you like to see in the town's thinking as we as they
um put together um a plan for that and and bring on a partner for that monitoring effort that would be an annual process and where what any thoughts about details of how you'd like to see that framed um well i i just you know i'm just
working off of what i know so like what i know and correct me if i'm wrong but six is slopes down to the pond right and and that's you know that's going to be really important for a view so you know
if we want to talk about six you you know area six must maintain view all right so i'm just like trying to state the obvious if seven has been used for parking you know there has to be parking
so or or an area that can be used for parking so if if it's not there then that needs to be a consideration so that you know um people can show up for a talk or a presentation or something at
at sarah dubblelet or anywhere else i mean i like to think in terms of you know events you know and gatherings like um i think the town is seriously lacking in you know pavilions and things that
where people could out gather for an outdoor gathering um so i don't know if that makes sense for any of this but i'm just going to kind of throw that out you know like a roofed structure that you could use in in nice weather and people
bring and with picnic tables you know i mean there's very little of that available and and it's important so but neither six nor seven would be included in this monitoring because those are not part of the apr land so seven is
conservation land that's that's self-help and six is owned by the town and is not neither of them are part of the lease that john is has signed with us so what we're what we're talking about right now is the criteria by which we monitor john's progress
year-over-year how he complies with the apr and his management plan oh i thought we were talking about these other areas yeah let me uh confused because i thought we were talking about i need i need a slide with both
questions and maps right now we're focused on suggestions for monitoring but i've taken all your notes because your notes are what we're going to one of the future questions are what are other uses of the property so everything you just said is a great for other use
of the other portions of the property in terms of monitoring it is these patched red portions and i think the types of ideas that we're looking for are things that you wouldn't want to know like if you notice something going wrong on the property what are the types of things
you would want that monitor to be picking up on or issues or challenges what types of things should they be looking for year after year that would then place uh bransfield on notice that they need to fix some act fix some way that they're doing things on their
portion of the property so what what types of things is would it be i don't know noise or like what are the types of things that might trigger uh a a respon that you would like to see the town be responsive to in terms of
way the way the that bransfield is operating on these red hatched portions but we will get to you we we'll get to what you were saying use of commercial vehicles trucks so figuring out maybe a a level at which
excess like excessive is more objective that we can that might take a year or two to figure out in terms of where that level is but um so traffic would be traffic
yes thank you yeah let's go rapid fire aesthetics general aesthetics if you're doing something that looks like junk teeth or something that would be really y the use of pesticides or anything else
that's going to degrade the land great well a lot of that depends on what's in your lease agreement but one of the things that matt had said last time which i think is right on target and i think is good is that you don't have experience in land use uh so that's why
you know you sort of having a third party do it uh but in town there are apartments groups that do have some use some experience in land use the conservation commission being that in particular and the model you're suggesting is an annual review so i
would whoever you hire for that annual review and there's some good ideas of what adjacent towns use for something similar i would think you would want that uh vendor or whoever you have working with the conservation commission
because they speak the same language they have the same knowledge they have insight what's going on they go to conferences figuring out how to do this stuff and how to fix it when it's wrong so i think ideally you'd want even though it may have come out of the the
select venue or select board you i think you want the conservation commission agent to go out with those people and they can have conversations what happens those monitoring uh events is there good discussions happening with the person who's the farmer that's being leased to
and the people in the town and the objective monitor about what the future plans are does that comply does that make sense and after all that's done then to steal it then report to the slack board but yeah you have people that already do some of the stuff and
you should use them i otherwise you're excluding them and they they do have knowledge and capability select board has a lot of responsibility has everything and you may be experts in some areas but not in all areas so i i think it makes sense doing that as far
as someone monitoring it i think someone that you trust and have a relationship with and as i pointed out before in the town of actton there's active farm area and they have sebury valley trustees who staff regional uh land
trust doing that and they have good experience we also have experience with se valley trustees raising funds for conservation land such as 500,000 for the app land they own some lands in town such as the smith land and recently i
went to a state conference on conservation and there was example given by sub valley trustees and the pro bono lawyer showing all the recordkeeping they have we really know what they're doing and they prevailed because someone
did go outside of what the arrangement was and they were able to uh rectify it without litigating so i mean that's their expertise is hard to come by and you you have it already with sever valley trustees so they should be
probably towards the top of the list to to consider and certainly consider other folks but you want someone you trust you have a relationship with um so anyway that's the pitch there i agree and also mdar is going to be doing an annual
review as well they do every year um they forwarded me the last 24 reviews that they' done um just recently so i could look them over so i think like a combination of mdar the conservation commission and the third party would be
a good trio and if i'm not going to be making any decisions like i mean i'm going to be i'm not going to be there i'm not going to be evaluating anything i'm gonna be i'm going to be basing any decisions that i make on the professional opinion well you'll be
learning okay other thoughts thank you for that yeah um yeah yeah i got a list um impact to um animals the wildlife um because it is necessary to have a forest which is a
nature reserve um and the animals are used to having that free range of that land and now all of a sudden they're not so i'd really like to understand what the impact of the animal wildlife is going to be um and that's also i guess
in terms of his um management plan he's speaking of um growing certain vegetation that he'll be um cutting um and i'm just wondering if that can be done in succession because he's inviting a place for all this
wildlife and then a portion of it is going to be cut to harvest um and so that if that the wildlife could be taken into consideration for the impact um as from what i'm understanding that's not his main commercial production i think
that there could be some leeway for that um i'm concerned about because what he explained i don't know if this what he'll eventually do john said that he's going to be using landscape fabric around the potted trees
um so i'm concerned just how water runoff is going to be on that i know that's going to be um typically more level areas i'm kind of thoughtful about how if he's going to be um leveling that
soil with bulldozers or is he just going you know or is like how intensive is the leveling work going to be on that like erosion erosion control like make sure we check for any erosion issues for example well not just erosion but water
in itself and storm runoff yeah neighbors have already spoken about how water runs off of that property and because it's on the hill and so there could be just storm water runoff issues whether it actually moves wood chips and
soil or it just moves on yeah um also how he's managing his soil building production um because it can catch on fire so we want to make sure
it's not happening and so that his he's not he has says that he's not doing large amounts but this is for 20 years but i think that that's something that's important and that's definitely
um an issue um also um i want to know and part of our monitoring is is his involvement with the nishop indians um that is he developing a relationship are they having access to the land
um what is his um historical uh acknowledgement and honoring and what impact is he having on the community whether it's positive negative um community like in terms of sentiment
or just relationship with the community how might you define that a little bit more impact on the community well there's a lot of different factors i mean there's the monetarial factor you know there's the aesthetics there's is
he providing anything that the community is benefiting from um in terms of um is he providing a product that they can purchase to support is he providing education um or you know then also is he is there
noise and there's more traffic but what are the pluses and minuses of his presence in our community great thank you thank you that's excellent and you as you saw me taking some notes if you don't want to make a comment please do put some notes down we'll collect
them and make sure they get in the right spot here i think along with the the conservation commission the littleton um conservation trust has a lot of experience in terms of monitoring and building and uh being
sustainable and they should be included thank you um is he is he is this company is he gonna is he live in town or is he have properties in a lot of different locations his his main current property
is in stow and he doesn't live in town okay and also he has has one in lincoln too okay okay yeah because i think you know um i mean i think it needs to be thought
through but um i think if if it we're talking about a relationship with the town is like you know maybe this is something that could be work coordinated with conservation commission you know an event or whatever but there should be
you know events there should be some you know informal and maybe also formal but at least informal uh situations where people can meet this guy and have a conversation um and also should be i i
think that the annual i think that the idea was that you know there would be an an after the annual inspection monitoring report was presented to the select board john would be there as well as the person who created the report and there would be an open discussion about
what happened well what went well last year what didn't go well what things do we need to change okay it should be posted oh yeah it'll be an like it'll be a regular open select i would assume a regular um agenda item on an open select board meeting so i guess what i would
say i mean i think that's great and that sounds formal but um i think there ought to be um some informal situations particularly you know around the time when there would be you know harvest or where there'd be stuff for people to see
and and you would do it on the you know on the land or at the place that that you know it there should be a way for towns people to show up and like shake the guy's hand and see what he's doing which is not necessarily a formal meeting
great thank you i do let's do one more and then i do want to move us on to the next part of the conversation uh i'd like to see the monitoring include um the financial impact so including the cost of monitoring um what is coming in through bransfield what the town is
spending um on the land that he's leasing to as a uh landlord great thank you maybe i could have uh one of our team pick up the post-it notes so we just make sure that they get
recorded in the right spot for that discussion around monitoring and i do want to shift us in the interest of time i know that we all have uh other things we do with our evenings besides talk together um but i wanted to shift the discussion to uh that inclusive
conversation with the nohoba praying indians and how if there are anything anything more specific you might like to uh talk about to help guide the town effort in that regard and i know as you saw in the feedback that was a very high
priority that we saw from the community um but and those discussions are are happening but want to make sure that anything that you if you have thoughts about how that should be happening or details about it or even a specific outcome that you would like to see uh
we'd love to get that recorded in this conversation as well and just to just to connect it again back to the the map on the screen too so this this could potentially be um anywhere on the property in the the
hatched red areas it would be in conversation and partnership with bransfield in other portions of property it would be in conversation and partnership with the town either the select board or the conservation commission if you specific thoughts about any exact portion of the property
or just in general guidance about how they might be engaged okay um i think what is clearly revealed in what we've shared tonight and what was shown up in the conversation with the community thus far is that they be engaged period and that that's uh what
is most critical and uh i think that the commitment is there to do so let's move along to the next which we started to talk about but that's the use of any portion
of the property not subject to the lease um and we have talked about that but not uh all portions of the property um and i think specifically we haven't yet talked too much or heard from you all too much about the house for example would be one thing that might be interesting to hear
from you all and um maybe the other half of the portion of the property that's not being contemplated for the conservation commission in uh what's notated here as six um any thoughts about specific areas of the property specific outcomes that you might like to see
i'd like to start by just saying for all of them all of the land that's not subject to the lease we've seen from the input that you've presented already tonight a clear front runner of what the community thinks is the most appropriate use for
that land and that even many of the items that were not the so the number one was obviously restoring it to the npi as much as possible but many of the other ones can be achieved by restoring
it to the care or control of the npi as well but most importantly i think because the public sentiment is so clear about what is desired that each parcel should have its own evaluation to say how can we
achieve those goals of getting the npi involved as much as possible whether it's co- stewardship co-management or landback how soon can we what can we do toward that goal now and if not now when and
have a progression of each thank you great thank you it's helpful any others yeah uh early this morning i did send out a memo to various people selectman and
town manager conservation trust conservation commission uh certainly we've focused on the southern part of number six the land that the conservation commission would like to take over and that has been the thought right from the beginning 1999 when the
grants were written and the town had purchased this land so um just to address a little bit about the idea of pavilion the land is a wet meadow it is not the type of land for a pavilion you know people think of nice scenic view
and think of some fancy pavilions maybe by uh urbanized area boston waterfront that isn't the type of place that can't support that so it's wet now so that should be passive recreation people have had weddings there and so on but that's also passive doesn't need a structure
but you should also connect that across the street to sarah dublet uh forest through where the parking lot is number seven that is was funded by a self-help grant now referred to as a land grant you need some connectivity you need a
corridor to connect it so people can be from the sarah force and go over to there also there are other lands that have been acquired by the self-help uh grant process one and two there are trails through there those also should
be transferred to the conservation commission for conservation so um even though it's honored through self-help and it's quote protected it better stewardred and uh maintained by the conservation commission working with the
town but once again this is their area expertise so a taco bill the seven part of six which is unprotected but the case has been made it should go to the cons conservation commission this town meeting should approve it uh there were
objections raised last minute at the last town meeting so conservation commission diplomatically withdrew it so i think everyone's on board to that currently i talked a little bit about the parking lot which is uh in seven under self-help that should be
conservation so there's you know connectivity and same usage uh i talk a little about one and two but also not shown here part of the morrison orchard per purchase a little bit further north of 30 acres of the morrison extension
land which for the last couple of decades has been used for conservation it's rocky it's wet it's sloped uh it's wooded uh it's adjacent to the app conservation land the cobb conservation land owned by a conservation trust and
the u conservation commission and that's a fundamental part of trails that lead down towards sarah dublin so what i'm suggesting is that we've opened this up yeah we from the beginning people have discussed this but it's always a
different uh board of selection and it gets forgotten and doesn't renew while we have the current board of select me four elections while everyone's in agreement we need to solve this uh essentially a selectman conservation trust conservation commission should go
and walk it and have an agreement on it and not this town meeting but the fall town meeting have warned articles to turn those parcels over to the conservation commission they're already under the control of the conservation commission one two and seven the select
board cannot do anything with without permission of the conservation commission we cannot include them in a lease without or management agreement they're under the control of the conservation commission we have been told that by town council right but they're not owned and managed it doesn't it doesn't matter we can't that they're
under the control of the conservation commission the select board has no authority to do anything on them we cannot enter any agreements they're under the control of the conservation commission just like six will be yeah you're talking about the self-help parcels the self-help parcels are under
the control of the conservation i know i'm but you're only talking about the self-help parcels the morrison extension which is 30 acres not shown here that's not that's not even in any of these discussions that is part of the morrison property
it's not on this map don i don't want to no like that's over by the y property it's not here it's not part of this this thing that we're talking tonight it's not part of the lease so i think that like adding that into the conversation is just gonna i i would like to complete what i'm trying to say okay it is part
of the morrison estate that was purchased in 1999 and for a long time there have been discussions about it should be transferred to the conservation commission and different select board members okay but we're not talking about
that tonight that that's not on topic and so so why are you saying it's not part of the topic it's part of the morrison property it's not it's not included in the lease so so when is that going to be done it's been 25 years i don't know but we're not talking about that tonight we're not talking about
that you should be let's shift let's shift let's respect the community number so what i would like to know is one two and seven let's just focus on those three for a moment and six falls under this a bit too but what do you want to see on that property conservation
controls it we could let it go feral and let whatever grows there managing invasives or not on those properties or we can turn it over to the praying indians to have them manage it in some way but they have to define what you want them to do on that property or do
you want them to do native agriculture on that property or do you want them just to let the native trees grow what do people want to see long term i understand we want to turn it over to the praying indians but no one's defined what that means for what they want the
property to look like right so i i'm just going to say what i would like which is that you know i've um visited you know i connected with the um actton what actton has done say through
trail through time all right so one form that working with praying indians might take you know i don't know how interested they're in but it would be very satisfying to me if you know the the some of the detail the history the
pointing out you know the you know remarkable spots and why they're remarkable um in terms of um you know the native culture native background if that became signage that told a story so that somebody could walk
through these areas and it was like oh okay you know i get it this is so one example that which i'm aware of is that you know in um sarah d sarah dublet you have these these rock
formations that were are very um spiritual ual uh situations that were placed in a particular way for particular reason and a lot of that has to do with overlooking the water and so
what you can actually from locations so that's just that's an example of something that you know you got to know that and then you make sure that the view from the rocks sarah dubblelet that was why they were placed there that that
view was kept clear and wouldn't it be helpful if there was some signage so people could honor and respect that and see oh wow okay yeah that makes a lot of sense so you know i don't know you know the show praying indians how interested
they are in something like science and that kind of thing but me as somebody who appreciates that background i would really like it yeah i was just wondering how the show praying indians would come into this i know the last meeting there was someone
here um i think we have to perhaps uh assign one or two people to do some outreach and try and find out what they would like to see or how they would like to participate
those conversations are already taking place great i appreciate hearing from you mark that you want to hear from us in the room what we want for the land especially if
we're going to have the nishoba praying indians manage the land but i think for as much as we'd like to say what we would like to see i think honoring the ancestral land of the
nishoba praying indians is to allow the space for them to have the freedom of their relationship with the land as they feel that is true and
authentic for their tribe versus us telling them how they should relate to the land and for me what i would like for that land is to have
the the ancestors of those that took care of that land and had a relationship with that land thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago to have that opportunity to have that freedom to connect with that land again as they
feel that they need and would like and that's what i think is in the best interest of the land so that's a f i'm not saying i'm opposed to any of that but that goes contrary to what we're saying on the other land
where you want it actively monitored right to make sure that they're complying with our wishes now you're saying we're turning over the land to allow them to comply with their wishes and our wishes or whatever they would like to do and and i'm if that's what
the town wants then i'm fine with it but i just want to be clear that we have to decide what we want as a town for them to do and whatever you guys want i'm okay with the the trails is a great idea but that's more of a passive thing than
an agricultural thing than a spiritual thing we need to decide what you're allowing them the freedom to do we can pick from a wide range and we can decide but we need as a town to decide that is
before we can go forward i'd like to respond i think the difference in the monitoring is is that there's the apr land and there's already a restriction on that that the town agreed to upon its purchase with mdar
and so therefore there is monitoring on that and if there's if we're going to retain ownership and hold the deed of the land then there needs yes i would think that there would be an opportunity for conversation with the nishoba
praying indians but in terms of you're asking what's the difference between the monitoring well it's apr land versus land that conservation land it's conservation land essentially so there's already set
guidelines on what be done on that property now is that enough for us in town and is that something that the nisha praying indians are willing to work with to begin with i i think that's actually exactly the question we're asking is what does the town want how
much control do we want to give are we okay with absolutely anything that doesn't violate the conservation restrictions on that land right like like i'm i know that's i think that's what we're asking me personally yes i know yeah and you you you expressed that earlier yeah i took
the mic to make comments very sympatico with what kristen was saying is if our intention is to restore the npi to their ancestral lands it's not appropriate for us to dictate what occurs there but that's not to say that there can't be overlap with their goals and our goals
so i would suggest that the and we didn't have any comments about the inclusive discussion with the npi a moment ago because i think i want to say this very politely this room is not capable of of deciding
how we should have that inclusive discussion but it has begun and there are individuals that um are doing that work and i want to respect that but what we really ought to have is the inclusion inclusive discussion with the npi removed from the wall and placed under
use of land subject to lease so that those things can happen the the goals of the npr and i'm i i loathe trying to speak for them but i know that their goals as previously stated is to restore the health of the land and that includes
you know indigenous properties in doing so those aren't at odds with conservation we just have to be broad enough to think about what we want in terms of conservation and where it overlaps with them because there's far more in common than there is different
and i really do respectfully object with the idea that we're trying to impose monitoring on the apr because not only as kristen said is it subject to the the mdar restrictions in the law of that uh contract that we entered into
24 years ago um but also what we have seen here is that the presence of that lease is kind of opposite from what the town actually wants so if we're doing a thing that we're forced to do even though we don't really want to do it of course we want to exert some control
over that if we were doing with that land what we actually wanted to do i don't think we would really want to monitor it in the same way thank you great one one more
topic actually two more sorry we're getting short on time just want to see if there were any thoughts about the discussion around historic preservation restrictions on any portion of the property particularly it's been discussed for the uh portions of property with structures the barns
the house etc hi uh i'm on the uh historical commission in town and we have some plans for the upper for the upper house the upper barn and the lower barn which i guess is part of the apr but i'd like
to hear people's opinions once i explain what we're planning um none none of these buildings none of these structures are protected under the apr so at the moment they could all be demolished and there's nothing we could
do about it our commission doesn't think that's a good idea um we think all of these buildings at least certainly the upper house and the lower barn are kind of iconic parts of the orchard that they're part of it they
reflect the history of it they reflect the beauty of it and we would like to pres preserve them and protect them um and there's ways we can do that um the the way to do that with some legal clout
legal legal um protection is called a preservation historic preservation restriction so our commission would like to um first hire a professional historic preservation consultant to evaluate the three structures the three buildings for
historical significance um external certainly possibly internal um and preserve some of the architectural and historical uh features that are historically significant
um then after that evaluation we would write a preservation restriction for each of the buildings that lists what we would like to preserve and um that would go to the state and the massachusetts historical commission would sign off on
it and then those buildings would be protect at least those features of each of the buildings would be protected so i guess i'd like to hear from people if you think those buildings should be protected and yeah one of the barns are on the lease right
the upper barn which is the large barn across from the house is included in the lease that will not be part of no it would be it can be um as long as the people who write the lease and and the lease or
whatever lease what the guy who has the lease long as everybody agrees to preserve these architectural features then that could have that kind of protection as well and there is language in the lease that it is expected we are expected to put a historical
preservation restriction on that barn so let me just do a quick temp check on who who would be in support of placing a historic preservation restriction on the structures i have a i am at the barn as far as i'm concerned about the house oh so it's
more more nuanced sorry how about um who would support a preservation restriction on the lower barn down by nog hill pond or nog pond so maybe about little little more than half the room it looks like i just don't have enough information
and how about the house a little bit less than the lower part and how about the upper part i mean what's the what's the other option if you don't do the historical preservation what are we talking about well so right
now the house and the barn are owned by the town and so it's unlikely that the town would do any major renovations or changes if we sell the house lot for example we you know whoever purchased it it's it's essentially a private
residence and they could do anything that was allowable within the zoning bylaws so i think um it's the intention of this select board to protect those visually at least and certainly the barn is is quite old and i think it's uh very
emblematic of that property the house is less old and has been added to a lot but um we still don't really want someone to come and knock it down and put up condos and one last comment on that um if so currently the town owns all of
these buildings if the town ever decides to sell the buildings if if while the town owns it we put on these preservation restrictions then any new owner in perpetuity would have to abide by these
preservation restrictions and preserve the buildings actually can i ask the question uh for the so i'm lindsay randall from mapc but i do a lot of the historic preservation stuff since the town owns
the land would you also be considering applying for one of the mhc grants for the preservation projects fund to help fund the rehab of the buildings that's a great idea we haven't gotten that far along in the process but that's a good idea i just want to put it out there that there is funding at the state some
of it is matching some of it is not that could help with that when it is municipal owned so thank you so i'm generally supportive of um historic preservation for these but um i'm more familiar with the timing um of state approval for conservation restrictions
how long does it normally take to get a historic preservation restriction through the state it can depend um i will say it is uh if you did go for the uh some of the matching grants and stuff for um to help with fund some of the stuff that is
usually a requirement and the state will hold it cuz the town usually they won't allow the town to hold the restriction but mhc mass historical commission would normally i would say would probably be like a year year and a half
process depending similar under current uh funding structures from federal government to the uh state historic preservation officers which is the shipo which is mhc for the state of massachusetts i don't know how that may impact going forward that kind of stuff
uh but um but yeah so but the people there are really good like michael steinets and stuff so yeah uh we have um last year or a little last couple years we've working on a preservation restriction for another property in town and it really only took about six months
to get approval from the state for the preservation restriction should be quick it's not always i'm thoughtful about um the restrictions historical restrictions on the house
given the current condition that it's in and how that would affect the cost to renovate the house with the restriction and what impact that would have um because if it is the hope you know if
we're thoughtful about um maybe uh providing that house for the nishoba praying indians it's you know or anybody you know what expense are we then adding on to because of this
restriction so it's possible to only put preservation restrictions on the exterior of the house that is one option and then anyone could do whatever they want or need to do for the interior um i would like to have a discussion with
town officials about whether we how much it would cost to clean up the interior whether we should whether we just push that off if they want to sell the house onto the next owner i don't i we haven't had that discussion so so the evaluation of the damage to the house is it's
primarily the interior the structure is sound um and that it would just need to be the all the interior surfaces would need to be gutted back to the studs and so i think that we could probably place a aesthetic external restriction on it and have almost no or very little impact
on the cost to rebuild it in the same form that it is now correct thank you great well we'll try to abide by the end on time as well so i think it's appropriate to end given
all these moving parts given the the various uh dynamics on each of them portions of the property does anyone have a succinct through line of an overall vision that they'd like to posit to tie all of this together anyone want to take a shot at
that like what what would be what should be the um overarching community vision i think we've seen clear suggestions within all the feedback that i provided that it would center on the nosha pray indians but i wonder if anyone has any thoughts about
how this how this all ties together so the the one theme that i'm seeing that's common between john bransfield and the nhoba praying indians is they want to return the land as much as possible to its natural state remove it from being
an orchard and turn it into a native food garden or using native means of agriculture to basically heal the land return land to a natural state heal the land i think we we those resonate with a
lot of what we've heard well i don't think i have your through line that you're looking for but you know what's standing out for me is that um uh you know we're we're talking about the nhoba praying indians and you know
what do they want what do they want and and it's a it's a bl big it's a kind of a blank in that you know um so um i you know and i know timing is also a cultural difference in terms of you know
hurry up or let things you know develop in a different time perspective but um you know that's that's my concern is is just you know where when and now are we going to have
a sense of you know where things are at with an ashoba praying indians um you know even if it's like um maybe they want you know could you just put things on hold in a certain way
for so many years to let us get you know grounded into the town because i know some of them have only recently moved here you know i mean whatever that is but it's like that's kind of where what i'm sitting with is that there's there's this big un unknown and that you know
they're not in the room here you know have you know sounds like some people have been in been with them have had some direct conversations but um you know how can we put you know is there some
way we can get at least enough information to know what would need to be put on hold to hear more you know and is there some idea of that um or is the you know
the town and going to have to just make some decisions based on guesses for some period you know time that's what we can tolerate i don't know i don't know if i'm being helpful at all here but there
you go thank you appreciate it another another shot through line perhaps yeah actually i do i'm gonna stand for this um matthew talked about um the healing of the land i think it also goes into the component of healing
of the of a community um naog hill if you look at it on a topographically um and where it is the land between the two waters um the historical component of the land it was
land that um the was set aside for the neshova praying indians so that they could live harmoniously with the community of the colonists and the development of littleton and king phillips war happened the
destruction the trauma and the experience that has woven into the history into the story of the land the nishawa praying indians and those of littleton and we here of littleton have
benefited from that trauma with this what we have today we have this land that we're even having these conversations about because of the ancestors of the praying indians and how they related to the land and then the decisions of the morrisons you know to
create the apple orchard and then from the folks in town and so there's some longevity here and this is a real opportunity for an overall view of a through line is us as a community deciding what our what is true for us
and what is what do we say about us as a community not only with our relationship with land but with each other with our history and for our future these are decisions that we're making for the next seven generations what do we want those
generations to be looking back at at this time and what do we want it to be saying about us as a community and what we're doing and there is so many changes going on in a much larger scale in politics and our but what are we here
doing in littleton where we can make a difference for aology our health um healing and bringing back a community of people
that have much to offer all of us thank you thank you yeah i just want to thank this woman here i didn't catch your name cynthia um it seems like a blank page to us the
npi have ideas and visions and have have expressed um a desire to provide education and a way for towns people here in littleton and abroad to be able to come and learn what indigenous practices were and
restore some some more as much as possible to demonstrate what a true nishoba praying indian village would have looked like and do it in the modern day and you're absolutely right about the the timing
differences it's really important that the town operate not quickly but at the speed of trust with the npi and great strides have been made over the last 6 months in that way they really only returned to our community just a little less than two years ago uh yes some of
us in the room know them very well others in the room don't at all and towns people that aren't here certainly have no idea so it's very important that that is done so that we don't put them in the spotlight in a way that's inappropriate and and would be harmful
to the the relation but so i appreciate your recognizing the different time scales um that said there's a great opportunity here and i'm really really encouraged that everyone in this room has focused on the possibility of what could be
gained by doing these things and no one has talked about anything being lost other than like development or things that are not even on the table here so everyone in the room should be focused on what could be gained and there's a lot to be gained by the throughine that
we're hearing about collaboratively working with the npi to hopefully give them whatever level within the constructs we have to work within in order to restore them as much as possible to this small part of the
original land that was set aside for them great thank you all for that and i i do think you've all touched on you're um much smarter than your facilitator here and have really touched on the through through line and vision here and we'll articulate articulate your work into our
uh final findings i just wanted to summarize and we have covered all this we just didn't do it on the slides um next steps for our process so we will be compiling notes from this session we've been taking notes we'll watch it back make sure we've got it right we
will be compiling a a memo which documents this discussion the previous discussions and the feedback from the survey and then uh defining that memo in such a way that we hope that it's most useful to you as community members and to you as town
leadership and others in the town who are leading these efforts um and we'll you know hopefully keep track of this process and work with you all as you continue along for those who are not present in the room tonight or who are maybe watching
at home this is just a reminder that you have the ability to weigh in on the same questions the discussion that we've had this evening to provide feedback through this online survey we will leave it open as we did last time for about a month we'll you know probably let's just call it uh may 15th is when we'll go ahead
and close the survey and then uh fold the results of the survey into the results that we just discussed with the memo so we appreciate everyone's time and uh thank you for the discussion uh and really thinking about how this the
legacy of this property can be moved forward in the town with all of your help so we appreciate it thank you