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Town of Bolton Agricultural Commission
Meeting Minutes
Date: 18 March 2008
AGRICULTURAL COMMISSION
663 Main Street
978 779-2297 or 779-3308
A meeting of the Bolton Agricultural Commission was held on 18 March 2008 at Town Hall. The meeting was
called to order at 7:34 pm. In attendance were: Joe, Ken, Sue, Martha.
1. Minutes from prior meeting were approved.
2. Reports:
• Conservation Commission – Martha: attended March 4 meeting which was a public hearing
i. Wetlands changes were reviewed
ii. They plan to consider drafting a management plan for Bowers Springs; this commission could
consider working with them for the benefit of the agricultural community.
iii. The Vinger land will no longer be hayed
iv. There are 2 fields that the town might acquire which could be opportunities to keep open for
agricultural use as they possibly were in the past.
• Board of Health – Sue: waiting for confirmation of meeting date
• Conservation Trust – Rob & Joe: Both attended their last meeting.
i. The Coolidge farm land is available for rental; a well is available; this is an opportunity for our
commission to find a lessee.
• Planning Board – Ken: no update
• Board of Selectmen – Joe: presented our mission and goals at March 13th meeting.
3. Grant Status – state committee reviewing all applications has not yet released the results (due out in early
March); we will wait for the grant results to determine what else we can do on the items we submitted in the
grant.
• Ken agreed to call Mary Jordan to check on the status.
• Sue reported that Mary Greendale spoke with Anna Waclawiczek today who agreed we can go ahead
with plans to use the Ag Tag cow logo on Bolton town entry signs should our grant funding for this be
approved.
4. General business:
• Conflict resolution protocol:
i. Martha wants this commission to discuss how we will deal with conflict resolution when we
are faced with such issues; she proposed we first all take a personal conflict style survey to
see how it would influence our individual approach to the topic.
ii. Action – Joe will ask Cheryl Lekstrom what towns have conflict resolution protocols
iii. Action – Martha will also do some research into this topic relative to Ag Comms
iv. Decision: postpone addressing Martha’s request at this time
• Open Meeting Law:
i. Martha expressed her concern that the grant request involved financial issues but that we
had no meeting for awareness of the grant availability & the process was not transparent.
ii. The regularly-scheduled Ag Comm meetings were both before and after the grant deadline
and the time to submit it was very short once we learned about it; also since the grant
proposal is to obtain funding for specifically designated projects not spend money, the
members who quickly met with a grant writer to pull it together did not violate Open Meeting
Law. We agreed, however, that a transparent process is our goal.
• Meeting Minutes/website: Joe sent Linda Day all meeting minutes to be posted to our website.
i. Action: Joe will create minutes in pdf format in the future.
ii. Action: Joe will get Bolton added to the list of state towns with Ag Comms.
• Generally accepted agricultural practices:
i. Doug Gillespie of the Mass Farm Bureau Federation is working on a practices document to
be completed by the end of summer 2008.
ii. We discussed the commission needs to gain some knowledge in areas we anticipate the
BOH and other boards may ask us for as resources in the future. We discussed including
other resources in these discussion such as Nancy Caisse, other towns, etc.
iii. We discussed the Ag Comm’s role in neighbor issues/complaints and our goal to not be
perceived as acting individually or independently on behalf of the town; we will only provide
consulting to the town on these types of issues only when they are presented to the Ag
Comm from official town boards. We agreed that common sense should prevail.
iv. Decision: our goal is to develop a list of resources we can draw upon when we are asked for
support or information.
• Miscellaneous:
i. Action: Ken will talk to Supt Michael Wood re “buy local” program; will also talk to Dwight
Sipler on Stow Ag Comm.
ii. Action: Sue will call Michael Wood re Mass Ag in the Classroom & contact she met at Ag
Comm training day in December
5. Next meeting will be Tuesday, April 15th.
• Agenda to include review of priorities
The meeting was adjourned at 9:05 pm.
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