What are what are these things? They're speakers. They're speakers, Ted. Um, welcome to the uh Township of Sparta Environmental Commission meeting uh Thursday, June 26, 2025. We are live in the council chambers at the municipal
building and it is 7:05 p.m. Um, this is being broadcast on our YouTube channel. The it's Sparta TWWP. Uh, please take notice that action will be taken on the following items at the Sparta Environmental Commission meeting.
Um, the meeting is called to order. Adequate notice of this meeting was provided to the public and the press on January 10th, 2025 by delivering to the press and posting on the township website a copy of the notice. Can we have a salute to the flag?
United States of America stands one indivice for all. Emily, can we have the roll call? Deputy Mayor Marjgerie Murphy,
Chair Kimberly Null, Vice Chair Neil Sourine here, Christine Dunar here, Ted Gaul here, Christine Rogers here, Barbara Kazulka, Landon Tier here, Robert Otto, John
Grath. Thank you. Thanks, Emily. Um, the first item is the approval of minutes of June 12th, 2025. Did everyone had a have a chance to review them?
Any questions or uh comments? Um, I just wanted to say on page one under application ZBA, it should say any hazardous substance substances stored on
site. So, just a typo. Don't worry. Sorry. Okay. Um, anyone else? Bob, did you have any comments on the minutes? Okay. Um the next uh item is uh correspondence
from the Sussex County Agricultural Development Board minutes. Do we have to make a motion for the minutes and approve them? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I guess we do. I'll make the motion to approve the minutes. I'll second the motion. Thank you.
Uh all in favor say I. I. I. The minutes are approved. So, the correspondence from the county agricultural development board. Anyone have any comments on those? I
went through them and I have nothing. I just I I just have a little trouble with the acronyms and following the report. And um you know, one of the one of the um things that they were discussing was
a commercial farm. Yes. A commercial farm certification. Got to have the red the green light on. Um and the other thing that um they were considering was a request from Sunset View Farms for an
SSM determination resolution. And um this was in regards to her um fundraising events that she has on her property. Um so they use a lot of acronyms.
So if anybody knows what these acronyms mean, that would be helpful. Um such as SSM requests. We could ask them to provide a glossery. the next time that uh they submit their minutes to us. Yeah.
And then there's the SC Sussex County ABDB. I think that's that that committee, the Sussex County Agriculture Development Board, but I don't know what the CC or CCCF. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't know what that
is either. Okay. And then there's also something called S SEE procedures. So it it doesn't flow very well when when you're grappling and and these days there's so many different acronyms that
are the same. So if you you know try to find out on the internet, you know, you get a lot of different choices and maybe not getting to the one related to what you're reading about. True. But I didn't see anything. I was looking for something with trails and I
didn't see it. Yeah. You know, because I know in August um sometimes they have a grant, a trail grant, right? Yeah. Well, these are minutes from May. So, okay. So, maybe they haven't gotten to that yet. Hopefully. Yeah, we will see
something uh coming up about that. Okay. Maybe we could request that they give us a Yeah, a glossery. That's a good good point. Okay. And next up on our agenda is a
presentation from the Ridgen Valley Conservancy on preserving your land. Um, we'd like to welcome uh Renee Mate who will give the presentation. Thank you. I still get
have problems with it. Now, is everybody going to stay here or Would you say people are going to move there? Um, yeah, if you guys want to go down there, but I'm trying to figure it out. Can you use the mic so that
Yes. Yeah. Please tell me if I'm if I'm not loud enough, Neil. Okay. Yeah. Okay, thank you. No, it doesn't help you here, but it's working on YouTube. But it's not coming up here. It's not coming up. It's not coming up
on here, but it's on my screen on YouTube. Well, I guess I could put it on my computer. That could work if it doesn't work here. Yeah. Okay. Maybe it's just not working on this for some reason.
Emily, maybe if you don't mind, but I want to go another slide. I could just ask you. Would that be okay? Would you rather my computer. That's okay. Yeah, I can still control it on my end, I think. I don't know why. Blue screen of death.
Okay, sorry. It's working on YouTube and not up here. So, sorry. What do we do? Uh I can do it from my computer here. Yeah, if you want to Can I put it up here? Well, everybody see. What do you think? Yeah. Sorry.
Everyone kind of expect these things. Yeah. All right, we'll just improvise here and it'll be fine. Yeah, I I'll come on that side. I think
that makes sense, Christian. All right. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, we're talking about I'm talking about land preservation in northwestern New Jersey. Uh why, how, and how you can help. Um my
name is Renee Mate. Uh if you can see that there, I'm a trustee of the Valley Conservancy. Um and I've been working land preservation for Milton Township, which is a township in Warren County on the western part of Warren County for uh
about 25 years. Um and it was always my real passion to preserve land because we have a beautiful town and I want to keep it beautiful and that was probably the one of the most important things uh that I I felt uh I actually got on our
township committee just so I could preserve land because if you have the a vote on the committee that gives you a lot of power because it it is after all a political activity you have to All right they can't hear you just speak into the microphone should I turn on
yeah Sorry. No, no, that's okay. Please. Is that all right? Is that better? Can you guys hear me? For the people. Yeah. Oh, thank you, Landon. I wasn't I'm not used to that. Thank you so much. So, um So, yeah, I got on our township
committee, our governing body, because I felt that was a good way to preserve land because you have a vote. You have a vote on the budget. You have a vote on on the things that are land preservation. And when I first got on, it was it was
people were not really uh convinced that preserving the land made a lot of sense. A lot of people thought about that that uh ratables were important. They were always talking about ratables and even bringing in residential development was thought of as as a positive thing for
the budget. But we we we realize that that's really not true. Certainly not true for residential development because of the cost of schools and it really isn't true for uh ratables. There has to be a balance there but you don't want to go too far and I always felt that uh the
um most important thing was the quality of life and that should not be uh traded for anything including a a big surplus on on your budget. Uh, so that's why I I I I spent a lot of time on open space
and farmland preservation uh when I was on the committee. Now, how do I do the next one? What do I do here? Um, is it this one? Uh, yeah, that's it. Okay, good. Uh, so open space and
farmland preservation. There's basically two charact two um ways of preserving land. Uh there's open space preservation and open space preservation means uh do you want to present? Say it again. Present on that. Do I want to do what?
Oh yeah. No. So yeah, help me out here. Good. I'll miss if I can. What am I doing? I don't want to mess with it. That's okay. You're fine. I think this is all this is all you can do. Is that all I can do? Because Yeah. I don't want to mess with Okay. Good.
But I I like this with everybody. What's that? I can share the presentation with everybody after the meeting so we can all Can you see it all right there? Yeah, that's okay. I appreciate all this help. This is really nice. Yeah, that's great. This is kind of close. Yeah, I like this too. Yeah. So, there there's
two different uh general categories of preservation. There's open space preservation and there's farmland preservation. And they're really very different. Open preservation. Open space preservation means the preservation of natural lands. Lands that haven't been developed or haven't been farmed really.
Uh they're natural lands preservation. And open open space preservation is almost entirely in in uh almost always involves green acres. Green acres is an agency of the D. Uh and you really can't preserve land
in New Jersey without D. Uh it also and this is really important we'll talk about it later. It also means that when you preserve open space through the DP you have to have a public access component which makes a certain amount of sense. The whole people of the state
are preserving the land. The whole people of the state should be able to enjoy it. So there's always a public access component that actually becomes an important characteristic of open space preservation. farmland preservation is preserving farmland and
it's only for farmland. I mean that's not really true but it's always for a farm. Um and that's done by the state agricultural development committee which is an agency of the department of a farmland preservation in New Jersey goes
through the the SADC the state agricultural development committee. So you have these two different kinds of land preservation. Open space preservation always has uh uh uh uh the green acres involved and farmland preservation always has the
SADC the state agricultural development committee involved. Um and the important thing about another important thing about farmland preservation is that it does not require public access which is really a very significant thing as we'll see. Okay, let me see if I can get the
next slide here without screwing that up. Okay, good. So, let's look at the numbers a little bit because it's kind of interesting. Um, preserve farmland. There's 250,000 acres in New Jersey preserve so far. Uh, they have the SADC has a very specific goal. They want to
preserve another 250,000. And I believe there's 500,000 unpreserved farmland u uh in the state and they want to preserve half of it. And that's a very stated direct goal. Uh Green Acres has preserved 725,000
acres of land. They don't seem to have a particular goal. Maybe they do, but I didn't find it and it's not seem to doesn't seem to be well publicized. Um and uh then there's a lot of other land that seem that doesn't it's hard to know how much that is. Uh that could be
federal land. It could be maybe parks that isn't really open space for towns. Uh it could be the land around uh uh reservoirs. You know, Monarch Reservoir has hundreds of acres of land, but it really didn't go through Green Acres because it was done in 1923 or
something, right? Uh so that land is preserved. So I don't know really how good that number is. I couldn't find a good number there. In fact, I had to back into that from another number. Uh but there is certainly a lot of preserved land and federal land is a lot
of the of the preserved land in that's in that number. So the total preserved land is 1.6 million acres. Now these percentages are of the total acreage in the state 5% preserve fine land 15% uh green acres
uh 10% of other and the total is about 33%. I think that's a little high because I think this 10% is a little high, but that's not too bad. You know, we it's not too bad. But maybe the most important number on this chart is that
the land that is neither developed nor preserved. And that's 1.4 million. 1.4 million out of 40 4.8 million acres, that's 29%. So 29% of our land is not preserved. It's not developed and it's
not preserved. Conceivably it could be preserved and possibly it could be developed but I think if you think about what if we developed that 29% things would look a lot different right things would look a lot different and and not
good uh for habitat for clean water for clean air we'd all all the things that pres preserved land does we would not do with that uh 29%. So we have still a lot of work to do. Yes, Christine. Yes. Thank you. The 29% that's not developed
or preserved, who is that owned by? Everybody. Is that public lands you're talking about? No. Private. Private and public. It's private. Yeah. I I guess there are public lands that could be developed. Uh but I'm really mostly I
guess private really. Yeah. 29%. Yeah. The private. That's what I'm thinking. I mean, it's just I I don't really know Christine. It's land that is neither developed nor preserved. And I guess some of that could be public. Maybe a town owns land that isn't they didn't
preserve it. You know, um if a town owns land, they if they didn't buy it with green acres, they could sell it, right? You know, there's nothing to keep them from preserving it. So, uh I think that's a I think that's a really important number. All right, let's see if I can get to the next slide. This is
makes me a little nervous because I'm not sure what's going to you're never sure what's going to happen with a computer. So, what do I got here? Okay, so let's think about green acres because that's really important program, remember? So, um if if you had land that you
wanted to preserve, uh probably the most the first thing you would do is to go to somebody to help you because you can't do it yourself. These are not you you can't get on the internet and sell your land, you know, for preservation. It's really complicated and it's really complicated with Green Acres. So, you go
to somebody to help you. You can go to Green Acres, but well, I'm not I want to say this, and I don't want I want to be subtle about this, but they're not going to maybe get back to you for another four or five years. So, I shouldn't say that. They're very good.
They work really hard, but I have to say they're slow, right? They're slow. But so go to go to a conservancy. They will they will help you and they'll be able to intercede with you with green acres and they'll uh it's a good place to start. Now if you came for instance to
the uh original valley conservancy the first thing that we would do or I would do Oops. Okay. The first thing that I would I would do is I would see if you could use a program a direct easement a direct
purchase program for for Green Acres and that actually works really well. uh Greenacres has a lot of land they want there's a lot of land they'd like to buy and if you have land or somebody you know has land they want to preserve and it happens to be some of that land they
want to buy they will they will make the deal with you and it's very easy it's a it's a very easy application I really commend them for that it's two pages and which is unheard of you anything the government right a two-page application
um it it does take a while but you find out pretty quickly if they want that land. You're supposed to find out in a month after you put that application in whether they want your land or not. And what Green Acres does, it goes to its constituent agencies, uh, uh, uh, uh,
Parks and Forestry, Fish and Wildlife, uh, the New Jersey Natural Land Trust, and if any of those agencies want your land, then they will get back to you and say, "We'd like to buy your land." So, that actually works pretty well. You don't have, it's one of the few things
that in fact you can do it yourself. Uh, but we would certainly help you if you came to us and and worked with you. Um, and that that is the easiest way to preserve land through Green Acres. However, not all open land is land that
one of those agencies wants. So, if they don't want your land, that's not an option. But that I think is the best option for you if if you had land that you wanted to preserve. Uh so let's say that doesn't work right. Well, now we've got a much more complicated situation
and now you really need somebody to help you. You need probably a conservancy to help you. And actually the conservies work together uh to preserve land because it gets real complicated. Um, and uh, you need Green Acres because Green Acres will give you 50% of the
money for that that and you you can generally get u um a a grant for that uh, and they will give you 50%. And and if you have good land that you're trying to preserve, that will that will often work. Now, those grants can be
complicated to fill out. Those grant applications can be complicated to fill out. Um, and sometimes they're not intuitive, but they will, Greenacres will help you. They have a lot of good people in Green Acres and they will help you. Uh, some of them are really excellent and they will uh uh help you
out with the grant application. Um, but the grant application actually an individual can't do it. It has to go through a conservancy or a town or something like that. So, you all can't do it. You got to go through a a conservancy. Um, and the um the 50% part
is the easy part. The other 50% is the really hard part. So you got to find that other that match that 50% match and that makes it difficult. That makes it complicated and these things get pretty involved. And to show you how involved
they are, I want to show you some of the things you got to think about when you preserve land through green acres. And let's look at this. So the first thing you want to know, and this seems trivial, but it actually isn't, is you have a willing seller. So, if you're want to preserve your land, you got you
have a willing seller, right? But what if you a friend of yours has land that they they have for sale and you say, you know, why don't you preserve it? You go to a go to a consery and say, there's this land for sale. Well, we go to the owner and say, would you like us to preserve it? And they may or they may
not. Even if it's for sale, some people don't want to sell to the state. They don't trust it. It takes a long time. They don't want to deal with the state. there's, you know, a fair amount of that feeling around and so you have to have a willing seller. But the reason that's important is that Green Acres will not
involve will not be involved in eminent domain, which is really a significant thing. Uh Green Acres, when I first started this, there were a lot of people that were not um uh um they were suspicious of any state uh any state
agency. That suspicion still exists. when we talked to a lot of people. So if if they were involved in eminent domain, nobody would deal with them, right? Because they'd be scared to death of them. But they don't. So if you don't have a willing seller, you can't go
ahead with this, no matter how good the land the land is. All right. Uh so uh that is an important consideration. Um can a grant from Green Acres be obtained? All right. I said this you can get that 50% grant
and uh it's not automatic but in my experience it if you have a reasonable uh um land that you want to preserve they will certainly help you out. That's their business in life and they and you get that 50%. And how about sources for
the 50% match? Okay. Well, that's the tough part. Where do you get that other 50%. And there are a number of groups that have money for land preservation. Um and uh they for instance uh the
William Penn Foundation had a lot of land money uh for uh protecting the Delaware River and its tributaries. So if you had land that they considered significant for that goal, they would maybe help you. they'd probably give
that money to another conservancy and the con that conservancy would match it with the 50%. Uh and and the trick is to find that other 50%. And sometimes you can do it and sometimes you can't. It's a shame that you can't get it all from Green Acres, but you
can't. So you have to find that. Sometimes the towns will come up with the money. Sometimes there'll be three or four different uh groups that come up with the money. So you got to put something together. That's why this gets complicated. um ecological value and location of the land. Well, uh there are
there software mapping programs that will give you for every uh for every uh for every uh piece of land in the parcel in New Jersey its ecological value. Uh and it's pretty easy to use. Um and you can see whether it's high, medium, or
low ecological value. So that you want to do the best land for a for the ecological value that you can. Um, the location. Well, that's kind of interesting. I want to go to this slide here if I can not screw it up. Okay. Well, let's go to this one. I didn't
mean that one, but that one. Unfortunately, I can't access this. But do you see here? This is part of what is here, but it doesn't work here. Um, these are all migration patterns in the Appalachian
the Appalachian area. And this the our area is circled here. And these the these are really significant in New Jersey and in the Appalachian corridor. U and the Nature Conservancy has decided that this is so important. They want to
preserve land. These migration patterns are so important that they want to preserve land in this area. So now we've got one of the most significant nonprofit conservies in the world that says they want to be in eastern uh the eastern part of the country in these in
in parts of New Jersey. So that's why the location is important because uh the Nature Conservancy will say okay uh you're in this migration pattern we we can probably get funding and we're going to donate we're going to contribute to
the preservation. Uh so that's really good. Now let me see show you another one. See I go this way. No here. Where am I? How do I I want to go up. I go Show me up.
I I want to go to this one there. Oh, good. Very good. Okay. So, this is another map of land from the Nature Conservancy. And this is called Bobcat Alley. Now, bobcat alley is where there's a lot of bobcats and a lot
bobcats are an indicator species, right? If they they need a lot of habitat and they're also attractive, you know, so they they're good marketing tool. So, the Nature Conservancy has a map of Bobcat Alley. If you've got land in that
map, the Nature Conservy's going to they have a fair amount of money and a lot of connections. They're going to be interested, right? If it's here real close to that and it's not on that, you may not be able to get funding from them. In fact, we had a situation in Nolton Township where we had a really
beautiful land, 190 acres of excellent land that we wanted to preserve. Um, and one of the best people who can who can do that work tried to preserve it and he couldn't do it and he was really frustrated because it wasn't in Bobcat Alley. Then the map changed and all of a
sudden it wasn't Bobcat Alley and then we preserved it. So just by that kind of arbitrary places on a map made the difference between preserving this really important land for Nolton Township and not preserving it. Yes.
Eolog is is it say it again would you? I'm sorry. Yeah. So all right, I was just wondering the software that you're talking about where you can uh check a parcel valid useful you know I'm not sure about I I don't think that the question was
does the software and the software I'm talking about is partial explorer which is part of the uh blueprint uh the uh conservation blueprint software and and I don't know if they have habitat for specific things there my sense is that
it's more for the physical situation, the wetlands and the tree in the trees the but I'm not really sure. I don't know how they come up with those numbers to tell you the truth. Um but the green but certainly the nature conservancy who
you really often need to help with getting the the money is um cares a lot about that. And I think it's, you know, it it's nice to think about Bobcats, you know, so that's reasonable enough, but it's also, it's always seemed to me be,
you know, somewhat a little bit arbitrary because uh you're off the map by, you know, half a mile and and you can't be preserved. You're on the map and you're okay. So now I want to get back up someplace here. I guess I can.
So which one do I use? Which one? Here. This one. So which way is this going? I go backwards. Okay. Oh, yeah. I want to get back to there. Okay. Good. Good. So, the ecological value and look, thank you. Thank you. And and the location of
land. We talked about that. We need to tell Secretary what? I'm on farmland preservation, but I can't go back if we Yeah, it doesn't let me. Oh, okay. So, I'm screwing you all up on this. Okay.
All right. So, uh, so past uses of the land. Well, that's really important when you want to preserve land because one of the things you have to do when you preserve land with green acres is you got to get rid of all the structures, right? Which is a big deal. So, if you've had some
past uses that might have cause contamination, for instance, let's say you had a plating operation, right? plating operation is going to have uh effluent with chromium in it probably and probably a lot of other heavy metals. That's bad and to clean that up
is really hard, right? And you don't want to be involved with that. Uh so before you can preserve the land, what you do is you look at the past uses. You actually have environmental assessment. You look at the past uses, what's there? If it's a farm, you know, there's oil.
farmers would throw the oil on the road, you know, on the on their driveways and that, you know, but there and we've had some very farms with a lot of stuff on them. We had one farm that they for fencing, they just put cars end to
end. So that was their that was the fencing. Mars Hillyard, who who never threw anything out in his life, apparently had cars, that's what I've heard, had cars that were end to end uh for their fencing. And I remember we preserved that land and and maybe that
was long enough ago that they weren't too particular about what was on the land. Uh but there's there's more to that than that actually. Um so all sorts of weird things can happen and you have to get rid of the structures too. If there's an you know an old building or something you got to get rid of it. Uh that can be pretty expensive and can
cause a lot of problems. So green acres requires that expectations of oh easement or fee purchase. Okay. So we're generally talking about fee purchase with with Green Acres, but not all the time. So
fe purchase means you buy all the rights all the rights to the land. You you know or the the state buys all the rights. Uh the uh the seller sells the entire land with all its rights intact, right? And the state owns it and the seller is is
is gone. Is that out of the picture? Right. But a seller could also want to still live on the land and sell a conservation easement. Right? So that conservation easement, the seller is selling the development rights. So the
land cannot be developed because the sell the the state owns the development rights or a conservancy owns the development rights which means the owner still lives there but he or she can't develop it because those rights have been sold. Now, that can work sometimes,
but the problem with that is for green acres, you need public access if you deal with them. So, if you have a 100 acres and you want to still live on it, but you want to be it to be preserved in perpetuity, which a lot of us want to
do, we'd like to do that with our our land. Um, you have to have public access. So, it means maybe you make a trail on the edge of the land, but now you've got the public coming in. you can't you got to let them in. You know, maybe they make garbage, put garbage
around, maybe they they got they're noisy and maybe you just don't want people around, right? So, that is a real I think um problem with the green acres program uh that these easement
purchases uh have this restriction that you have to have public access. But I understand it because the people that are paying for this is the whole the whole state, right? So they should it's reasonable to say that those people should have access to the land I think
so um so expectations of the land owner that is always a problem because you got to meet their financial expectations and sometime and a lot of times you can't you you determine the value by uh appraisals. These are appraisals that
look at comparable sales. Um, and sometimes and and they're done by credit accredited appraisals. They're independent. They don't they're not the staff of the of Green Acres. They're independent appraisers and they're
usually pretty good. But, um, land owners often see double. You know, they have a friend of theirs in Mars County who's sold 10 acres for $200,000, right? and they think they can get 20,000 an acre and and they can't in Nolton, you know, in Warren County and
maybe in Sussex you can't. So, you have to be careful. Uh that that's always a problem. Zoning. Well, zoning maybe doesn't belong on this list, but it is important because it determines to a lot extent the value of the land. We were
talking about uh Alex's place we think might be oneacre zoning. The 10 16 acres is probably worth a lot because it's oneacre zoning. If it was a house for every five acres, it would be worth a lot less. So, the value you get is going to be based to a certain extent on the zoning
uh and uh if if it's zoned in a uh in a in a way that is restrictive, that lowers the the value. In Nolton Township, our zoning is a house for every 10 acres. So, a 100 acre lot in Nton Township, you can put 10 houses and only 10 houses on it. a 100 acre lot in
Blairestown, you could put 20 houses or in Freedom Housing, you could put 20 houses. Um, and and I'm not sure what it is in in Sparta and depends probably where it is. U and that makes a big difference. Uh, and and you all know this, I'm sure, but you should all know the zoning of the land that is next to
you because it makes a big difference. And we've seen some real problems in in Nolton with farms that were next to commercial zones that would allow uh um warehouses and and it was really it's really very sad you know when these were
preserve farms and in town over they allowed warehouses and that was is really tough for the farm owner. Um and now who will own the land? Okay. So, if you're a conservancy and you own the land, that gives you both responsibilities and and opportunities.
Uh the responsibility is you got to take care of it, right? You and and the what you what I mean by that is you have to be a steward of the land. And what that really seems to mean now more than anything is to try to get rid of the invasives, keep the invasives under
control, and uh bring in natives. And that's really a lot of work. That's hard to do. uh but it is a very worthy endeavor. Uh so it should be done and that the uh conservies try to do that. The uh valley conservancy had one person
that did that and she was very good. Um and other conservies have staff that are uh uh dedicated to that job. But if anybody's tried to get rid of mugwware, you know this it's not easy, right? We got a few acres of this stuff and I'm
trying to get rid of it. So um that uh um who will own the land is important. Now if the state wants the land, sometimes you might buy some land and give it to the state because now they own it and then it's not a problem for you. But they do not, as far as I can
tell, do much stewardship. And and I'm not sure if this is is really true, but at one time it seemed to be that their uh philosophy was first we got to preserve the land, then we can get rid of the multifllora roads. I'm not sure they think that way now. And I don't criticize that way of thinking because
preserving the land is so important. I always I I very much want to get rid of invasives, but the worst invasive is concrete, it seems to me. So, uh once it's preserved, once it's developed, you're not ever going to preserve it. So, I I think that makes what Green Acres says makes a certain amount of
sense. And uh and they're they're very dedicated people in Green Acres as they are in farmland preservation. Uh timing. Well, timing is always an issue. because it takes a long time. It really takes a long time for for green acres
and for it takes too long frankly and I think everybody recognizes that and a lot of people don't want to wait a year and a half to preserve their land. They want to do it right away and which is understandable. In fact, we had one in Nolton where this woman was quite an elderly. She owned some perfect land for
us to preserve and I she asked me how long it would take and I told her, you know, a year and a half. She said, "I can't wait that long." and uh and uh so she sold it to somebody else and we could have preserved it. I think we could have preserved it and she was very much in favor of preservation but she wasn't in favor of you know waiting that
long. So that's something I think both the farmland preservation people and the green acres people have to do a little better on and I think they realize that. Um is there a dam on the property? Well that really we're talking about a structure but this is a particular kind of structure that causes all sorts of
problems. If you have a dam on the p property, you generally if you're going to own it, you before you actually buy it or maybe during the process, you bring in uh the dam safety people from the D and they got to look at it and if
they say, you know, this is a potentially dangerous dam because there's jeopardy downstream for people that might get hurt if the dam breaks. Uh and if the dam is in bad shape, now you got to fix it up and that could be really really expensive. We there was
one situation where there was a dam and there was I guess downstream jeopardy from it and uh I think the bill was a lot of money to try to fix that up and nobody really wanted to buy it because of that situation. So uh that's a
particular particular situation. All right, let's see where we are here now. Let's just hit this and see what happens. Huh. All right. Nope, that's not right. So this one. This one. Okay, I already saw that. You already saw that one. Saw that one. Okay, now we're here. So, let's talk about farmland
preservation. Now, that's uh I think I figured it out, huh? No, I'll forget next time. So, yeah, but what's up and what's down? How do you know? So, so farmland preservation, let's talk about farmland preservation, which is
different than than open space preservation. It's done by the SADC, the state agricultural development committee. As I said, they preserve 250,000 acres. They want to preserve another 250,000 acres. They're a lot of ways different from Green Acres. First
of all, their process is very regimented. It's always the same, which is sort of comforting, right? Um, and basically, their basic idea is pretty pretty uh easy. They almost always
really always what they do is they uh buy or take uh development easement from the land. So you don't sell you the final analysis is that a private person owns the land and there's a development
easement a farmland preservation easement on the land. And that farmland easement is pretty long. Okay. It's and it's it it's easement is uh uh described in the deed of easement. So you get a deed of easement which says you can do this and you can do this but you can't
do this and you can't do this and it's very very uh pretty specific and we've got we often have problems with that u because it has to be enforced. But the good thing about it is that it's enforced by the state and the county. the SADC and of and the county often old
holds that easement and they enforce it which really helps you know you get the state behind you for something like that it makes a big difference and the state is serious about enforcing those easements and one of the problems happens we found in the county agricultural development board in Warren
County is that the people that buy the uh preserved property they didn't preserve it but they bought it preserved sort of don't recognize the importance of the easement, you know, they sort of either uh uh
on purpose or they just overlook it, you know, and they think they say, "Well, I didn't know there was an eman. I never read the eman." Well, it was in their deed and everything, but they never looked at it. But, you know, we don't all read our deeds. That's true. Um so we have to be really careful with these like second generation owners because
they weren't didn't go through the pro process of u uh buying the uh selling the easement to the state. So um that is a really significant part of the farmland preservation program. It always
has a deed of easement involved. Uh and uh the owners have to respect that deed of easement. And it makes sense because the state is not going to buy farmland without having somebody to farm it, right? And they're not going to farm it. So you keep the farmer on the land. And
it that works pretty well. So that's the basic idea. So, I'm going to go through the steps and you'll see it's a lot different than Green Acres because it's very the steps are very um um this is the standard. They're the same. Every one I've done has the same steps. So,
the first step is uh you got to call somebody, right? Because you can't do it yourself. It's kind of complicated, but not hard. It's just complicated. Um so, you call you can call the SADC. They're in Trenton. They're 30 or 40 really
dedicated, smart people. And I like dealing with them as I like dealing with green acres people too. They're all dedicated and they all care. Call the SADC or you can call your county department of land preservation. You have one here in Sussex. Uh they're I talked to them a while ago. I don't
know when that was. It was April maybe Christine. And they're really good. I thought they were really nice and intelligent. Um you can talk to your township. A lot of towns have u land uh land preservation committees. Uh
Nolton has one. We've had it since you know two 1999 or something like that. Um and uh if if you have a twocent tax, you probably have such a committee or or a a tax uh for open space tax. It doesn't have to be two cents, but uh or you call
a local conservancy. Um and the local conservancy has some examp advantages. I think they are dedicated to helping you. Uh, you know, the others all the township is volunteers. The county has the whole county to deal with. They're
not necessarily local. The state is down in Trenton, even though they're very dedicated and very good, too. Uh, but a land conservancy will uh really try on a very personal level to uh to to help you. And that's what we did with Ever
Alex. We tried anyway. Yeah, we're going to keep trying, aren't we? So, that's the first step. Uh, call somebody and get somebody to help you because you need somebody to help you on this. So, I told you about the basic uh
idea of farmland preservation. That's that you get an easement on your land and you have the right uh uh and you lose the right, you sell the right to develop it, but you don't have to have public access. So, that's really important. So preserved farmland does
not require public access unlike green acres land which does. So the farmer doesn't have to about worry about somebody coming and stealing his watermelons or something like that, you know. Uh he he or she uh it really after you sign that eman after you go through
this process and it's a long process. It's complicated to a certain extent you don't even know what happened cuz nothing changes. And I've had people that towards the end of the process got really really nervous that all terrible things were going to happen. people were
going to come and put signs up on their lawn and all this on their farms and all this kind of stuff. Um, and I said to them, listen, you're not even going to know. There's no change, right? And the only thing that changes is you there things you can't do that you didn't want to do anyway, right? Uh, so it's it's a
pretty natural transition for most people. And u, but it is a complic it is a very big decision because you're taking probably the biggest asset you own and taking a lot of value out of it. you're getting paid for that value. We're taking a lot of value out of it. Okay. So, step where we on? So, we're
we're still on step one, I guess. So, step two, uh talk with a farmland preservation advisor to determine if the land is elig eligible. So, that's the first thing is your land eligible. And the eligibility requirements are basically three. It has to be either uh
25% farmland uh I'm sorry 50% farmland, 50% tillable is the word we use or 25 acres tillable. Uh and tillable doesn't mean you can put a plow in it necessarily. For instance, an orchard is tillable because it's agricultural. A pasture is tillable because it's
agricultural. So what they really mean by that is agricultural. It's a very poor word. Uh but that's the word that's been used for many for many years. So it has to be either 25 acres tillable or 50% tillable. Now that's really kind of
interesting. If you have a 30 acre farm, well 50% of it is uh tillable. That sort of makes sense, right? 50% you're farming 50% of it. But what if you have a 300 acre farm? We had an acre farm that was 258 acres. All you
need is 25 acres till them, right? That's really amazing. So farmland preservation is not only preserving farms, they're preserving for that particular farm that the the 200 acres that weren't tillable, right? Because
they had the 25 acres actually had they had more, but they had about 25 acres and we've preserve actually preserve one farm. I think it was about 150 acres and and it did it had like 24 acres tillable. So we couldn't preserve it and it was and the guy the guy told me he
has 25 acres. Then we came and did mapping and it was like it wasn't. So he was trying to get by. But then hurricane Sandy came by knocked down an acre of trees and all of a sudden he had 25 acres of till we preserve so we preserved it. So Hurricane Sandy helped
us out a little bit on that deal but uh that's not usual. Um, so this it's pretty amazing actually that you can preserve a really large farm with a relatively small amount of acorage and I think it's a great thing
that SADC did that. They did that many years ago. In fact, about the time that that farm with Sandy I was talking about, they changed it. Um, and I think it was a very far-sighted thing. Okay, so where we're where number uh number two eligibility there's two
other eligibility requirements. One is the land has to be developable. If you can't develop the land, you why preserve it? Why spend state money to preserve it? And and so um if it's if it the zoning wouldn't let you develop it, like
you had a 9 acre farm, uh which is small and there's problems with that, but uh and there was one house on it in our town, you couldn't do it because you need 10 acres for a house, right? So that's not exactly right, but in that case, you'd need 10 acres. So uh if your
land does not have pre development potential, you can't preserve it. The other thing is you have to be farming it. You have to put every August 1st at FA1 that farmland assessment application in. You have to be uh you have to farm it. All those things make sense. Now
then step four is to fill out an application. Oh no, step three. This is the most important step. I forgot. You got to understand what's go what you're giving up. You got to understand the rules. And I spend a lot of time in the kitchens with farmers and their wives and their kids
explaining what you can do and what you can't do and what you should do if you want to preserve your land. And the questions keep coming and coming and sometimes the same questions over and over again because they're complicated and they're hard to remember. But you got to take the time and you got to enjoy sitting with these people, which I
do. uh they're, you know, they care about the land. They care about their their uh uh um the future of the land and they are, you know, somewhat suspicious of the whole program and
they're making a really big decision. You know, if you got 100 acres in Nolton Township, that's worth a lot of money, probably trying to think, probably close to a million dollars, right? and uh now you're selling half that value and you're
getting paid for it, but it's forever, right? So, you really got to think strong and and our just think long and hard. Our um idea about this is that uh our policy is that we don't want to do anything that's
not right for the farmer. If I thought a farmland preservation project was bad for the farmer, I would recommend him against it. or if the money is too little, I'd recommend against it because in the small towns where these farms are, if you start screwing the farmer, nobody's going to you're not going to
have more customers. You know, they all talk to one another. They all know and if you have a good reputation and they know that you're looking out for them, that makes a big difference. So, you're really, this is not a situation where you're a developer and you're trying to buy the land for the cheapest. I always
try to get the most money I can for these farms when I can. there's very little I can do, but whatever I can do, I'll do because I want them to have the the best uh the best outcome they can have. Um and um that seems that seems to
work because we're we're genuine about it. You know, we really care about it in the right way. Okay. So, where are we now? Um, so that if you've if you learned out what you want to do and you want to and you feel comfortable with it, um, then step forward to fill out an
application, which is long, but really not that complicated and not that hard. It's not like a lot of applications where you don't understand what's going on. And then the adi whoever's advising you, if it's a land conservancy or somebody else from the town or something, they will help you with it.
They probably have to, but it's it's not hard. So that's pretty easy. We have had nobody trip up over that, you know. Um and then these are the rest of the things you do. First you get appraisal. The appraisals come. You don't have to pay for that. The state does that. And
the appraisal situation is kind of process is kind of interesting. You're trying to appraise the value of the development rights which is sort of interesting situation. So the what you do is you appraise the farm as it is.
That's the before value before the development rights were sold. You appraise it as is. And then you appraise it what it would be if the development rights were sold. And you look at comparable sales and you have to go to comparable sales of preserved land. And now there's a lot of preserved land. So
there's a lot of sales of preserved land. So now you have these two numbers. The difference is what you would get paid. So let's say your farm is worth a million dollars, right? But before, the way it is now with none of the rights
being taken off, but after it's preserved, it's worth $600,000, the after value. Well, what you should get paid is what you're losing in value, which is the difference between a million and 600,000 is $400,000. And that's what you would get paid based on
the appraisal. So, it's a reasonably logical approach, I think, and I don't know how you'd make it better, frankly, although the SADC is making it better, as we'll see in a little while. Significantly better. You get the appraisals, then an offer is made to
you. You don't have to decide anything till you have a offer that's in stone. You know, it's absolute. It's not going to change. Uh sign a contract. the survey is done by uh the the county or the states,
depends who's the lead agency on this uh or the township. Um and then you have a closing. So, this is all the same for pretty much every one of these. And the nice thing about it is you really don't need outside money. You know, you the county and the state can do it, the
township, the county, and the state can do it, but there's enough money for them. And that's the big difference between that and Green Acres. U they uh don't you don't need to put together these complicated deals the way with
Green Acres. So um that that's it. Any questions about any of this stuff? Does it make sense? Yes. Wait, what's your name? Oh Christine. Can the farmer stay on the land? I know with farmland preservation the land must be farmed. So
that farmer stays on on the land and they farm, right? Um or the easement says, as I recall, that it has to be remained farmable. Um that is um you can't let trees grow
up in it. You can't let uh uh Russian olives grow up in it where you can't farm it. But I don't think you have to actually farm it. But nobody who's got land doesn't farm it because you get farmland assessment and that lowers your
taxes, right? Even lowers them below what your taxes would be with the land being preserved, which has taken a lot of value out of it. I I believe I believe nobody. But so usually the far even the farmer doesn't want it. He'll rent it to somebody who does want to
farm it. But I believe you don't have to farm it. You just have to keep it farmable, right? That's my understanding. Then um when you pass away, what happens to that part portion that needs to be taken care of and kept
farmable? Well uh it's a good point. I should have mentioned that Christine. These uh conservation easements or farmland preservation agents run with the land. Uh they don't they don't die. They don't end when the person who made that uh uh negotiation the who who sold
the development rights dies or leaves that is permanently in perpetuity with the land and the same uh requirements exist. It has to remain farmable, right? So, so if you sell your land, the
person who buys it has to meet the requirements of that deed of easement and has to keep it farmable and all the other requirements of the deed of easement, right? To your family. Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. You got it's like any other piece of land. Sure. You have you own it and you can you just don't have
these the rights are not with the land, right? I mean, I guess it's like water rights in the west or oil rights or something like that. I'm not too familiar with that, but I I assume it's the same kind of thing. Okay, so where are we now?
Oh, another question. Oh, sorry, Robert. Um, so this all makes sense, but you kind of alluded to development pressures. Um, and I guess I wonder how that would
go because the whole process sounds takes a long time. This route sounds good. preserving Bobcat alley type situation or certain species of concern
for for smaller parts. Just trying to figure out the problems to me. Exactly. Right. And it is an argument against reszoning uh that you lower the value of the land
that uh is not preserved and you may discourage a little preservation. We changed the zoning in 2004 from a house for every 5 acres to a house every 10 acres. We had a lot of push back but this was a time before the uh tremendous
activity in the development that we were afraid that uh we would have our farms destroyed. So like every other government policy there's a good part and a bad part. Um and uh you know if we could preserve land without changing the
zoning I would have I would have been in favor of that. But we didn't figure that we could. In fact, because we changed that zoning, we actually preserved land that was very very important. From the from the farmer's point of view, they don't like us. If their land isn't preserved, they don't want to change the zoning. And I, you know, I
don't I don't blame them. They have a point there. Um, so you're making a a good observation there, right? It's somewhat related as we're dealing with the national housing crisis and how
does that factor in or not saying but I think in those situations sometimes state over but the necessity of affordable housing options
perhaps. Well, it's really interesting that you mentioned that, Robert, because I don't know. Do you read the Lancaster farming? Well, it's a really good paper actually. It's well surprisingly well written. You know, it's got the uh Star Ledger beat.
Um, and uh there was an article I just read, I don't know what what one, we have a bunch of them. It was a current one, right, of a 21 acre farm in Cranberry. Did you read that? So, it was a 21 acre
farm in Cranberry owned by a family that had owned it since 1850 and had lots of opportunities to sell it for a lot of money and would not sell it because they liked it very much. Uh, it was not preserved. the the township then
threatened and apparently will go through with this to buy it to take it over with eminent domain for low-income housing because the townships are under a lot of pressure for this low-inccome housing. Um, and the you remember the
the quote by the owner saying maybe he should have preserved it because once you preserve that land, nothing can touch that easement. that easement is ironclad. Uh and which is can be a problem. You know, if you don't do it right, you're kind of screwed. Um and uh
he would have been protected if he did that. That's an unusual situation. I never heard of that, but it's interesting that you mentioned it. But I I I think that u like everything else these are a balance of of interests.
The interest of keeping farms is pretty important. Interest of keeping open land is pretty important. The interest of having um um uh low-inccome housing is pretty important too, right? Um it you know
it's hard. It sort of sort of depends on what you think is most important. I guess you know it's hard to answer that question. You know, the towns uh are have just gone through their low-income housing uh uh
[Music] operation now and it's gets pretty complicated. But one thing that our town is really lucky we have a low-inccome h low-income housing obligation and I'm told by our attorney that one of the reasons is we preserve a lot of land so
there isn't that much land to develop and that discourages the developers. I'm not I'm not totally convinced that's the reason but that's what I was told. So, um, but you know, those are good
questions, Robin. I can't be, you know, dogmatic about the answer. Now, am I going to get to the right thing here? I don't even know. Oh, what you can do. I'm going to get back to that later because I think you guys know what you can do. Um, green acres versus farmland preservation. So, let's just go over
this. Green acres preserves natural land. Farmland preservation preserve farmland. All right, that's fair enough, right? Most Green Acres projects involve a fee purchase. Not all of them, but that seems to be a little easier to deal with. Essentially, all farms and farmland preservation have an easement.
But let's talk about this. Yeah, they all have easements in farmland preservation. Let's talk about the green acres. If you let's say the the Nature Conserv, the Region Valley Conservancy buys an easement to preserve some land,
right? So the owner's there, there's a trail for public access and there's a conservation easement on the land. Now that easement needs to be enforced and you can probably enforce it now. You
know, you know the owner, you dealt with them. The owner wanted to preserve the land. The owner cares about it. But how about in 100 years? Who's going to preserve that easement? Right? Uh people are going to forget about it. the the owners in 100 years from now are going to build a tennis court. They're not supposed to. Nobody's going to ever know
about it. Maybe even though you have it, you know, you're supposed to have inspections, yearly inspections. We inspect the all our land uh that have easements every year. Um but this is supposed to be forever. So what the land
conser the uh Richard Valley Conservancy is they have insurance for this. they have insurance to protect those easements. With farmland preservation, the state protects it. You don't have to deal with that at all. And you know, you really don't want to go up against the state with something like that. But with
uh when a private conservancy owns it, these easements, uh you have to have some kind of uh way to preserve those easements in perpetuity. and they have that and they als they have insurance but they and they also have plans uh that if they go out of business a
conservancy some other bigger conservancy takes it over and that could preserve it. So that's a you know that's a difficult thing when you're talking about uh um an easement purchase. Uh next uh comparison all green acres
projects require public access. Uh farmland preservation project does not require public access. That's really significant. Uh funding for open space projects is hit or miss. You got to put together these complicated deals. It's
it's really pretty hard. I think there a lot there are people that are a lot better at it than I am. So, you know, they find it less hard because you you have people that really uh have a lot of experience with this. But I always find it kind of mystifying to tell you the truth and a little scary, you know. I mean, I worry about things like you
preserving land and you uh you find out there's you've gone through spent a lot of money and then you found out there's so much stuff under the ground that you could never fix it, never clean it up and you spent a lot of money in the trying to to get to that
point. Um funding for farmland preservation is available and you know it's there and you're going to if you have an eligible farm, you're going to get it. never seen an eligible farm uh denied and the eligibility requirements are pretty cut and dry and if you meet them the farmland preservation people
are going to help you. Now let's see where else I'm supposed to be. I think that's pretty much it. Oh, okay. Let me just say this. This is really very interesting. I had a part a thing there about what you can do, but I think you're all doing it by being here, you know, so I don't really have to
suggest that. I mean, it's great that you're here and this is really important. That's good. Um, you know, being on the environmental commission is really important thing. Um, but talk to your local politicians. They they they want to hear from you and they need to hear what you
think. Uh, I know having been in that role in a very small town. I mean, it's hard to be more more minor a politician than I was. I was like the most minor in the in the state probably. We have 3,000 people in the town. But I listened to what people said, you know, and uh I I
would discuss it with them. I might argue with them a little bit, but I always listened and they'll listen to you and they want to hear from you. And and the people who believe in this preservation have to speak up and talk to their local people because a lot of this happens on the local level. But this is the last thing I'll talk about,
new developments, farmland preservation, state preservation, statewide preservation formula. This is really revolutionary. I mean that might be too strong a word but it's really uh very new. They're actually giving farmers the opportunity
to increase the value of those easements that they're buying from the farmers based on the characteristics of the land. So for instance, if your land has a lot of environmental environmentally uh important parts of it, they will
instead of giving you maybe 50%, they start at 50% of the fee value for the easement, they might make it up to 60% or it could go to 70%. Or even go to 80%. If you're close to another preserve farm, that is a bonus. If you have a C1 stream, highest quality stream in the
state, that's a bonus. So think about this. You've got this land. You preserve it and you get 80% of the of the market value of that land. You live on the land. You don't have to have anybody on the land. You don't even know it's
preserved and except you can't go you know when Toll Brothers comes you send them packing. But you know uh that's really extraordinary. That's really that's really extraordinary. So uh that is already April 7th is when that became
more law and for regulation. Uh it was instituted by the u uh by the ascent legislature which I think is kind of interesting. Not by farmland preservation but the legislature said we're not getting enough farms. We want to preserve more farms and we're going to do this. And it's it's really
amazing. Now there's another law Senate Bill 699 which would I think it goes through farmland preservation the sedc. What that does is it is going to put together a program for preserving
forest land and open space the way we preserve farmland and that is really really necessary and when you think about it and this is a you know some objection that I have we consider farmland which is very very important we
consider it more important than open space we consider more important than trees because we won't preserve farmland unless there I'm sorry. We won't cons preserve the trees and the open space unless there's public access. I certainly understand that. But we will
do it for farmland. Right now, they are different. You know, you can really screw up a farm if you have people tracing all over it, right? Uh but it seems to me that we have to consider open space land as important as farmland and there should be a program for an
easement purchasing an easement for open space land without public access and I believe this law will do that. It's not passed yet but I think it's a fantastic thing that the assembly is trying to do. Um we need to recognize how important
preserving open space is. preserving trees. Uh, and you know, we couldn't make the argument 30 years ago about climate change because we didn't know about it. But now that is a very important argument and one that's valid. Uh, and I think the legislature who was
thinking about this is uh uh going around, you know, in the right direction. So, I guess that's all I have to say. I hope I didn't take too much time here. I'm Did I Robert? Um just thinking about this as this as these programs evolve. So in the past you kind
of saw these discrete parcels surrounded by whatever question related to that. So so you could have a farm is protected. That's correct. Yeah. Sounds like you have programs in place where there's
There's things in place to protect those land. Is there anything of that high value parcel surrounds Yeah, I think it's a good question.
Also, not only preserving the environmental issues, environmental characteristics, but also preserving the farmability because, you know, a farmer is going to be out at 4:00 in the morning plowing sometime. If it's going to rain at 5, you're going to be out plowing at four, you know. Um, and
that's a legitimate thing to do. And if the neighbors wake up, well, I'm sorry, you know. Uh there are protections for that. The right to farm law is protects that. Um, and that's a a useful thing. Um, but the other but it won't protect
the kind of thing you're talking about. Um, with the the way they evaluate farms um um and is the way they evaluate how
whether farm should be preserved or not. the also one of the criteria for our evaluating is the the closeness to other preserve farms. So they want to try to make a um areas of concentrated preserve farms.
And so when you take a farm that is eligible for preservation, uh one of the first things they ask how close you are to other farms. Now, saying that, I've never seen a farm not preserved because it wasn't close to another farm, but you do have project areas and you're
supposed to be within those project areas and those project areas are where you want to concentrate the farms. So, in the past when there wasn't enough money when they would actually do a ranking system and I really was not ever involved with that, but the closeness to other preserve farms was some of the one
of the criterion. Um, but I I never really had experience because every time we had a farm it was that was eligible. We could preserve it. We never had a problem. So, um they but they do seem to care. That's one thing they always ask. How close is
the preserve farms? You know, it just I'm not sure if it has a real functional meaning, you know, buil consequence to tell you the truth. Um any other Yes, Christine. Just wondering
before the open space preservation Senate bill, um if you had a land owner that wasn't interested in having the public access to the land, would land conservies ever go all in and pay for 100% of the value
without green acres if it was a high value? The getting the 50% is tough and we're talking about a lot of money, you know. you know, often we just did one that was over a million dollars. We didn't do it. The land the Nature Conservancy did it.
Um, and they had to come up with that 500,000 and and uh I mean I guess they could. I know they'd like to. Uh, but I you know that I I think they need the 50%. I think they need the 50%.
I mean, what you're saying is could they do what this does on their own, right? previously. Well, not that I know of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and you know, you can you have to ask somebody, you know, find
out way. Let's have find a way to do do uh um public access that isn't going to be a problem for you. Sometimes it ends up being a problem, but uh you know, you can try to do it so it's far away and it's got to make sense to Green Acres. It can't be just, you know, something
the size of this room that you can, you know, it's got to be pretty reasonable. Um, I've never been involved with one of those projects. So, I don't have any firsthand knowledge about that, you know, but we would do them if we if we could, you know, just nobody really
wants to have, you know, especially if it's a small area. They don't want people around. That's why they live out in Old Town, you know, so nobody's bothering them, you know. So, any other comments? It's very nice of you to have me here. I like talking
about this stuff and uh I appreciate your questions and being a fainting interest, you know. I wish you did a really good job of pretending to be interested in this stuff and I I appreciate that. So, anyway, well, best
of luck, you know, best of luck and it's great you're on it's great you're on the environmental commission. That's fantastic. Our town doesn't have one. We used to have one, but we don't have one. And I think it it's important, you know, it's important. Is it not a statuto?
I don't think so. If it is, we don't do it. It's a statuto. Statutory board means what? What does that mean? I don't know. I mean, it's it's an advisory board, you know. You don't uh
you can't spend money without the township council or committee, right? We thought that makes that was the impression that it's required by the state to pro provide recommendations and advising. Interesting. I I don't know.
That's the first I've heard. So, it's very interesting. Yeah. I mean, we had one, but you know that actually my sense was that we have a always had a pretty sensible township committee while I was involved with it. Um, and there
wasn't a lot of pressure you had to put on the governing body to do the right thing. Uh, so, you know, you really didn't have the need. You know that doesn't mean that need won't arise you know but the people there are pretty
sensitive that changed and our government body did not make good environment decision then the envir Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Right. Right. I mean, a lot of this just is getting out and voting for the right people. I mean, I was always counting votes on the township committee. You know, did I have the votes to do this? I have the votes to do that. And but we had really good people. I made a lot of support for
farmland preservation. They really supportive and uh I I uh I was lucky because I let him politics politician and I actually like them because they're
they care. You know, I don't agree with them, but I always felt that they were honorable. small towns. Maybe Sparta is not that way, but small towns are pretty pretty honest. You know, they from my experience, you know, there's not a lot of shenanigans going on. I never saw
even voting for politics, I think I saw 20 years, I think I saw one vote that was just a political vote. You know, uh I remember one guy that I really like and we were all Democrats and this guy was a Republican and the Republican
party said to him, "Whatever they whatever you do, do what they don't do what they want you to do. Whatever you do, stop stop what they want you to do. Don't don't agree with them. Whatever you're going to do." And the guy said, "Every time I make a suggestion, they take it. How can I how can I be against them?" You know, cuz he was a really
smart guy, you know? So he had good ideas and you know what you know so the small town I think you can do that when you know in the bigger towns now you got a lot of money involved with the lawyers you're going to hire and all this kind of stuff and in the small towns it's really not so much the case so that's why I like being in a small town it's
but that can change you know that can change you know yeah it could it can really change I mean you can change the zoning overnight that's why zoning is not a good way to preserve land because you get the wrong people in there and maybe you know somebody has 100 acres they want to develop up and they say, "Well, let's go back to one acres
zoning, you know." Um, in fact, we couldn't get to one acre zoning because of the nitrate dilution issue, but but uh that was we're stuck at about five. We're at 10, but uh the the D the D would not let us go much
less than that. So anyway, I I you're I just want to say that Warren County is quite an inspiration for me because you've done such a fantastic job and you have so many farms and preserved land compared to Sussex County. So I think that Sussex
County still has the opportunity to do that, but I think the time is running short now and that we need to um we need to get our open space plans redone like we did. We have an idea what we can still preserve, you know, and and that
needs to be really a priority. Does does Sparta have an open space uh um open space advisory committee on it for on the municipal level? Do you have a do you have an open space tax?
So, you do have money that you can All right. You should what? I'm sorry. You should in theory then have a committee for that 2%. Well, yeah. How do you Right. That's right. Cuz that's a that's a dedicated tax. You have to use it for whatever was on the uh uh
referendum when it passed, you know, [Laughter] but but on the on the other Republicans here, we're No. What's that? We don't we don't recognize, you know, politicians here.
We're a false. Oh, yeah. I don't know. That's a I think that's great. I think that's fantastic. It only causes problems the other way. That does that workable. It's questionable. It's questionable. Ending works, right? That's that's
that's really good. So, you have your votes are a different time. Is that right? Or something? I don't know. I don't remember. No, same time. Yeah. Well, that's good. That's good. It was so nice to talk to you all and uh thanks
sir. Well, well, I hope it was at the right level. I wasn't sure what level because you probably know a lot of this stuff already. Learned a lot. You did. Good. Good. Well, thank you. Thank you, Emily, for and Robert, thank you so much. Next time I talk, you're coming with me. All
right. Will we be able to put your presentation on the environmental? Yeah. Do whatever you want. I think so, but you're gonna do that anyway, right? Yeah. Yeah. Sure. We could share it around because a lot of people will watch the recording. Yes, we have good turnout with that. So then they could
see the slide. All right. Now, you mentioned the 29% number in the very beginning. Yes. Do you know where Sussex County lies in that? No, that was for the whole state. Yeah, I know. And I don't even know how good that number is. Where?
No, I don't. It's a good question. It's just what you want to know. I'll leave you off. Nice meeting everyone. Thank you. Hope I didn't take too much time. Thank you. This yours?
That's yours. Okay. All right. Is that Yeah. Byebye. Good night everyone. Have a good night. Thank you for coming. So that authorized Okay. Uh that was great. Uh next item on
our agenda under applications, we have planning board number 25-735, uh capital improvement plan for the Alpine School addition. That's I suppose we should go back down
and take a look. Do you all know what's going on with this kind of No. What's going on with that? They're they're doing an addition gym, I believe. Yeah. Twotory edition.
It's basically fits all, isn't it? And then it would be adding a new parking lot, changing some of the outdoor things. The main thing is the wetlands line on one of these maps. So I know that was a big thing that I
don't know if that was a wetland or something. Yeah, wetland buffer. So that's the furthest that they can go and everything else I guess has to be left. So this is it right here.
And what is this? And then this is pretty new or this is pretty excuse parking. Yeah. Yeah. I don't And the bus park used to be in the back where the building was. And I think they were saying if
everything goes well with the referendum, they're hoping two years, two years. So I think it's just like a conditional. I don't think they need approval because we had something like that for another school on the zoning board. Oh
yeah, the charter school. Oh, right. Charter school. Yeah, you're kind of just advisory. Everybody's environment. I've never went to this school. entertained by the construction of this.
Let me know when you guys have an engineering report. application checklist. I don't think we did. These are his That's my big guy. Usually it's the engineers, fire,
police. Maybe we look at it again if we get the Yeah, fine. Yeah, it's not being heard until the 20th. Yeah. I just wanted to give you guys time.
Yeah. Yeah, I can bring it back. Yeah, that's fine. It's good to get our eyes on it. That would be great. Yeah. So, just looking at it, what concerns do we have that it's just going to be very close to the wetlands, the the
percentage of imperous surface? There's a lot You want to take a second? I didn't notice that. No, it's not on. That's I want to see like the the full property if possible. I think I was
Yeah, could be on the first page. difference existing sewage treatment. So I'm curious about that because we're what's changed where are the streets?
So Andover, you come in here up here. So that's 517. This is Andover Spart. This is all wooded area with houses, wooded area here, wooded area around
here. I was curious about this. Just thinking about how much Yeah, there they have on both the top and the bottom. that existing being updated.
That was something that came up. People were saying back in the day they were talking about second story on the existing discuss. I'd be curious. because this is better than
the whole thing in Florida, but there's something that's way too environmentally safety building. There we go. So, this is all shifted back. They're taking
more. So, they're really up against this forested area. I mean, it's nice that there's this buffer, but where's the wetland? So, are they going to have to move the sewage treatment plant out of the
wetland buffer? Are they expanding the size of it or it's probably designed the same way the other one was? has quadruple capacity. Where are the kids going to play now? Are they Well, my kids go around the sub. They're going to go around the subject. I was going to say they're
going to keep them indoors in the new gym the whole time. Never let them out. This is new new playground. Oh, okay. This is new basketball court. I was going to say basketball courts are kind of like right here. They're shifting stuff back.
I guess New spaces 19 52 parking spaces that are going to be new additional 28. What is the what is the infirm on this? Do we have that calculation?
Here's some tables. Too indepth. I'm just curious. could be in the bottom. Good to know. Yeah, I didn't see it. Again, that would usually be with the
engineer. I just didn't want too much of a shock. Want to just review this again. We have Yeah, I would say so. I guess absolutely. Some of my initial questions
are what's happening with the existing sewage treatment? Uh what are the effects on impervious? Um are they adjusting the slope in the back? They're up against
there's Yeah, I think it's kind of a bowl here, but I'm wondering if they're they're modifying the slope at all to because everything's shifting back. So, if the kids are going to play here, I wonder change
rubber boots. This whole section's being widened. It says free traffic. That makes sense. Sorry. backed up. I'm curious where the property line or something. This is the property. Yeah, they're very
That's like a home over here. Maybe could suggest that they do something environmentally friendly like have solar panels or a windmill in the back or something, you know, um to
offset all of this new imperous surface here. We also have that path goes down. There's some nature stuff. So, they've expanded it just where they can
narrow once they're off property. I' I'd be curious. We're talking about easements and is there an opportunity to to talk to some of the property owners
here or who owns that property? Who does? Yeah. Maybe we could preserve it. There's houses here, here, and here. This is This is grassy. It's definitely
definitely a need, but our population isn't growing that much from what I saw. the charts, you know, start growing that rapidly. It's just it's already it's already crowded. It's apparently been grounded
for decades, right? And we had one of the parents person infrastructure support. So we'll table this until the rest of sounds good.
Okay, next is public comment. No one here. Um, reports planning board. We don't really have an We were stuck with affordable housing. That was the emphasis for the last meeting the
affordable housing which passed. So that's a celebration. Y correct. I did tell the planning board, we did tell the planning board that we were having a preservation talk, land preservation talk. So they were informed about that
and it was posted and everything and they seemed glad of that for sure. Um but yeah, oh here's an announcement. We don't have a July. We don't have a July 2nd meeting on the planning board.
Fourth of July. We're bragging. No, we don't have any applications actually that are ready for us to review at that time. That's why we got lucky. Okay. Um I have nothing for the um um master plan
subcommittee. We haven't met since the beginning of the month. Um, so I guess that's it for reports. Unfinished business, sustainable New Jersey certification. I saw that they um unlocked
they unlocked. Yeah, they unlocked it. Um, so now they say that we have 155 points approved. So that would give us bronze certification. and they came back with a couple of actions that they said we can revise um for additional points,
but we're at least at the bronze threshold. So, we just have to get our rest of our stuff in and we can increase our points. But that's I think what we had last time in our certification. So, we're at the same level. We have a couple we can add today's presentation. We could add Jenna's um rain barrel
workshop. So, we do have some outstanding items. Emily's helping with a couple of the tasks that were approved last time that we haven't gotten into the system. So, we're definitely going to have more points, but I think we're going to kind of be in between the
threshold of silver and well, not really at silver, but over the minimum bronze level, kind of in between for now, right? What is what are the points for silver and then what's like what's the hierarchy? I guess it's 150 for bronze,
150 for bronze, and then 350 for silver. So, it's a big jump. It's very big. We're at what right now? Uh 155. That's going to be a hard work going on. There's some big ones though that we still can get. So, we're
definitely going to get a lot closer, but we're not going to hit silver by next month. Yes, there there's some that I was waiting for, too, but I don't know if we're going to make them because of of other issues.
Okay. Speaker presentation schedule. What do we have next? I think Kim said last time it was the deer population presentation. Okay. Was that our is going to be at our July 10th meeting? July 10th. Yes. Okay. Was that
with both the town council and Perfect? Yeah, that's the joint meeting, right? Okay. And do we have anything lined up after that? You know, uh, not that I know of. I don't think so yet. Okay.
Uh, tree ordinance update. So, that since Kim's not here, uh, is still with Corey Stoner with for review and they've been going back and forth with comments. So, Okay. Yeah. Packaging and paper product stewardship
act uh resolution and the municipal food waste resolution and make polluters pay resolution. Um climate super fund act resolution. U Margie's not here so I don't know where I don't know if she did have an update.
I did have an update for the um and I'll just pass this around so you can see um on the New Jersey Climate Super Fund Act, the New Jersey Super Fund Clim um Super Fund Act Municipal Resolution.
And this is an update for June um 2025. And I received this from Jill Aquino who was our speaker. So um there are currently 42 municipalities who have passed this resolution
and 25 including Sparta where it's still in progress. So, um, so that's an update and there's a there's a website you can go to, um, you know, to learn about it. And, um, you'll
see in all of the little little pins, the green ones are the the green ones are the ones that have passed the resolution and the yellow are the ones where it's
in progress. And if you go to the There's a list on the side in Google Maps that lists all the names like West Milford, Monontlair that have all passed this resolution. And then you can see us up here as a yellow in progress. Oh,
great. But I was going to pass it on to Margie. It may help her um you know, present it to the rest of the council. Wonderful. Yes. Yeah. Christine, this is great. Like I would wonder if we can almost try to get this info for like all
the resolutions recommendations we give. I think that gives like our town council a really good visualization of where we're at because sometimes you don't want to be the first but at the same time you don't want to be the last, right? That's not very good either. So um this is pretty eye openening showing
how many people are considering it across the state. Absolutely. So um so well we can look into it and see if um we can um the other The food waste might have something like this. I suspect because I think this map
was generated by supporters or people who are working with the food and water watch folks. So they might have one for the the food waste the two food waste ones. Um so so yeah. So, this is very helpful and I know that if I was on the
town council, I would want to know if anybody else had signed on and who signed on and perhaps I could contact that municipality and speak to to somebody there and and um pick their brain a little bit and get their
process, their thinking process. So, I'll try to find more. Okay. Thanks, Chris. Um, next on the list is student liaison. Did we have anybody? John, did you
graduate? I did. I still have to see if I could find someone to fill in the position, but as of right now, I don't know if I have anyone in mind, but I can reach out to people about it. Okay. Is Is that what you you were going to try to do? That's Yeah, I Yeah. Okay, great.
That's that'd be awesome. Congratulations. Congratulations writing, too. Thank you. And you've been great on the board for sure. You're our second student liaison, so it's definitely going out on the books. Thank you. I've enjoyed being here. Great.
Great having you. Um, annual report. So, Kim tried sending it to me, but the file was too large, so I couldn't open it to add and look at it. So, uh, when she comes back from vacation, she's going to Cool. try to
send it to me again. So, we'll see. Okay, good. Thank you. Hey. Um, any new business? I have nothing. So, I guess that's a collective no.
Um, anything else for the good of the environment and the township? Everyone have a safe and uh healthy Fourth of July. Yeah. Yes. I also know I don't know. Hopefully, I don't know if
the police department or who does like the PSA for fireworks and stuff, but hopefully there's nothing, you know, keep it calm and stuff like that in all those regards because uh you know what can happen with fireworks and especially the dry weather had at certain times.
So, don't lose any fingers. Oh, you know, uh did we mention anything about the trail committee? Our next meeting and everybody's invited. Um did we set the next date? Which what was that? Christine was the
17th of July. That is it the 17th or the 18th? Let me look. I believe it was the the 18th is a Friday. So I think we did the 17th. But um yeah, the trails committee we've been doing very good on the side of um actually finalizing with the the major
trail. We're focusing on kind of punch list items and goals. Um, but I do think we we could advertise a little bit more um some more members, Christine. I think we could have now that we're kind of understanding where we're going with certain projects and stuff, there's a
lot of uh sub projects that are developing and so on. So, if there's anyone that you all know who live in the town who are willing to stop by once a month and kind of just put their insight, provide some comments and and help us out, I think that'd be really wonderful.
Okay. We have a plan. Yeah. Yeah. It's the 17th. 17th at um at six o'clock. That's your next meeting. Mhm. On in July. July. Yeah. Thank you for inviting me, Christie.
Okay. Being nothing else to talk about, uh, can I have a motion for adjournment? I'll make a motion to adjurnn. I'll second the motion to adjurnn. All in favor?