Open space planning meeting March 25, 2009 Meeting opened 7:07 by Ted Cady 1. Members were reminded to sign in and indicate whether you'd like the 2002 Open Space Plan maps via email (5 MB) or on disk. Introductions around the table. a. Synopsis of "The Friends of ...." by Pat Lemon 2. Minutes from 3/4/09 accepted as written. 3. Brief update from Teen Sub-committee on open space and recreation - Clare Green (& Karro Frost). Clare called a number of teenagers and their parents in town to form a teen sub-committee: Dillon Limoges (and Leanne Limoges), Christine Duerring is willing to host teen pizza party at her home on a weekend to talk and brainstorm, Taylor Lubrie is interested - he suggests that a trailhead journal near Mt. Grace, or on the MMM trail. Cody Simon suggested a roller-skate park, Emily Stephens is interested maybe, Devon Snell maybe, Amanda Cadwell-Frost maybe. Eben Curtis Maynard maybe. Ross Petrain, Raleigh Hubbard are possibly interested, George Bennett maybe Tom and Isabel Bennett. Jody Larson? Liam McRae is not interested as he has too many other things going on. Kim and Dillon Matelainen? LaFrenier? J.T. Mallet? Todd, David and Tracy Weed also expressed interest. Next step - meet with teens and brainstorm about their interests and what they'd like to see. Ted notes that a number of the goals from the 2002 plan have been met. Input from teens may make this town the way they want it. 4. Review Scope of Services and Timeline by Kimberly Naoke-MacPhee. This committee is compressing a lot of work into a limited time frame, and will need to work on its own some of the time between meetings with Kim. She has prepared a list of items that she would like help with that the committee could do. She suggests including the Heritage Landscape info in Section 4 rather than Section 3. Kim's role - Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG) has the ability to do GIS mapping, writing, helping with public outreach and materials. She has limited time and budget. Let her know if we want her at another meeting however. Kim brought a revised Scope of Work - tweaked Task 3 and the Timeline. Draft report should be done in October, as the funding ends in December. That gives time for the draft to go to the state for approval and revisions made before the funding ends. a. Some updated figures for demographic info. b. Comments on Chapter 3 should be emailed directly to Kimberly. c. Discussion on the Heritage Landscape and problems with it and the quality of work that went into it. Use what is accurate and discard the rest. George Day and Ted Cady discussed this project. Ted thought that the list of historical structures may be worth keeping. Matt Hickler notes it on-line, Pat Lemon thinks it is on WarwickMA website. Brad Compton notes it would be nice to know where some of these historical sites are located, perhaps with a map. Ted suggests that that might be a good project for the Teens to do: if they can drive around and GPS these sites. Kim notes the Town of Whately included scenic resources and view sheds, and that such a map might be interesting. All our cemeteries should be on the map. Charlie Morse listed all the cellar holes on his map and the names of the people who lived there. (Locating these also might be a Teen project) d. This time the committee will need to do more as there isn't a budget for Kimberly to do as much as the FRCOG person did in 2002. e. (Item 6) Kimberly handed info to Ted that she needs from the assessors. We should prioritize land that isn't protected but might be important to protect. Mary Williamson will be on the Assessor mapping sub-committee. Keith Ross has said in the past that he wants to be on committee; also Mandy Hampp is interested (she worked for the assessors in the past; also Ted Cady). Kim suggests that this committee could create different categories beyond what she did. Pat notes that important agricultural sites and soils might be included on the map. Mary notes there is a digitized soil map of Franklin County based on the 1967 maps. (The revised Franklin County soil maps are not yet finished). f. Discussion about land protection - properties owned by the Conservation Commission - there are two recent properties - Hockanum Hill and Beech Gum Swamp - that have permanent protection, and town land that are currently forest but could have a change of use. 5. Community Outreach - discussion of what we want to do. a. Discussed whether to have a public outreach meeting and when it would be - should it be in April, or should we do a survey instead? Articles in the local newsletter? This committee does not have to do a survey, but we do have to have a way for the public to comment. One option is to have cookies and coffee meetings for comment, or go to other groups that are already convened. Kim Naoke-MacPhee notes that putting articles in newsletter or website would be insufficient by themselves. However, organizing public meetings do take time. Meetings should include goals and objectives that were in the 2002 plan and looking at where they are now. We could also send out same survey that the committee sent out in 2001 or totally revamp it. What is the best way to really reach people in town and get them talking about and inputting information? We need to decide which we are going to do. Ted states that in 2001, the committee sent out 253 surveys and got back 28.5%. Lots of questions with fill-in answers that took a long time to tabulate. b. Do we to do a survey? In 2001, the committee sent out surveys to 253 households with 12 pages each; these went to every household in town and there were extras. These surveys were only sent to permanent residents, not summer residents, or boarders. Mark Maynard suggests that we offer them at town meeting in May, and also at the library. Ted notes there is a cost to print them and mail them. George Day suggests also having them at the recycling center - Kim asks if it could go in the newsletter? Ted states that if it is 12 pages long, no. Matt notes that printing is cheap. George suggests that the survey could be pared down and then sent out in the newsletter. The newsletter has a permit and mail is less expensive. Part of the question is the work and expense of doing a questionnaire and the quality of information that we would receive. Matt states that if we don't have a good sense of how the town residents would direct us, that we should get data. Matt Hickler and Patricia Lemon and George Day are interested in participating on the questionnaire subcommittee. Patricia suggests that it would not be difficult to have an OCR change the old survey from a pdf to a word document, and volunteers to do it. c. What about going to groups such as the Women's Guild? Ted suggests that we could go to a meeting and just get a sense of how things have changed since 2002. Least expensive way would be to add a survey to the newsletter as an insert, but Kim thinks that there is a possibility that FRCOG might be able to cover postal costs if we couldn't insert it into the newsletter. Ted pushing the committee to make a decision - Patricia Lemon suggests that we send out the survey and tabulate the results and then have a meeting to discuss the results. Such a meeting would need to be in late May or June. Ted says it is a LOT of work, a HUGE tabulation effort. Matt would do the tabulation as a database, and is volunteering to make the database and print and mail. Matt is not volunteering to go through the questions to pick out which ones to keep and which ones to change, but would like to look at the questions before they go out to be sure that they would be easily tabulated. d. Vote - would you rather have a survey or informal meetings? Surveys should be mailed to everyone in town. Doing a survey will give us a very graphic image of what has changed and what hasn't changed - George Roaf feels it would protect us as we are sending surveys to everyone in town. The disadvantage of a survey is that it is very directed; public meetings might get info from interesting discussions. There should be room on the survey for comments. There has to be a meeting at the end. Pat Neville is interested in helping to organize a public meeting. Brad is willing to help. Royalston and Wendell both had shorter surveys. Ours had room for comments, most surveys don't. The Committee decides to do a survey. The Sub-committee will consist of George Day, Keith Ross, Pat Neville-Anderson, Brad Compton, Patricia Lemon, and Matt Hickler. Kim did the one for Royalston so it is available in electronic version. Matt notes it would great to have the survey go out in next month's newsletter. The survey committee needs to meet soon if we are to have results by the end of May. Kim states it would be ideal to have results by June. Someone requests that we make sure the name of the town is correct on the survey. Brad states we should come to the April 8th meeting with a solid draft. Meeting is set for Monday night 3/30/09 at 7 p.m. at Patricia Lemon's house at 700 Old Winchester Rd. e. Discussion about whether this survey should go to only Warwick Households or to everyone on the mailing list. Ted has a preference that it go only to the permanent residents in town. In 2001, it was mailed only to the Warwick households. We send the newsletter all over the world - if it goes in the newsletter, we include a checkbox asking "do you live in Warwick?" and if they don't we could remove it or not. Committee Consensus is to send to everyone on the newsletter list as these are the people interested in Warwick. Other towns usually send out with newsletters. f. Zoning Task Force Survey 2007 said that people want to maintain the rural character of the town, but if we are doing a full survey, the ZTF survey is not relevant. 6. Scope and format of information needed from Assessors - Kimberly Naoke-MacPhee. Info given to Ted to work with the Assessor subcommittee. 7. Karro had questions and comments regarding Section 3 including Hodge vs. Hedge Brook - Clare asked about the spelling of Sheomet Pond's name - George Day notes that he has a wonderful story about how it got its name from Oscar Olsen: The seven owners of the pond before the state bought it formed a club and, with a play on Shawomut (the Wampanoag name of Warwick, Rhode Island), they took the first letter from each of their last names and spelled Sheomet for the name of the club and the pond. The old clubhouse used to be near the parking area near the beach. 8. Assignments for next meeting - Kimberly will have drafts of Table 3-1 and one in Section 4 - and will include the Heritage Landscape Inventory. Ted recommends that Kimberly Naoke MacPhee work with Jim Toth on Heritage Landscape Inventory. Mary Williamson will have a Q2C update. Survey committee will have update too. Work on reading Section 4, and be done by April 22 meeting. 9. Adjourned at 9:22 p.m.