um I'm going to open the meeting today is the 25th of February 2025 um this is the open space committee meeting um I am the co-chair bill Hoffman and to start this meeting because there's a couple new faces I
that may we just go on the table um so again I'm the co-chair um been living in new for almost 10 years um moved from rally prior to that there for about seven years we live down um
near the lower green um right down near the Parker River um and just uh got involv open space um couple years after we got here for probably a lot of the same reasons why we all are here because we love space the world field of new um
so that's that's me so we just kind of go around the room sure and I'm Christina Hoffman uh yep same history as Bill and I think we ended up joining the commission last year this committee last
year so yeah we're excited to help move things forward to try and create opportunities um like really what the town's priorities are when it comes to open space and Recreation and see where we can contribute so yeah that's why we're here hello hi hi
official now congratulations congratulations all right so I open the meeting for David I don't if you want to take over no no no actually I need to tell them they're not official until you go sign the
book um so we opened up the Mee and we kind of going around someu there's so many new cases is exciting hi Mora I'm married to Greg here um we live in Newbury we moved here about 10 years ago and I think you both
summed it up well we we came here because of the open space and so we just want to be involved and and yeah see what's going on um I'm Mary keys I live up in rally I've been there uh since Co began um I'm on
feno um and uh I'm here because I'm curious about the Boston to border update Jim duing Liv in town 25 years and um just L exploring all the open
space we have here and um been sitting it for a year or so on the committee finally made it official and uh look forward to getting an update done any other new ini we take
uh my name is Sean mroy I live on Main Street here in bfield um my focus or the reason I'm here is I also want to see the U borders to Boston Trails uh completed especially
the Byfield section um I've been talking to the folks at the coastal Trail Coalition um they've kind of got some great input by the way I'm going to uh be interviewing them as part of this uh
survey we're doing as well as soon as I get signed in I'm Mike carbon I uh I grew up on Stalin Road left for a little while and I've been back on stotland road since 2007 and I've been kind of on and off
this committee uh ever since I've been back in town uh assisting where I can with either updating these plans or uh doing other things um I'm s um I live over on DOD Road and
Ry um I had a job at um the is River wersh Association time met Christen GMS and then she helped me get this um opportunity helping with the um open space Plan update so yeah well we won't hold it against you
from rway so I'm David Powell um I live literally across the street which is how I came with an umbrella um Mike and I were actually on the original old open space plan back in
the 201s I think 2010 something like that um I was on the planning board for many years I've been a volunteer property Steward at Oldtown Hill for a long time about 30 something years and
was are involved with green belt and their ospring program um and very much interested in essentially trying to move along a number of things in new that have to do
with open space great all right well thank you um so we have a an agenda tonight to follow um which was um David and I had help pulling this one together so appreciate as always um so the next on the agenda
is citizen queries I'm seeing how we have some um folks from the public here I'm like to open up the table for discussion um questions or if you're just here to listen in then you can proceed sh any you guys
want just just learn those green heads over here just saying yeah get on that other side of 95 um okay well thank you uh so then moving on um we have the uh meeting minutes to
review and approve um those were sent out to the group um think was the 19th uh has everybody had a chance to review those and any any questions Mike is um Ben Jenners to type those up and send
them out for us in a time and man so if you have any questions for Mike no hearing none um would someone like to move to approve I to approve the minutes of the last
meeting and second second it excellent all right thank you so now we're get to the bulk of it um so it looks like there's actually quite a few um little um bullets here uh for us to discuss um
and and these are plan updates um and S looks like uh there was an update with the mar Valley Planning Commission yeah so we met with um Adrien and Hannah from the mbpc um and I just wanted to share
some things some recommendations that they had um and then wanted to talk about planning and sorry these bullets are like a little bit out of order of how I want to do it but um so
um Kristen and I have been talking about um deciding on a date for a meeting um to present the like the process of the plan to any public who interested and to get some people um to fill out the
survey that we're going to send out to the public um we were thinking about March or mid to late March does that sound like something we could do okay so this is the the survey questions to the bigger organizations
groups where we have the for well this actually this is um the public survey okay different from the organizational Outreach survey um I think David you had started working yes I you I right a copy of that so you
could look at it and play with it and whatever right um and um Jim I think did Ella have a cop or a digital version of this to know of the of the public survey the
public survey um or was that just the organ i' have to ask her about that yeah I think it might have just been um yeah she was working on getting the yeah the question I send it to everybody with
also a little updated dender um and I don't know I think probably I only sent it to Jim I don't think I sent it to her specifically at that point cuz I don't even know then I
had her email actually so uh we might let's assume she doesn't Okay um okay so yeah I think that I mean just like uh we were talking about having it in March that means this would
be our last meeting before that and that to me feels a little ambitious if we need to like really nail through the you know nail down the logistics of where it's going to be who's going to do what you know confirm the survey questions because I know that we' like had there
were people who had comments on them and we were kind of going back and forth and then we kept pushing it off of the agenda and we never ultimately got to the final version I don't think unless it happened when I was not here which is completely possible no there is no final we don't have a final version yet I feel that might take a little time to work through so I'm just tossing out that
March seems ambitious and we might want to think about April but I'm all gungho to make it happen okay sounds good yeah um okay so I like these questions and I was looking comparing them to the survey
questions that we've used in the past um and I picked out some ones that I think would be most effective um and I can send this to everybody so that everyone can review it comment um okay um in
the there's a I called now but in the the state has this how to do open space plan and it's outdated and um is there a section in there with specific um questions that we should be asking that would meet the open space plan
requirements um it's a little bit vague about the exact a lot very yeah it's like you should do a survey and I'm like okay and then kind of kind of up to you at that point but um I liked the one in
the last plan is very concise and it was just a couple questions um and a lot of it was just circling and then there were a couple questions at the end for like WR your thoughts so um I think a good short concise thing would be best um and I think for that first meeting we
should have it ready to go with like a QR code or like fiscal copies for people to fill out and stuff so I think the major question that needs to be addressed also is how are we sending it to
everybody in the town if so where's the budget for that um and if the isn't one to doing it at that level because that's 500
households or so uh what do we do in other words do we do a random process do we target specific groups in other words do we make sure that we're asking those
questions of the over 65s families with two kids single unmarried I mean that sort of thing do we have that kind a profile because otherwise that sort of questionnaire really doesn't provide you
with information that you can go you know to the land call M in my experience okay so we we need I think to have pretty solid background to to know how we're going to do it if it's not going
to be Del household I think is how we describe it yeah do you remember how you did it last time you guys worked on we didn't you didn't do a survey no uh we
did but it was um how shall I say uh it well it was based around the fact that the state handbook which as still mentioned is complely out ofd um was pretty vague then in fact I think it was
even Vater so what we did was we did a survey in in an initial meetings and then a survey of the meeting where we had the presentation of the
plan um all of which was a bit kind of you know how shall I say uh not very professional but we needed to get it done yeah I what is your that's that's my recollection too there was maybe a couple members of the public present but
we didn't have a full house by any means yeah I I think was be more than a couple but yeah yeah yeah but we did we also did a presentation uh because as I said with the committee some time ago I turned out
I did it and I forgotten um all the final version to a group of people and we asked them some questions at the beginning and then we asked them the same questions at the end to see whether they had
changed based on what we we were talking about in terms of information of planning so it was a bit you know we did it because we could raise our hand and say we had yeah but nothing as ambitious as
this and I think I don't know whether I when I sent that to you I confess to these guys that a lot of this is stolen from your hometown and from boxfood that's in the thing I sent to you and
from a couple of other talents too uh who did much more comprehensive things than the original one that you might see floating around yeah yeah I wonder if we can you know somehow get it on just on
the front homepage of the website too the link right there you know not buried in departments and committees and everything else but right on the front page for however long we want to leave it open for you know two weeks month whatever our we can kind of figure out
our time frame there and I know that you know some percentage of residents subscribe to different boards and committees you know newsletters they get a notice you know for the agendas and things like that automatically via email is there any I
don't know if there's a way that we can tap into that you know I mean they're not directly subscribed to us but is there some way that we could email the survey out to folks that have might not be subscribed to the open space committee but they're subscribed to some
form of town business you know I don't know where that lives or you know if we if it can be tapped into or not it might be possible to Simply scrape all the subscribers that's what I mean it might be you know right if we get I mean 50%
might be a huge number but if it's 50% of the population subscribed I mean that's that that's a pretty good pool right you know it's probably less than that I'm sure but I don't know just thinking of a way to keep the cost down instead of like
physical mailings or like if we well this might not go on with what you said David um but um posting like the QR code at entrances of like different facilities like schools or open space
and recreational facilities or like information boards so that it gets people who are more willing like more likely to fill out the survey and take the time to do that that would be targeting like a specific population but I think it might get some good
responses so in order to do that we need like a design of a one pager you know that's like hey take our survey from the open space plan plan you know committee and put the QR code I mean we even can post it right all around here and all the offices around here as well um we
had talked a little bit about I'm looking back at my notes when we were talking about the survey last year here and we thought if they were going online to do the survey it might be nice to have like a little reward for doing the survey and we were going to give them the walking trail map like if you finish the survey then we'll give you we'll
give it to you anyway they need to know that we're already going to post it but I feel little right just like a little you know here's the trail map right we want the updated one
and to them right after they're done the now Gojo the way to distribute it to as many people as they can um and then we also talked about sometimes you can take these kind of things and put them in a mailer like with the water
bill with something else the tax bill or real estate bill or something um I don't know if that's even an option but if we could just sort of ask around if it is feasible then we still need the one you know it still comes back to we need a one pager that's designed and way that will catch people's eye that will make
them want to click the code and then we need to get the code to work so that was probably going to be my next project yeah okay okay good so yeah were you say thinking it
would go to the like via Google I was thinking yeah because I feel like know how to use those and then it giv you the nice little result Survey Monkey or something cly Mon and we're happy to you know take the
one pager and go around we had listed off some places that we could go to put it um to kind of advertise a little bit like the library and you know I don't know just different committees going to the town Conservation Commission the planning board like just go around to
all the commission meetings and say you know here we're doing the survey we just want to make sure that we spread the word a little bit um does the town clerk have do they collect email addresses I'm thinking I S maybe
on the dog tag or a parking permit thing cuz I'm just thinking people who have parking permits and dogs M I have an interest in up spaces yeah yeah I think yeah I think there's
a confident you know there's I think a state law that if it's if you've given up your email for specific reasoning we'd have to talk to but it's good idea but I have a feeling may be limited and it may be that people who have opted to
subscribe as Mike was suggesting are the better way in because they've essentially declared their sort of public identity s stuff yeah yeah did we end up doing the blurb I know that we had come up with language for the blurb
about the open space um committee and how it had you know sort of been um refreshed last year and we were working on updated plan I know we were refining that language but I don't know if It ultimately got pushed out as like an
announcement on the town website but that was one of the things that we were working on too and it was also we were going to use it as a way to ask people if are here's an announcement if you're interested in you know getting updates about the open space and Recreation plan
update then click here and give us your email address and then we get their approval to say like okay do you want to review the drop plan and here's the survey and anyway we could at least give them some updates so it'd be interesting to know I'm actually I'll go on right now and see if it's on there
check something I know it's too late to do this year but maybe we could put a survey in the uh because they do send out uh uh requests for people to sign up a parking and such I imagine those go to
everybody yeah so uh without using the email at least we could at least get it in front of people yeah um at least those people a lot of people probably just throw that in the trash but what I
that's you have to try right uh what's the turn I what are we talking about for a time here is this something we're doing right away now or the surve I think just as soon as possible um I yeah we have we have a draft survey
so um I can go through it and send that to everybody through feedback it kind of dictates a little bit of what gets put in certain sections of the plan um so kind you know to F fully finalize it we need that kind of
information in the back end and going back to Christina's reward thing another thing which comes up when you do surveys is particularly this sort where you're trying to not only survey but also in directly engage people is
actually to let them know what the survey turned up in other words to publicly release the survey not at the end which so often happens where you know there the first survey there the second
survey kind of thing but to do it as soon as you can because in a sense I think one of the things that happens is that people feel that they get ask questions and whatever the hell happen to that right and that's a way of
because some people will come back to you and say oh I read in the survey that X and I really think that that's kind of important or that's rubbish or whatever yeah I think some of the survey uh software like I know Google um collects
all the emails so like we could send like that could be a step towards the end where we send out right like the results of their responses cuz I noticed I don't know whether with the Ry one but certainly with the boxman one they had a
very sexy graphic report showing you know what the survey said as and that was part of the plan they filed with the state and I did try and contact
the people who put that together I'm I remember what happened okay I didn't get an answer to my question and my question was did they share that before it got put into and they know they couldn't
remember whether they had results and they weren't graphic until the final report which I think what actually happened uh because that can be very telling if if you look
at percentages and things in a graphic format but wouldn't that be included in the in our um in the plan it was also the survey we can use those Graphics to publish them but you're saying but do the analysis first pump that out even before the plan
yeah yeah right and what I was going to thinking of doing the other day is to work with one of the people at mvpc who I know real well and see if we could come up with the the best way of
graphically presenting that sort of data uh because there are different kinds of graphic representations and most of us tend to sort of have the you know the
verom graph type thing whereas actually on account of what they're called now but the kind that use area in other words if something is 3% it's tiny little thing down here and if it's
57% it it's easier to read and it you know it's it's a better message and I think I think mvpc might have Hardware software I think and we're going to be talking tomorrow with um Steve Lopez I
don't know if you know him from from mdpc about um maps and data and stuff so we can bring that up and ask him if he can do that for us once we're done with I'm thinking did you oh I just had a
question and I'm sorry probably already been answered and I know you're fine so it sounds like the survey has to be done for us to put into the plan to submit to the state is that right yes okay if I'm just a resident and I don't really I do
care about the plan but let's pretend I need you need my input on need my input on this survey what are we actually doing with that like why why would I fill out this survey like what okay let me okay the
question I actually mean is like what from this committee could do we actually want to know that that would be useful for us aside from checking the box to money is the answer dollar like the state will give us money well we'll be
eligible for eligible for I wish but yes what it is basically we wouldn't be eligible for any funding unless we have in fact currently we're not because we don't have a
current plan our plan plan is so far out of date which is one of the reasons for doing this yeah so sorry then just another quick follow question so we don't actually really need any information from the
public sorry to put it back we have we have to do the survey and we want the Public's input so that reflected in the goals of the plan kind like what does the town want to do because that is actually going to dictate as Michael say when we first gu here that's actually going to dictate we don't know what the
plan's going to say we don't know what the town priorities are so it's like the foundation of what our goals are there's some sections of the plan that are prescriptive that we have to write that doesn't matter what everybody thinks but like the end result and the biggest driver towards the plan is to find out
what our goals are as a town in Recreation right like if yeah like if the if residents feel that we need more playing fields or playgrounds or there's enough of that and they'd rather you know more passive Recreation opportunities different things like that
you know can influence those goals and the goals actually have action like acquire land or preserve this piece land if you want to leave your email
with s s can send you the current version of the thing things that she has and the very long one that I did which I help think would help you to understand what kinds of questions one's
asking and understand perhaps why for example one of the questions I think is important is who filled out the questionnaire in a family situation because if you know Dad did it
or if a kid did most of it you're getting very different kinds of perspectives which very important other stuff like that yeah the um questions this little down
Leeds um it's required that they put down where they live because if we put QR codes up anybody can go around and take the survey and it's specific to people that live in Newberry okay so are you saying that we should make it like
they'd have to reside are you a resident in Newberry that has to be one of the questions address I don't know that want to give their address do we want to keep it Anonymous yeah yeah other than declaring right other than saying are
you a res that's like our only way to know it is the honors Sy I mean you could put an optional field yeah right at least what street what street do on and not without any number you could say optional what street do you live on right that might be a good idea or we
could use the three sort of rough areas that the town's divided into which you know um yeah or or or derive our own for that matter uh yeah POS but it's I think you're
right it's important that if you have that information you at least then can access it and use it where you feel it's important because I think it well there's the whole issue not for
this discussion but of Plum Island which has a lot of issues that need to be talked about so um I guess I just want to make sure I'm clear on how we're going to come to agreement on the final questions okay I know that there's a lot that have
been floated out there and I feel like it could take us a while to do that and if we do it we either do it in person CU I think that we have to do it like you know as part of a an open discussion but I feel like it warrants its own meeting so or like it's warrant its own blck CU
it's just going to take us a while we all have to go back and review it and then come already voted with our with our comments so that we can just hammer out what it looks like so it seems like we might need like an interim meeting sure if we actually want to have the
survey go out in March we might need to have another I mean just if we just focused on the questions we're having a meeting about questions we could maybe just do like a zoom so really quick you know hopefully do your questions have Mark it
up and we'll just on Zoom hopefully take too much people's time I wish I sent this out earlier was my bad um and would you put also the the one page or bullet because the language
of that it's going to be key right yeah I just look back and I don't see any um news flashes right and I went back a whole year and and I know that we talked about it in May and I don't see it so I feel like we could do home news and
announcements yep you know and let's round up the language that we had from last year and put it out there and then say you know would you like to sign up for and then give people the option like find a way technologically the inner workings of town hall which to you of how people can
actually do that sign up interested in open space commun like for for news updates yeah for open space and Recreation plan updates do you want to keep a rest on that and then keep your eyes peeled for a survey which is
coming out soon I almost feel like it could be like a one two two different announcements here's the open space committee where we can do that this week and then we can work on the questions for the survey and then we can launch the survey electronically in a few
weeks yes and then maybe we can follow up with the meeting inperson meeting yes I agree okay so I will or do you DAV do you have I don't know if I've got a copy of the
survey a digital version did you send that to everything that's what I sent to you okay I'll go I'll go back and check I was just oh well I can send it to you again I don't have it that's yeah that's fine
I no okay um just an idea about some places where if you wanted to just use the paper surveys uh town meeting would certainly be one place right and of course voting um if you have a town Vote or something like that going on I don't
know if we are but and I don't know what that again I'm not sure when we got to close on all this and say okay that's it the survey's over see with town meeting April vacation so that's yeah if it's just going to be paper who's going to be
like inputting all the data CU get a graph like yeah that's fine well you say that's fine but like 2,000 I feel like we will have we will end up having both online and physical
for like you know the few people who don't really use technology like I just want to have the option um and I feel like people with the ease of Technology will choose the like n out of 10 people will go H the
code we s the papered we don't want to force people to mail it necessarily I feel like probably can we have a few if you're living on Palm Island coming here to drop it off this maybe unrealistic so you're not into
technology then you have to drop it off sorry or you could mail it but you have to have your own stand some spot out there for them I know getting the details but it would no that's that's important it at chrm
yeah interested people just like a Bo I'm not sure what we're talking about but we've got a box right outside the door upstairs where people drop off planing stuff all the same yeah surve like public survey
responses for if someone wants to do a on paper on paper version yes we can do that yes just at the meeting I mean that's what I was thinking maybe just have them fill it out like a little period where I mean
they can always of course bring a little bit of I get the QR code on the thing too either way yeah that's sounds great anything else about the
survey um do we want to have a quick F and that is would it work for the discussion that you were thinking about we need to have about what's in the survey if the members of the
committee went through whatever it is is a sort of initial draft proposal and simply said yes no maybe to the questions because then we' have some idea of whether some of the questions
are problematic and others are kind of very basic in other words if we survey ourselves does that make any sense you mean actually take the survey and answer the questions or which I think we did say everybody review all the questions and come to the meeting with your comments
and you know yes no maybe seems like a good easy way to categorize your comments right and actually if we sent that just simply numbered to S she can then say Oh Boy here's a
question that everybody feels we've made an exception or his question that everybody feels is bad or yeah then we don't even have to talk about question 135 CU they got all yeses and let's just spend 30 minutes on the
on that because I think I mean I knew when I did what I did that it was a huge portmanto kind of thing you know I stuffed everything in it I thought should be there if you were you know interviewing somebody for their rest of
their life or something largely so we wouldn't miss something that other people thought was important yeah so it might be a way to do it and that way if you send out what it is you
want us to review we'll have it narrowed down a then we can review it and say you know simply by the numbers and and and say Yes No Maybe with any my particular comment like well for example
I I don't know something happened recently where somebody was threatening to do something if you didn't behave on the trail oh I know it was the it was the the trail the new Trail at coell
Falls and your two young guys there were proposing that people were you know going to get in big trouble you can't do that on a public notice I mean you just you don't do that when you want people to you know get involved with the
trail etc etc yes yeah in the same way there was certain things you really probably can't ask people um in the way that maybe something is phrased you have to be careful yeah we can review that for sure
every word we'll review every word yes I'm forgetting did we and did we talk about what is kind of the optimal length for the surgy because we certainly honestly don't want to you want it to be reasonable right right so
we can do that like like 10 no more than 10 questions or something I don't know maybe when we're doing that first yes no maybe yeah coming to that meeting we can then also I can formulate in our minds or yeah I can send because um I was just reading one I can't remember if it was
from 2010 or 2000 but it was a really nice concise little survey with like you like the first two or three questions were just circle like one two or three like how strong you feel about something and then there was like what do you like most about living in any when you like least any other thoughts like I thought
that was like perfect BL it wouldn't take people too much time I can send that and then I'll along with the one that we're thinking and no more than 10 yeah set expectations on the blur or whatever the one way you have for the
organizations is what to 7 maybe I think it was questions remember yeah it was a little more yeah yeah like just thinking you know I don't know absolutely keep engaged and not
like this is too much and so like I feel like let's look at all the questions and then we'll just sort of pair down the ones and I think we had written a bunch of questions too so we'll send you those so you can just send them all and then everybody can just comment great
so looking at the calendar uh our next meeting is going to be the 18th of March so that if we were to keep it to Tuesdays um that would give us the FL for the 11th half hours meeting does anybody
have any preference there I'm open on either day 11 doesn't work for me 11 is no good okay fourth works so next week so yeah next week so we got to yeah by the end of the week out of
hours or not that would we can do I can I could do that for for for next Tuesday I think I can if it showing up after having reviewed it though like you would have
to send it out by I mean almost like this Friday so that we could review it so we could show up on Tuesday with the or we could pick another day or we just doesn't have to be Tuesday either right we could do it that's true just it's like a so we're scheduling an
interim meeting so we can move forward THS 1th okay Thursday 13th I'm just sort of I've gone that whole week sorry no no worries Thursday the 6th
6 Thursday March I'm just and that's halfway oh no we can't do I do that think we're concerned just about timing if we hold till our meeting on the 18th like as far as like turnaround
time to you know April is that I think yeah um uh survey or trying to finish it by well that's just a long time
um well you're in tomorrow right yeah so we could work on it together in the afternoon and um yeah I honestly don't think it's that unrealistic just it's just kind compiling thing you're not like creating comp or something no word
I was going to go through David's questions you guys have some questions and then um I was going to send it out to everybody everyone review and then I could compile the most popular ones and then we'd have the meeting to talk about
like what we want the survey to look like based on everyone's thoughts see one com is back and then send it back again before the meeting or is the meeting the chance for everyone to give their thoughts to you this the interm meeting I think it was going to be a
little bit of back and forth before the end meeting but do we want so that the meeting is super brief so if we all agreed on like questions 5 10 11 12 then we don't even talk about those at the meeting because everybody's already agreed that they should be in it so we only talk about the ones that you need
to talk about and everyone's already like gone over it their own time so they know what we're talking about instead of going over right talking open meeting L we can't do anything in secret to explain like that's why we
have to do something like that you know we can't we can't just like decide on our own outside of a meeting and you know it's so we can actually Workshop yes the small not as a big group can't
we only do it like a couple of us can get together well no you can have less than a quum work like a sub commmittee that's less than a which did you guys get a did so two three four five six so your
quum is now four well interesting this the math person in the room three or four if you have a meeting be the majority so is
three well actually but people people I mean regulations Define what isn't for them so I guess I don't care the regulations because most are odd number so you don't run into this math problem so I will check on it but I would say I
mean would two of you be able to work on the survey bring it or you want everybody too much time send the thing out get the feedback in send it out again and then have meeting that's that's not enough time but if you just want to send it out
get everyone to look at it and then get together and go through it very effici and half an hour I think you could meet on the fourth yeah right do we want to go with that plan then I think that's a good plan just see where you're can get
yeah yeah all right yeah and if we need more time then we'll just yeah yeah we have to post that meeting by Thursday Thursday we can do that okay that Zoom y okay so one more time the final plan is I will compile
all the survey questions send it out to everybody and then we'll just meet on the for that Y and he'll send out a public notice about the meeting by Thursday by Thursday okay do you want to do 6:30 630 let's do that CU
um and then you guys send crit yep so um should we see who should take on like drafting up refreshing where we landed on the announcement so that we can get that posted to the website remember last year we had drafted language about an
announcement but we just checked the website and I didn't see that we ever posted it under home news and announcements on the website on the town of new website um so we wanted to drop something that says open space community plan back in Action whatever we had
already drafted language and then say if you're interested you know please sign up for the updates and keep your eyes filled for a survey so that in a couple weeks when we're ready then we send out another notice is there any liit um that we send out and say please take
the service so your question is not to the open space distribution because I'm pretty sure that's on the open space committee page right but not the H page of the website yeah I wanted to send it out to the homepage of the web of like town of new that says are you interested
in open space click here as a news item yeah as a new it's so the difference is I do not have access to H page just saying it's more of a process to get something approved to be posted on the hom page
it's just like not in the planning yeah um oversight so um I am I we can definitely work on that okay yeah I am just curious though is it on can you just check yeah open committee
is ramping up we're regularly meeting sign up here for meeting dates and agenda items so we might already higher level just more visibility to let people know that there's a survey coming so if we could do like two one hello and then
one here's the survey y you guys he about the and it was the uh parking to the website so yeah the time to check in the new year so you have that stuff
Vis it's good feedback meeting that was probably the last time yeah so to happen all so I just wanted to make sure we're hitting all these so was there a meeting with M Valley yes that was just
um I wanted to talk about how her recommendations about how to do the public Outreach and stuff which was how I love him to talk about the survey and everything got you okay um I'd say that's all there is to that item all right then um we have our
individual sections that we've been working on um so we have a bullet here progress or questions on individual sections um we have no due date or deadlines on those yet so we're just trying to start working on those um if
does anybody have any questions or have you been working on any sections and um you want to share your progress yeah I mean I can start somebody else start trying to stuff here go ahead um I mostly had questions revolving I have a lot of
tables in my section so I have section five um which is the inventory of lands of conservation and W interest and there's you know 10 12 tables in the section that I've gathered the majority of the data for um I haven't updated
them all yet uh because I was kind of I had a couple questions just to see if like we still wanted certain tables or if we wanted to reorganize a couple of things um and I just didn't want to make that call on my own um
we have a table the first table in that section lists lists out permanently protected properties over 100 acres we also have subse subsequent tables that talk about different organizations in town and their land protection efforts whether it's a green belt par Wildlife
Refuge Etc to me it seemed a little redundant to have you know like the permanently over 100 and then be kind of like listing um kind of the same thing again you know a table or two later so I kind of thought about just eliminating the over a
100 and table two actually just highlights the Essex County green belts efforts in town I thought about morphing table to it you know to kind of include all those um outside organizations that are operating in town whether it's Aon
the trustees Green Belt uh Parker River you know all that and just kind of condensing that a little bit I don't know I know it's hard not all looking at the same thing you know but um I don't know Po and just see if I can squash some of that info in that sounds
Division I feel like as long as it complies with the requirements from the state I would be happy with doing that eliminating a table and merging two others to make just one I'm supportive any other sounds good we should maybe like you and S and
I maybe talk through some of this suggest just cuz she and I have been talking about this too because a lot of this Gathering is like through the gis right which is what I've been yeah I mean most like like I I have you know 2024 assessors
data from town you know directly available to me through GIS yeah I have I got all the 61 information from the assessor that was valid midye 2024 I mean again with any report Table whatever outdated as soon as you you hit
send right but so I I have all that I used you know the massgis open space layer to get all the parcel information or in conjunction with you know the assessor information that I had for all the other organizations in town and you know I just have all that in in
different Excel sheets that i' I've kind of sorted for the acreages or you know um I've kind of hacked them up you know and move like town-owned stuff to one table and then you know more the public private organizations in a different table yeah um so I've just been kind of
manipulating that data and that's why I paused on like actually importing it into the word document yeah yeah it was kind of another question too word is not the most fun thing to put tables in especially when you might be dealing
with you know 50 60 more lines you know like do you want me to still do that is that the best thing to like keep things organized be a mesh things or I you know use Excel and you know convert to PDFs and things get merged in the final I'm
happy to do whatever I just didn't want to like put everything in word and then have you be like oh you could have just done this in Excel you know you know what I mean like I keep it in tables just until the time that we're it all cuz like yeah that'll be like crazy okay
so just keep it it's like separate Excel tables for the moment and not update the actual I yeah I feel like that'll be like a formatting thing for like when we're dealing cuz if the tables need to be kind of yeah quality checked then
they're going to change anyway and hopefully at the end you just like make it so it's easier for you right now to have just the the Excel sheets putting in the data and everything uh yeah because I it's it's it's really easy for me to export all the information right
out of GIS straight into Excel so then I have it all in Excel table with all those columns you know and then I can I can remove unnecessary columns that come with GIS data you know and kind of get it to like what we want just you know ownership names parcel information
acreages um you know and just kind of have that condensed for us the final version is going to be in PDF anyway so the be so yeah do it in Excel seems to me because G St only
really lends itself to excel AB it's like but I didn't want to do that and then no some whoever was compiling the final report now it's like you know making page breaks in word in order to now put it outside table into the document like the way the document flows
right now it's just continuous right like everything's just meshed right in there so that's why I didn't want to go too far in One Direction and then have something be like why you just cre you created a whole bunch of yeah just put in where just put the table number and name and then have an Excel file companion I think of fine okay for now
great um okay I had that those questions so I was sort of assuming mvpc would have to do this for us and we do did you say we're meting
with tomorrow so this is just helpful because like anything you've already done we don't have to have them do but um we did s and I talked a little about the um I I agree with your the comments you made at the beginning about
questioning why the category of properties over 100 acres and I just thought that's kind of interesting and you actually had a great point so you brought up like well large properties have different higher level ecological
value right in general so highlighting those maybe that's you guys would know but maybe that's what the decision was in the last plan to include that but on the next one where green belts like here and yeah that's weird to me right cuz
like one I have all the open space and then you can identify or sort by who the owner is I don't know the reason behind out a specific maybe that's because the other organizations lands are over 100 acres you know like whereas
like re's got you know 50 acre 25 acre you know all these different Parcels but you know the feds the state the trustees and even Spencer Pierce little farm are all 100 plus acre pieces so that's
probably why and I think that's you know I kind of looked at that and I was like oh well that's everybody but the one other organization so should it just go together um but I'm happy to keep them separate too you know I just wanted to ask before I
what too far yeah I'm not sure what the significance of the 100 whil was in the first place yeah um I I think it was an arbitary kind of figure that somehow came up those prop you know
maybe those properties stay at the top of the table you know what I mean and so you're just you're just happening to see you know Park River Wildlife Refuge first you know Martin Burns all the different State Properties the trustees censor appears and then kind of the
green belt listings his start new agency has a couple of small ones the dollhous and the one up it's almost in it'll sleep yeah but no I think it makes much more sense to do it in
relation to property which is held by you know the major conservation organizations because that makes the point that this town has has a lot more than most towns do yeah absolutely maybe
like you know may we just Bal Bal the acreage numbers when they're over 100 something to really like call it out or something like that um you know trying to remember we'll take your thank you yeah I mean I I think I would just make the
point that any open space is open space if it's permanently protected it's important to like make note of and then you can kind of the table in terms of just being sort of a list and then our work is to like
look at it and think about it and sort of discuss whether there are any like actions that this leads us to think about or whatever like like David's Point like a takeaway is there are a lot of partner
stakeholder or organizations in this town that the municipality has a benefit okay like how can we support their work right and compared with other towns the town itself holds very little yeah Great
Meadow being the obvious one which is of any size but all the others are a lot of town owned properties are you know trashy anyway frankly I mean there are sort of bits of left over there's one by
outside of my house actually it's tiny a tiny little triangle that nobody wanted yeah yeah yeah yeah and one of the tables is town on stuff you know and it there's a a
column that you know labels the protection level if it's actually permanently protected or it's you know limited um in that table there too well I think the 61 61b things get to be very
important right yeah yeah that's that's a whole another table 61 stuff right but what I'm saying is that I'm looking at what tables tell you important things about the nature of the community
yeah well that's new that's H yes I think we're Farther Along and I mean you know I'm happy to send just you just want me to just send the Excel sheets to you now or I can do a little more cleaning up on them too um
well maybe if you want to send them just as they are we can talk about it with st you can actually have something like this is what we have right now sure um doesn't have to be perfect but just so we have a place Mar of where we are I think the issue is that the like my map
doesn't have any updates yeah so that's going to be something we need to talk about but maybe we can t sure the mvpc viewer that mine app that's on
the town website that has you can check the open space on and off and look at all the data layers um they're the ones who are going to make the big Maps plan which you you guys probably shocked about anyway their data isn't updated
I'm sure like the data you've been Gathering through these tables is probably going to be more updated so I'm just kind of wondering like we don't need them to don't the work that's already done don't they have regular downloads from
assessors I think they do yes partial data butly conservation restrictions and stuff like that it should be it should be in thank you than
you all right so I didn't want to break this conversation or made but there was um an item on here to discuss was bard of that's something yeah we wanted to switch the agenda around a little bit to cover that
now and then maybe we can cover some of the other items because I think actually didn't you wer you interested in Boston the Border no yeah interested in The Bu for to so can we do that update yeah sorry we were a little late on the proposal okay
um hi I'm Mar what's the filming going on that's required for all have video can you zoom in to this meeting you don't do zooming you're only
in for yeah okay we're beinged okay that's right yeah yeah hybrid doesn't happen very easily so most committee meetings are either in person or totally on Zoom but in either case there's a video of the meeting okay out yeah all
right um so welcome thank you um I'm Kristen um the board of Boston update is um things are moving again which they've been quite soled there um has been work
in the past that the town has done there's been a committee I don't believe the committee has met in years were you a part of the committee I live in rally okay um but I clear the section of it um the one that goes from downtown
across from the post office to Forest Street okay oh right we cleared that um because we get down to the end of forest street hooker right and go into the crane Pond Wildlife Management Area okay y that's how we're getting to it and I
tried you know National bre they like you know we do it every five years so under the utility Corridor is what you're talking about yeah okay that's the trail is the between the two big well there isn't technically a trail yet
it's it's in engineering and it's well the guys are out surveying yes and they keep going we don't know nothing lady just the company survey that's a good sign though right that survey they're surveying in in the freezing you know
they're digging holes scking up Stakes so to say that's a hole um so so National Grid is out or you've seen no no national g the contractors the guys that doing this you know naal G is so no
be seen okay so Mass hired the survey company they've been out in the fall I didn't know were still oh they're out they're out more so now than they were in the fall it's bizarre the tapes everywhere little holes everywhere there
they are hey how you doing guys good all right so what I wondering about is the b in the B border trail from what I can figure out is that you got a bridge problem right there are 25% design plans
that have just been completed for the Byfield to Georgetown segment which starts at the post office and includes the section you're talking about and includes off of four Street and where the bridges out right on River Street and then continues on to Georgetown
that's one segment and it has a mass do project number it's been like worked on for a decade at least but is that the pro problem with the bridges right that is down that yeah the bridge is down for
the the vehicle not the vehicles but the other one there's another that bridge that'll need a bridge years yes so that's going to need a bridge it it will need a bridge all
right so those plans were there will be a public hearing on the 25% design plans for that segment in April we're setting the date now it's probably going to be held either here or at the Georgetown Town Hall it's a joint project between
Georgetown but and neber that segment is in 25% design plans once the public hearing happens public comments and then Mass cot has funding to continue the designs and Engineering to get to the
next 75% 90% design plans once it's designed there is money in the state's Transportation investment program the tip tip for construction so there's been construction money in the tip for years
that just keeps getting bumped because the engineering and design has gotten installed it got the 25% design plans were done in March 2020 they were planning the public hearing hit Co H and that's
in that in that time the Beavers came out the wetlands moved conditions changed on the ground so that's why the res surveying has been being done in this fall interesting so it's finally moving again there's a project manager
at massot working with Georgetown and Newbery that meeting's coming up it it'll probably be the week of April 7th so I'll definitely like that so that so that so Georgetown to downtown Byfield is the section that is getting worked on
now correct from Byfield over to Route 95 nobody's doing anything there's been a feasibility study that was done a couple years ago and there has not been any survey engineering we are working on
CU they're surveying that section they went out there and put in little orange tapes okay well there could be different things going on because um it's there's not currently a trail there to my nause is I'm currently any one being paid to do anything out
there but maybe there is and I don't know about I will look into that all this is a wonderful lesson in how not to do it doesn't it I mean this no Ed come what does that mean David
what that means is if we were in Maine we would have had these Trails 5 10 years ago okay they allow snowmobiling sorry no I mean what happened was the
Federal Government if you want the history very quickly the federal government realized that all of these abandoned and being abandoned rail tracks okay across the country were a
way of giving a a a real gift to Outdoors folks and particularly in the Northeast to snow bills right and so what happened was M money became available everybody
started doing it the border the Boston Trail was part of that because everybody discovered oh GE we had Guilford here and they built these railroads 100 years ago and then what happened Mass do got involved and everything came to a
grinding ho because they wanted to design sign I mean they are absurd you want go to the one in in Newport which is in the same sort of thing and you have stop signs you have I
I mean you know it's a mini road okay and this is to prevent what bicyclists running over I don't know kids in parabat or something and frankly having spent a fair amount of
time in main what I simp know is I can ride on an average mountain bike hundreds of miles of trails in main which are not paved which are dirt and they would accomplish
Bridging the problem with the Beavers or whatever it might be yeah or whomever with a snowmobile bridge that would be it and the trail would be open okay so that's what I'm saying about this being a lesson and how not to do it
because we also have the fact that staring Us in the face is the whole Scotland Road issue right yeah talk about okay so from from Georgetown CU that's where it ends right now roughly the border to Boston
Trail no it goes to Boston no I mean the the completed section from Georgetown to bfield is not completed up to Georgetown is completed oh no there different segments being worked on the way so it's 25% and that's what is being worked on
now from by field over to 95 and the Martin Burns isn't going to be worked on it's um it is a priority for the people involved in Board of Boston to keep working on everything um but there isn't currently any project in like that's
being funded it's not a mass doot project yet oh okay the Town does have an ear mark and this is the other thing that's um deep s this is what I do on my weekends
basically is this kind of work because there's no time for it during the week however the town received an earmark to build a boardwalk in the bfield section back when the Beavers had made the wellons a certain way that year mark is no longer required now that we have
this updated survey work from the bfield to Georgetown section so that year mark as of January has been made available to the town to use for a different work for different Bo Boston work so what we're working on is drafting a project scope
and an RFP for using that year mark on the bi field to Newberry Port and what I what my understanding is needs to be done is take the feasibility that's been done on the by field to Scot and Road
segment and and then look at the next segment there are three chunks in Newberry bfield to Georgetown Byfield to wherever whether it's Mars or Scotland Road or somewhere else to get across 95
and then the last CH chunk to get to hook up to the coer city rail trail inport so what I've been trying to find time to work on is to draft an RFP to because it's it's a chunk of money a
$250,000 ear Mark um with a match from Mass so it's $312,500 that we have in an earmark that has to get obligated for
September which RFP processes when you have to use Mass do standards are not simple um but I think we're working on it so I've been talking with Newberry for I've been talking with the
transportation team at Mass Mar Valley plan commission and I think we're going to be able to structure a project that looks at the feasibility of the different routs because there are still questions around Scotland Road Martin Burns or other Alternatives apparently
there's an old cow um tunnel just north of between f Road and hail Street yeah it goes under the highway I mean yeah I haven't been out there in a while but it's been been blocked off for a while and I don't know the last time you
walked Tred to walk across the common pasture was but it's uh very soft so the three sections are bfield to Georgetown that's the 25% that they're working on right now the second one is Byfield to Scotland Road where Martin burns are how to get around it and then
the third is from there up to Newberry report correct Okay the reason why I ask is that we're trying to figure out how much time we have left to horseback ride on it because that's what we're using it for we're the one Crossing downtown Byfield um and that's why I'm looking at
that bridge and saying the the wooden bridge that's when you go off a River Street you go to the right you go over the bridge the road bridge and then you take it right and there's a wooden bridge and we're looking at it and saying can a thousand house and trying to find some I'm ready
to walk her across and say let's try it but I can't find any anybody to tell me cuz that'll open up that whole section but we did clear that one section out and we're very happy to see everybody's using it they're they're walking it they're they're you know uh cross country skiing it they also cleared in
the M man I mean in the cran Wildlife Management too um that trail Camp 16 opened up and then when you go to the end the beaver dams have taken it over but the drought made it so that you could get around it so we were able to get around on the other side but once
the the drought ended you for getet it what I'm curious about is is West Newbury a part of Newbury no no no that's too bad we came first and they were the second ones right well because ecta is you know Essex County Trail Association Newber
and I was trying to get them involved and they were like you're not Hamilton you're know s not going over there really um you can you build this little Bridge you know but they're putting all their money you're smiling cuz you know I'm right you know I'm right you know it's all the the Wes over h n s l
getting those bridges built and I'm like can't you just put you know it's only this much and she's like I said it's West Newberry and she's like you well I mean utility quarter is owned by National Grid so not like the town to
just go build a bridge no this is uh this is on this is in the crane Pond Wild then when you get to the other side of it it's going over to cran Road over there yeah all right well that gives me idea it gives us you know tells us how long we have because once it gets built
horses aren't allowed which sucks um but uh I fig it's going to be a few years don't you sounds like you know why not someone tells you not say whatever you know nobody's saying anything um you know I bought a
little chainsaw and you know we got we got that all cleared out nice does ETA have a presence in anyone here in town ecta Essex County Trail Association no they're not this C area they're George
they're they're Ipswich Hamilton topfield West Newberry yeah and that trail ended at West Newberry where the damn beavers are you know part you when you call up the wildlife management association well the beefers ever right and I said not all 4,000 of them you
know CU they really are but anyway um that's what I was curious about was how much time we have but we were the ones that out that section okay um and then there's been very nice people on Forest and then I am really wondering is this bridge you know Chris you know Marcus
was it Marshall or who was it that Marvin what's his name the kid on the commission oh um his name I don't know what you're talking the kid that we met conservation
Asian Mason there you go kid he said other young person he said may be able yeah you know he they're all kids he said uh uh you may be Kristen may be able to tell me if this bridge is it's this one and I figure if I can hold
a thing like that on there that can take a 12200 lb horse are you asking me whether I think you can walk your horse across that do you know whose bridge this is and who put it in that is property owned by National
Grid that is the utility Corridor owned by National Grid they own it in fee okay so they will have to give easements to the board of Boston Trail they will have to what they have to give easements to the board of auson trail to
the public to use their property that's part of what some of the holdups around in other towns are the negotiations with national grid for instance in George toown Town some of the board of Austin Trail corridors owned by National Grid
and on some of the areas National Grid owns easements on property that's privately owned so that's even more complicated in terms of the trail it is being established for Public Access yeah okay Newber section is owned by National
Grid okay so I don't know who the contact person is but I can look into it um well in your spare time yeah I mean there's someone in touch with mass do about this segment someone from National Grid I have not met that person yet but
I I can ask are they is National is um will do might know the answer to that question are they coming to the public hearing on April 7th they're running on public hearing yeah so they could that person might possibly have the contact information too yeah it's a question you
put in yeah okay can you um how do I find it cuz I don't live in town I live in rally I mean we keep our horses down the road um you can find Emil post wow I love your you can sign out you can sign out for the email updates so is it the
who's posting them where would the announcement come from um the town I get open space okay so if you if I we have an open space committee then I'm all set to get the April 7 all right can you leave me your email
address going to say very important that we get this lady's contact information because I got a chainsaw right she also clearly belong to a group of people I appreciate right in the sense you get it
done you don't I I tried and then I said and I went and we and she and I in August Sweating Bullets but like I said you get much less green heads over here get I got it all right all right but I
did sad that we all we are saying to oursel oh man you know once they get this done they're going to kick us off you don't like the horse poop so do other segments of the B of Boston Trail throughout Massachusetts
not allow horses we read it we read the fine print and it said no horses and we were like um okay you know so we thought that sucks well you should come to the public hearing and make a case that to I me if it's if it's on Forest Street I drive
back with my shuttle and I pick up that poop I'm a good dude but if it's on the you know whatever we're good and crane Pond is okay it's got the two trails that we can do again we stay to the left there more swamp to the right we would like to get over but if we could get
over that bridge that opens up the whole other side of cran Pond wildlife and I use GIS love it boom take a picture it isn't it something it there you go Mary K Bost stuck with that email okay okay I've
been retired six years this has been my first meeting Dam roll now damn I don't know I don't know I'm like this is what meetings are like Mary thank for [Applause]
coming that's that's the kind of attitude I just I just wrote discussion in s per I know her name from somewhere though I I definitely heard her name before what's her last name Keys Mary
keys I think is what you said um oh uh the yeah okay all right so um are we supposed to be reporting on contacts yes I have I have one more
question I'm sorry know I I didn't get it in in time um okay table 56 is town-owned Parcels of unknown open space attributes I think you and Dan did that
table originally no no no please okay Dan sorry D answer that t Le yes I I don't know what it there's no description with the table so I don't really know what it
provides or how to update it cuz I don't know what to look for for it I mean own stuff okay you're right I was mystified I think what it was was Dan derived most of the tables that you've been looking
at okay and then it was like oh I have all this stuff so we'll now put this into a file mocked of open space interest well well that's that's a different table oh is that a different
table and that's question you're right well maybe it was I think it was the like had a bunch how many are in met roughly um 25 yeah okay he had about that size
and I think I think that's the unknown open space interest was I think it meant to say I'm coming to this later gotcha well maybe Table 5 six could
be well does anything it's almost all pil and stuff yes does anything stand out in terms of size or location and ring bells with you there is no acreage in that table but it's all like I said there
there's a lot of there's a there's a lot of Plum Island addresses yeah 12th Street 25 12th Street 12th Street 12th Street 12th Street 14th Street Old Point Road you know um it seemed like a lot of it revolved around the island there's
some other stuff in Elm Street uh yes town on Parcels of Unown you know what I think is I think it's stuff that at that point was UN ascribed by the
assessors okay in other words I mean we're talking a long time ago 2008 right okay and I think what happened was the town had still does some fairly you know records and there are a whole bunch of
things out on Plum Island where nobody really knows sort of who what where and whatever or didn't then that's probably what it is and you found a few others floating about some of those may be town
properties some may be tax default yeah yeah well table says Town owned you know for that table Yeah so it is sort of an interesting data point like what are some Town owned Parts there another table that has Town own there is yeah
um Town table 54 is town of newy owned conservation and W properties and it has a column that you know uh lists uh protection level if it's actually permanently protected or if there's just some sort of limited protection like the schools you know are
on that list I feel like that should be a goal of looking at the other town-owned properties to see if they weren't protection like are they nice enough do they have enough attributes that we should actually take it as a goal to also protect them as Open Spaces
I mean we're hearing from people like we haven't done a survey but we just had people show up that say that like the main thing that they want do is protect more space to prevent it from development so I feel like that is actually a a useful exercise but so should 56 be combined with 54 then so
the the unknown open space attributes table should they're town-owned should that get wrapped into the town of Nuy owned yeah and one says like conservation preservation and then the other one is like no status or status unknown or maybe their status has been
updated by the assessor office by now m 17 years later there might be some new data I I think so you know because that table predates Water and Sewer a water and sewer in PL
islanded out a lot of stuff CU they have to yeah are there pump stations even on some of get used for certain things yeah the only can you do blind searches through GIS that way can't can you you
couldn't throw those into a GIS search and see what it turns up or could you um I might have to ask somebody a little more query I think reverse it's in the attributes yeah
right like in if it still correlates to what actually is shown in GIS now right you know if things have changed or anything like that like they might they might not be completely comparable anymore I'm going to say maybe yeah it might be
just useful just to if you could to plug in or have somebody plug in that list and see where they actually are and whether they're you know postage stabs or yeah yeah right yep okay then that
will get rid of the the sort of question mark that hang over that table but I'm pretty sure it was Dan sort of like oh let's call them but probably we can just grab anything that's town of new now and
then we just need to sort through it that's and and I mean you know I guess I kind of have that in like the master assessors list you know we sort that and we sort it by the town yeah you know then we would have all Town own
parcels and then we need to identify like which are permanently protected which are in care cust control of the schools or pong or right DPW or select board and then there may be ones that
jump out as like well yeah we don't want the select board to whatever build a new sewage plant on it we want to protect it this open space or whatever there could be some like parsing through to identify some right
priorities yeah steps to take yeah yeah I think that was what my with the master assessors data that I had was that's when I was going to try to pull out like Town own stuff which I hadn't done yet I just sorted that so far by acreage cuz I I just had that 100 Acre question and I
was yeah sometimes I go down the data Rabbit Hole kind I like statistics so um I mean I think like other open space plans I've been involved in that's like that can be a very uh challenging piece
of work to figure out the real ownership like it's Town owned but like what does that really mean did it get left to the town in someone's will and it's supposed to be a park but now it's not right like there's
some properties like that that we may know about but there are other ones that just like digging through the deed and who has custody and whether the right entity is actually being the right Steward like I think sometimes like the
Veterans Park in bfield where 20 years ago everybody sort of thought it was something but nobody this one right here yeah nobody identified it as such except
finally a couple of very elderly folk were found who said oh yes it's supposed to be a veterans par yeah it goes around the post office yeah and also this parcel right next door to this right across from your
driveway that I believe was acquired for particular purpose town meeting said something but it's still just sitting there and whether anybody remembers like what it was supposed to you know that history is going to get lost over time
it was you know a classic you don't have long enough for that story no but people still might want to use it for something you know any um all right last question one of the later tables table 58 is privately
owned land and unprotected Parcels of open space interest the criteria at the time somewhere it said you know 10 acres are greater but the table goes as low as like two acres you know cuz I mean if
it's important it's important doesn't matter what the acreage size is it be two acres and have more biodiversity than 50 um do we might not be able to answer this question now do we as a committee want
to come up with the criteria for that green belt has also underwent a lot of prioritization work for guiding our efforts in land protection they can they can make maps for us for
prioritization their criteria is what their criteria is going to be they might be able to tailor it if we have some ideas you know I I I don't have all the criteria off the top of my head and I can talk with our GIS team about what they've used but you know they're they're focusing on Farmland they're
focusing on Parcels either five or 10 acres or you know greater um not smaller you know in that prioritization effort but they can kind of if we want them to uh they can kind of produce that kind of uh you know yeah goals for us for that
kind of table that would be useful um because when I talked to Vanessa about all this who's the the person gille does a lot of this stuff in terms of deciding right yeah I mean she would she would be she would be the project manager you
know right interesting yeah because I had mentioned um the Armstrong fossil okay and she mentioned two or three others which were further up on her list than the
Armstrong parcel yeah I guess you've had contact from the daughter recently do I remember yes no from Armstrong yeah uh no no okay maybe I know them but not no
okay maybe it was Vanessa then okay y yeah so Abby who was running that conference too the open space conference she heads up all of our GIS stuff uh and the kind of planning side of a lot of things there so you know her and her team have developed these prioritization
criteria and they've been mapping them for different towns and whatnot and they' I'm not sure which towns but some towns in their open space plan updates have you know utilized that information and green belts produce the map for you know correlating to that table and
whatnot so we can do that um otherwise we're kind of just maybe picking something a little arbitrary and you know setting out on that you know if we're just like well everything you know 5 Acres or more you know we can generate that list it doesn't mean it has anything weighted on
it you know as far as uh is it Farmland is it you know drinking water supply is it this is it that whatever you know um I don't have the capacity to do the gis leg of that kind of you know that kind of I don't know exactly what the goals
of of ss Greenville versus the town would be they may be very consistent for us as a community to go through and do that um that's I think that's a stretch yeah um and depends what the survey says I mean maybe what green Bel
wants is different what the town wants according to the survey I don't know if we'll be able to tees that out or not yeah cuz like we're not looking at wreck opportunities right or active wreck opportunities that's I know that's not in our criteria you know that what I don't know is if
if they they are adding certain things in depending on you know an open space committee's recommendation or not right like could it be tailored once we get the survey results could we use the program to tailor it to whatever the results were and I get more information on that I just had a quick conversation
with Abby in our office the other day about it and I just really haven't had a chance to sit down with her and like get all the details from her of how they've been doing that work is it me prob um I mean I'm curious well you know I don't think we have it just like
out there anywhere I think I think if if a municipality requested it you know we would we would share it with them absolutely um I think there are those some issues with that there people who have real
issues with identifying oh yeah um privately owned land as being preservation or conservation opportunities because it can do a couple of things one is is it can alert um what
should you say less less than perhaps good developers um and also at the same time it can do some things to property values so we I think we'd have to be pretty careful about what you know what it is
we're saying oh yeah I mean you know in our table here you know we're not listing the actual owner uh unless it's you know more of a more of an entity like you know we we've got like we show land in this table that the Governor's Academy owns that the
kind Sportsman's Club owns but everything else is just listed as private there's no like d David Powell's parcel um but it is showing addresses for all the parcels in this table so you know it doesn't take it's easy to figure that out so easy to figure that out
right yeah I mean in these day and age I most people really don't understand how much this can tell you about the person if you just know where they live right amaz I would think it would be
interesting to see what if it's possible to tell us what citeria green belt use for their work because maybe maybe we don't need to like rethink it right I mean we can just like
capture that in some way as this is an a prioritization exercise that our wonderful local Land Trust has done for Newbery and this is just a snapshot of that yeah um I
agree kind of where Bly you were going maybe which is it's just that's a whole P of worms to like try to figure out what priorities and if they're going to wait them yeah I agree I might be hard to like sort through
as yeah like could be a goal right an action oh and that is what mvpc said to us several times was like you can identify things as part of your plan and you don't have to do them all yeah
yeah yeah no I feel like that is yeah interesting okay all right well thank you just helps me be able to move forward a little bit of some things all the work that's huge yeah problem just going back real quick like there's a table about all the conservation
restrictions and aprs in town right regarding of who holds them it's all that's all public knowledge public record but I still feel weird being like you know David's you know I I give your address but not you know your name you could sell it
tomorrow right so the name part there is maybe less important in my mind than like the physical area no well that's a public that's a public record because of the tax issue and all the rest of it and that is in fact I think the one table
that provides us with a fairly good view of what are really truly active 61a and r 61a tax really Dodges in some cases
and we have a handful of 61 BS which is you know um Recreation creation thank you um but no I think that tables that that's a kind of base level table for this sort of work y okay and then to
keep it updated and when you go in and look at some of them some of the stuff that goes on is really weird I have to tell you um in terms of what they choose as codes for what they're doing with their property you know one year it's
Forest in the next year it's c is interesting so we're running really long tonight so I I kind of want to crank through this um and but so before we just move this section um we're talking about individual sections there any
other burning things that we need to discuss um that if something I I was just going to say for section four if you guys are talking to Maran Valley and we have a certain number of hours for them if they can create updated tables um in section 4
tables 41 through 49 um it would be helpful if they have access easy access to that data what are they um they are like the and I don't even know if like there's one table that I'm not even sure
that we really but it's land use um yeah there's one that's like the land use uh there is a habitat types then there's um but the habitat
types like it's using trustees a reservation from 1998 data and so I just wonder if there's a more recent vers like a more recent document that they could pull from um then there's vegetation rare threatened endangered species from um
nhp that I think they might be able to fall pretty easily then there's like fish eel shellfish and crustation species amphibians mammals um Birds I honestly feel like maybe the birds goes on for like 10
pages and so I honestly feel like if we could put it as an appendix and just maybe put the summary data like there's 10 fish species and five you know is that required to list every species that might ever have that's that's also kind
of my I just feel like it's Overkill and so I want to pull some stuff out um but if you're talking to them I didn't want to lose the opportunity to like put it on their scope if we actually do need it but I haven't taken the step of
confirming what's really needed MH um okay and I feel like yeah there's like that that's all the birds um it just keeps on going so anyway those were yeah if you're going to talk to them
just talk you know maybe they say oh no no you don't or maybe you could even because they already know like what's required by the state to be included in the plan and it can say no you don't need any of those or yeah we can just run those quickly and it won't take them that long to create them and then we can leave them back into the narrative okay
thanks and I would I mean section three which I wasn't here last time and I we talked briefly about it but I also realize there's the comment from the Mee that it's about pulling from the m master plan and other sources but it's a similar kind of thing where the sources
for different tables particularly in Section 3 which is community setting for the population characteristics which is really like a lot of demographic data age education jobs blah all that and like you know the sources are bounce
around and and even the master PL sources are like say if it's Census Data it's from 2018 but there is more recent M data from 2022 or three Mass I think or something but you
know there's questions around just what is the best way to get at that data and I I do think that it's sort of the same question like what do we actually have to have for this exactly exactly do we have to cover every demographic question
you yeah there's a lot there I mean right yeah I'll take a look um I just I know you're having your conversation tomorrow but I will take a look and compare to the state requirements and see what we really need and what we canect yeah I mean who we're trying
tomorrow as the gis person so my guess is like so it's not it's not necessarily GIS data like even the list of species I don't know but I mean that seems like you go directly to National Heritage and be like can you give me the list for
Newber or what can you tell me I'm not saying MPC can't do it I'm just saying yeah it's not necessarily G person did it in the past because they had people there who had interest in that and that
information was available and I think we can definitely I think Adrian's probably the person to talk to about this these L she she can tell us we ask the obvious question and that is we look at a
comparable community that has filed an open space plan hopefully within the area and actually Ry is one um and see what the state yeah we just look at the handbook
and see what I because you know I mean I think what happened with the original 2010 one was most of it was in place when Mike and I got on board anyway and certainly when I got on board and I I
think a lot of that information was simply what mvpc sort of had yeah right and whether it really was required for uh you know what the state yeah wanted and at that point the
other thing was the state was using towns to generate information that they didn't want to pay for right right well we can explore my guess is there's like a minimum what's required and then there's some options
and if we like what was in there we don't we can like that so yeah the other question was if um if there are some requirements for data and it's in the master plan because the town paid for the master plan can we just lift that and
move it right into here and we can just like maybe we just even put a source if we need to the section three okay good good good good I just wanted to make sure I like no one was going to be upset if I just copied and pasted but I'll put the source yeah
yes exactly I'm very worried about that but I think I think that's totally fun I did for all of our rec facilities I I literally opened up the master plan and took that table and put it in the end section here and said you know master plan 2023 y I like why why am I going to
reinvent the wheel it's all sitting right there you know wanted to syn up make sure we're all doing the same thing um I had one little thing um we were talking about um collaborating with
the rec committee um trying to get them to be more involved in the plan um and they have a meeting on March 10th so we were thinking of trying to either I could go or anyone El who wants to go can also join and we can kind of like
give them stuff to do did you see see the email I sent out sent uh sent a copy to you and to Christen turns out you met we want to talk about the rec committee now which
was sort of on my supposed watch anyway well you met with them I did meet with them and I am in in touch with them and I haven't gone back um because frankly we were establishing sort of what we were going
to do so okay um they okay my question quick question to you is where was that plan that you sent me today you sent me the the boss to
plan in my folders electronic folder yeah yeah how come it's not on the website oh I don't know okay all right people don't do stuff they just don't get around to it
yeah all right um so no I got that from the town administrator's office though they provided it to me it's a master plan that the rec many had Huntress Associates do on the Central Street Fields so it's like a management plan
for just that property yes yes so and it was presented to this life board last year and now the re May is using that to right take actions yeah okay so too
yeah so the two of the responsibilities that I I don't know volunteered for uh taxpayers Association and the rec committee and they both suffer slightly
from no suffer is the wrong word they both have the obvious thing that happen and that is a bit of a territory issue okay in other words um why we reaching out to them why are we interested in
what they do uh is clearly the the gentle feedback I'm getting okay I hope I explained it reasonably well to the recre committee in person I have just
asked the guy who that clerk Mark that because he's the contact I have um and that was the the copy I sent you and Christine okay cuz I wanted you to know i' done that it turns out Christine met the
chair who didn't wasn't there the night I went so I didn't have contact information to him um I also do not know and I can't share with you what is actually happening because I do not know whether there was
a formal adoption of that Master Plan by the select board but what has happened is items in the master plan have been funded by the covid funds that we needed
to spend by a dirt date certain in April I think it is isn't it yeah something like that anyway and we're talking a quarter of a ion dollar okay and that's for a Tot
Lot at the playing fields all right um Point all this is that that master plan is only a submittal by a commercial organization it is not something that
has been reviewed by anybody outside of that group as far as I know with the exception of the creation committee okay so I don't know what they think so I'm trying to find that out so we can have
frankly a a you know a good interchange with them an exchange in terms of finding out is the master plan the big thing the only thing on the agenda or is it part of other plans or
looking forward that they have because our responsibility is what 7 years now is it used to be five plan yes for seven years um I don't aware they're focused okay so that needs
to be resolved uh hopefully I will hear back from Mark and get some better idea and I can send you all now chrisan found it thank you I can send you the plan rically so you can see it I can post
that somewhere yeah and uh it's not on their website you see yeah there may be a reason well there may be a reason for that maybe well it seem to me there probably is a good reason for that
because I think it's in limbo in terms of if they've agreed to it there's some stuff on there that's quite CUO about the river and boat all and all kinds of stuff okay the pl
taxpayers Association um all right I've had contact with them a couple of times what I've done this time is to reach out to a new person who
is a director and ask her who like who actually contact to ask the kind of questioners that you had derived you know in terms of what are
their plans and so on um they hold that kind of stuff fairly close to their chest and so I don't quite know but I do know that um the new well no he's not new but the the was was he the vice president um is
a guy actually from Salsbury who was on their uh select board for number of years and I think I can probably have a a pretty straight exchange with him um and I the questions I would be asking
from our point of view are are simply um what is what how do they see is the taxpayers association their relationship to frankly to particularly to passive
Recreation and also um essentially access because that's the real problem as I think you know I I showed you with all those photographs and so on so that's where and oh as far
as the trustees are concerned um put it this way the kind of questions that we might ask other organizations I don't think we can bring to the trustees because we can't really ask
them as to how they actually Rec recruit their lands and whatever um in the in the sense of you know I mean um that's that's a whole other story for them but what I will do is and I have um feel
this out but this point is to ask them a simple question and that is because the regional manager now for this area is somebody who has been involved with newb both personally and professionally for
many many years Peter Fiero and I'm simp going to say to Peter okay what should newb be doing in the whole open space conservation that sort of area from from your perspective as it
relates to um you know the kind of work that the trustees do broadly in the Northeast yeah I think that was one of the questions but I think that we decided already that you can just talk to them however you need to talk to them no need to take those they were just guides in case you didn't know what to
say so uh and one of them was like what do you think we should be doing so whatever however that conversation flows that sounds great okay yeah if um it's just if you could take some notes so then we can use it when we're trying to incorporate that into report just so
these are awesome contacts you have better contacts than probably anybody but as long as take some notes and stuff cuz that was the point of kind of the Google spreadsheets just so we can kind of pull all this together and they like okay kind of assess everybody evaluate everybody's opinions and is there
there's just like an open one in there right that's just like what else did you talk about right and that's where you can go in if it wasn't related to any particular question miscellaneous not could you say that out again that
that um yep or you want me to do it um yeah I did send it uh it was kind of in the big bundle of stuff I sent um with the agenda for this meeting oh okay okay I'll yeah that's where we need okay I
didn't maybe recognize what it was cold it was the um like the it had like the assignments for everyone and then there's a link in the beginning it's like here's the Google survey right but um I'm talking about Jim put together this act
Google B well that's so the word survey is kind of throwing us off so maybe you could change what it's called because the survey on our mind is when we're going out to the public to ask them the survey questions and this is like the interviews that we're having with likeold interview I think that's why
people are like confused so way call it like oration input oration intervie yeah exactly the thing that I have is that is to was that the original yes yeah yeah that's the list
of put the link in there the link I can't remember if that was I need it to live somewhere yeah well so soes what what is the active thing
called the thing that that responses in what's that like organization interview or something those interview link meeting notes it's meeting notes you're meeting the people
on your house I had I sent um the I can't remember what it's called but I couldn't send it again in well all I'm remembering is that Jim's description of it was that was and you said you used it it was an
active thing it's a link and there things and you just type into it it's a Google form right a Google form not a Google survey form okay right that's but I've been trying because nothing has
come up which seems to respond and maybe in that document there is link to the form not the thing that's this is the old one El okay so the updated version of this correct okay now what I to the form
isn't there something missing on here and that is the Council on aing shouldn't we be reaching out to them yeah I think yeah if they didn't make it on the list SC might have talked about them later that's that was like an older you know we it's a living document
so feel free to add add a row feel free to out a I mean we're definitely gonna get the survey in front of the Council on Aging folks as well you know I'm not sure I mean I can talk
to Cindy she's on the rec committee the director but in terms of representing what an organization likees interest is it's probably uh through the survey we could get some good information from well I'm
was wondering I get a sense that um that we now have a much more active and sort of directed group or directing group of the Council of
Aging and they as a group are going to have I think some some reactions and interests um yeah I don't see the council well I'm
getting that I guess if I can put it more clearly I don't see the Council on Aging as representing people like me the ancient people what I'm looking at is the Council on Aging represents a way of looking at their mission and part of
that is the role which open space and Recreation plays in the life of yes am I making sense yeah and so to ask the Counsel on
Aging as opposed to their CLE right see do you have the link to that to that table right there uh yes well I have the I have the document yeah see there's the Hy and
that will take you just to did that come I just want to it looks like this just answer all your which email um it's right it was with the uh draft uh meeting minutes from January and the
agenda I sent it on the 19th to everybody no that's not that okay so does anyone want to attend the rec committee's meeting on March 10 back on that or no I think it's a little
too early I might say unless you feel that they're doing something that well it's sort of just to update them on everything this group is doing like we're gonna have a meeting is there a meeting don't we having a meeting we
talk about that public meeting we haven't gotten to the we jumping pretty hard toight I'm try let me just quickly say one thing though that section three does have the wreck um Act of recreation is a
section okay and so they should fill that out because it asks about all the um the Sports youth sports and the enrollment numbers specific so like tasks we can give them here's the section we need your it's a subsection
in three that they could take run with and add on whatever they want basketball court you know I and do whatever they need to do there do you want me to do anything with that or just assume um why don't we Circle back with you that sounds good sound good okay well one of
the things that plays into their world particularly is the um you know the accessibility issue right that whole that's one of the main things we want talk about yeah I mean that's like this sort of Mountain we you need to climb okay I'm
going to circle back with the chair of the committee David R you've already reached out to the clerk and we can stay in touch and then s and I can figure out if like maybe we can attend their meeting and update them on what this
work is and specific requests I mean I'm perly happy to go but at this point since it's pretty soon I have feeling there may be some problems with this master plan
thing and and and um I don't think we have to like worry about their master plan right now like they're they're in charge of their Master we can then figure out how to incorporate it sort of at a later but what you're saying like
it we might need more time for that yeah and and right in other words how reasonable is it of us to expect that they in fact are going to make a major contribution to this plan which will be
and reflect whatever their quote unquote master plan is see that's where my head's going right well I think we should just ask them that question like we're we're writing this plan we're trying to you know get some drop language here in the next couple of months yeah do you guys
are you in a place where you can contribute your thoughts that's what I'm hoping to be a open a conversation with Mark about and if it includes David braw as well fine you know it's just I Haven met the guy
so you know and they a bit kind of cutesy about contact info yeah okay all right and then the plan the meeting we thought maybe the 18th was ambitious if we don't if we're
still like working on our survey and stuff and we want to have it really high that meeting right yeah for a public meeting when are we envisioning the public meeting to be know I think we have to I think we're thinking April sometime
because March seemed like this was kind of the last meeting before March but then now we've got the meeting next week to talk about the survey so once the survey is done I feel like we'll feel like we're in a good spot where we can schedule the meeting me so maybe we land on the meeting date on the fourth yeah
when we're done talking about the survey we can for that okay sounds good um cool all right um so I think in around about we might have bullet here tonight
we've been jumping a little bit and um D your um member updates that was that everything you talked about with the contacts you had with other people did that cover any other updates you wanted to include that's that's it okay that's
I thought excellent excellent all right then we're we got through it um we have a good plan set up for our next meeting but how about the next actual meeting date um I think uh right now it's March 18th does that still work for
everybody we'll put us right back on track for the third week May it does look as though it would be help what's her name Joy yes is the new new umy about us just having this space on
the third Tuesday of every month and she's comfortable with that oh okay right so it works very well yeah I the SE off a little bit Yeah does it work better if we kind of do that and not shift the data around
unless we absolutely have to yeah yeah yeah because you know we had a series of very strange emails backwards and forwards about dates with joy which was very nice of to get to you know uh Bill
and me but at the same time didn't include Christen the first yes so the third Tuesday we'll be here and are we aiming for 6:30 or are we what time we had 16 went back to 7 we went back to 700 so we need 7 is 7 better or or
6:30 I just thought 6:30 for the zoom cuz then like if it's a half an hour say you can work till 700 and then be done but um in person doesn't matter yeah I mean I can do 6:30 6 might
be tough probably seven is better in this space because sometimes they're doing something in there up until 7 okay excellent all right then I think that's a wrap anybody like to move to adjourn I
make a motion to adjourn the February 25th 2025 open space meeting second all in favor in favor