Conservation Commission Meeting Minutes
February 1, 2016
Present were members: Margaret Graciano, Tom Seidel, Pam Smillie, Dave Matesky, and Mike Dufilho.
Hank Benesh filmed the meeting.
The minutes from January 4, 2016 were unanimously approved as amended.
Tom received a letter stating that the wetlands permit for the property on Frances Ave. was approved by the state.
Larry and Margaret's terms are up in April and Larry does not intend to renew. Margaret likely will because she has a few more tigers to slay. Therefore, we are in need of one member. Dave suggested Bill Terry might be interested and Mike Dufilho said that Lucy Koup and Rachel Frierman may be interested. We need to tell them to submit letters of intent to the selectmen.
Easements
Tom asked if everyone has finished their SPNHF easement monitoring? Pam and Dave still need to finish theirs.
Prospect Farm
Tom asked if we want to work on our signs tonight or arrange alternate meeting times to work on the kiosk planning. We decided to come prepared to the March meeting.
Margaret and Mike will prepare a rough draft of the Prospect Farm plans for the March meeting. They will try to get in touch with George Howard to co-plan.
Margaret really wants to investigate the possibility of placing Prospect Farm into a conservation easement. We located the original testament of will from Edith Baker that designates Prospect Farm as a “Public Park.” We believe that this leaves a lot of room for interpretation and could be taken in an undesirable direction. Mike is going to email Linda Comeau at USVLT to ask her opinion on whether or not Prospect Farm is a good candidate for easement designation. We will revisit the issue in March.
Jackson Falls
Same deal as Prospect Farm. The Jackson Falls committee will prepare drafts and ideas to present at our March meeting. We debated what style of kiosk would be most effective. Mike prefers a flat slanted sign as opposed to a roofed A-frame kiosk. Much care must be taken to preserve the view shed.
We agreed to order seedlings from the NH State Forest Nursery. For $115.00, we will get 10 alternate leaf dogwood, 10 American hazelnut, 10 fragrant sumac, 10 common elderberry, 10 mountain ash, 10 European high bush cranberry, and 25 red osier dogwood. In addition to planting, we will continue spreading the wood chips and explore the option of building a fence. A fence. Hooray!
A motion was made to adjourn the meeting at 6:35pm.
Huzzah! See you next month!
Respectfully submitted,
Margaret Graciano
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