TranscriptConservation Commission Meeting (07/27/2022)

all right half virtual happening person you have two guests today do you need how many minutes do you need as many as as many as you all want indeed i i can talk about the project in five minutes or so i don't have to yeah and you sent it to your scoot or no okay yeah it might be interesting to hear from rachel or you but if you had scoot out early i'm fine for health reasons i bet rachel lin's looking at a pillow over there fondly i can go second if that's what you're trying to yeah yeah thanks all right so rachel lynn is here she's um did you well robin were you okay uh do you want to update us on what stage the the project is in and kind of what you've been up to i very much do i have one small request before i start talking at you sure could you do a roll call so i can just have like the facebook names even though it's virtual yes so i'm sam um thanks for joining us fight not failing 100

um we have juliet sorry to skip ahead but julia has the other one virtually one of our members nice to meet you and roberta brzezinski hi jess costa robin schneider adam kerr adam pereira from royal river conservation trust hi adam nice to meet you and who wasn't before adam robin snyder hi robin hello sam who is new on the committee since i was last year no i thought it was robin but i think she had just joined when we talked with you so we are looking to fill our seventh seat right now um but we haven't yet oh great yeah well great great great so did i hear that i can't do a screen chair um no you can i can set that up i can awesome yeah okay so the things that i was hoping to cover this evening in about 30 minutes saying no you all want to get on with your agenda as well because to give you an update on where the project is the next steps to kind of revisit the initial conversation which we had about four

months ago i think and just see if any of those ideas are still alive because i don't want to advance old stale ideas that aren't relevant and uh and then answer any questions that that you might have and so i might start where you might think i'd end with questions does anyone have any questions right now about the community science partnership who i am what i'm doing here regardless have a quick question just for clarification as the service provider it's my understanding of course um we filled out a letter of support and sent it to the governor's office and it's my understanding that in august that you are sending the paperwork and everything in now and it's in august that you will find out if you receive the grant

for i hope it's in august they um they initially had dates that said uh july 15th that all of the applications would be due they extended that to august 15 which was a great relax for me because i didn't have gray um yet and so i will be completing a service provider grant application with your letter of support new gloucester and gray as well

and my application is being reviewed by a fellow grant writer and i and i got a few more letters of support that i could tell you about okay thanks any more living breathing questions out there that was a great piece of that was a great piece that i needed to introduce the next step is the application so with the municipalities that are

um approaching the community science partnership with me as a service provider there is um a team of people that have committed and offered a letter of support to help make the conversations that we have in your community relevant informed and visionary and so those people include royal river conservation trust and our bouvier consulting is a new one

i actually work part-time for our buddhier they're economists environmental economists and they help quantify things like the climate impact uh on this housing crisis we just had so climate migration to maine is real and it's causing a huge pressure on our housing supply and the population in maine is growing the the people that are moving to maine now have considerably more money than the people who live in maine now before before migration so there's a displacement occurring and everybody can feel it but not everybody knows that that has some climate change aspects to it so partner a partner by garber vieira is really great at illustrating that as well as being able to provide real-time social vulnerability assessment analysis which isn't one of the fundable things with my grant because the communities in my cluster are not in it designated by another economist as a high social vulnerability community

there's not extra funding for that but that doesn't mean we can't put our eyes on social vulnerability as a real thing especially when housing displacement has been named in this room prior to this conversation as a big issue

we don't have a coastline that is getting chewed up by sea level rise and so the matters of urgency in durham might be very different from what they are in freeport or yarmouth or any of the coastal communities mid coast up and down and those communities are going after the same pool of money so i'm really glad that we're able to get in and try and get a little bit of support to talk about what community resilience really does mean for you in durham um let's see so my application in the so i i told you about our boobier talked about royal river north star planning a new gloucester based comprehensive planning support consultancy is also on board they're going to provide wonderful amount of facilitation capacity for large gatherings should we have them and they're also experts at finding those things in the comprehensive plans that we need to bring forward and make sure that we're really grounding

what we are doing in those plans because those are legally those are legally binding for the municipality and so where we find things that are relevant to community members at large relevant to your committee and relevant to the plan is a really strong priority

so we can look at that with the help of that partner and the other partner that's joined is cumberland county soil and water district they do a tremendous amount of work annually hosting a stormwater conference they know the impacts of our hundred-year floods happening like every couple of years they know how to mitigate some of the erosion problems they understand soil they just have such a great breath on community agriculture for food system security there's just so many cool things that they can offer and programs that they've been doing for many years um but i'm really excited to have them as well so that's the dream team and there's a few other people who didn't provide letters of support but wrote emails to me saying personally they'll be an expert on demand should we want that and that might be a solar energy person uh one of my one of my weak links i guess publication is that i don't have an

expert in biofuels or any of the alternative energy stuff where the state of maine has stated in this program specifically that they want to have emissions reductions and a clean energy advancement first of all i want to prove on the ground in durham that that is actual priority before i go find an expert for that but second if that really is an expertise if that really is something that is lighting people up in durham then durham can be a leader in that in its own right maybe becoming a fuel producer you know there really is sky's the limit when we really engage people about the realities of how we're going to evolve as a future

so the deadline is the 15th i plan to have it a little bit early my request to you about my application is if i can ask it to be read for feedback from someone on your committee or everyone it's up to you that i just need one person but i'm happy to have all eyes on it um and following that information back to me um it will be a great opportunity to understand more of what i am planning to do in the next year with you unfortunately because i did get sick i have not got i did not prepare to share that today as much as i wanted to but i do have a visual for you um

i wanted to share [Music] let's see there it is can i screen share i can all right here is this sharing nope not yet no that's just my toggle screen okay sorry bearing it says you're sharing but we don't see anything okay i want to shut my screen my video off

but um and there's no video shared there's no video share also i'm frozen on my end whatever we're gonna see because i definitely have a number of questions based on your remarks thus far you do yes all right please tell me so starting with the economics group the environmental economists and the reference to the social impact do they have any capacity to address household economics in terms of you know as they say kitchen table issues pocketbook issues we're looking at utility bills and that question is related to the topic of clean energy and emissions reduction energy efficiency is often referred to as the first fuel so the cleanest fuel is the fuel that you don't use so how does that relate to you know a project that would be considered emissions reductions

great question and they did cut out a little bit but i i love where you're going with it i've shut off my video so that i don't reuse anymore and i stopped sharing my screen because that's um have you ever heard of window dressers that was an alternative project that i

do have a comment about because i spoke to um sam i don't know if it you know this this could be all interwoven yeah so we met with megan last month um from window dressers and we're really keen on the project and we're we're going to discuss further today anyways but we really liked the idea of a project like that for getting involved in the community and kind of an issue that like you said pocket bug issue yes so i love all of those types of practical solutions they they meet the community's need they frame things in a way that bridges social and um you know climate um divides uh political divides and they really get to the perks and so i love the idea of coordinating window dressers and i think it definitely qualifies as resilience and what we'll do is we will introduce this concept at every chance we get um what you just presented as a question i hope you keep presenting it at every turn because more and more people are

going to go oh yeah i love that makes a lot of sense to me um there is no reason why we need to um jump ahead and you know get the town a whole ev truck unit where the public works you know that stuff is a little bit off the ground sort of like 10 000 feet away from where people are really at yes so some people in other towns might be there and if your public works department is there i've misspoken and i would apologize but i love this idea i love the demand side of any clean energy conversation happening before the design and build side the engineering piece never seems to say well how much energy do we really need to be using because if we're going to design a green energy infrastructure at any scale without talking about how much we really need the lights on like really how much do we need the lights out if we're going to continue with this sort of blind um you know consumption of energy

um then we're not going to design a truly green system i don't think we have a conservative approach to that and i have a passion for mobilizing on the community scale having you know window dressers help these inserts for for windows can have such an incredible positive impact and then we can do more we can go insulating water heaters you know we can take an inventory door by door of who has a need who has an insufficient windows here's another oh yeah i'll list that one more really exciting uh practical thing in permaculture with regard to clean energy is on the demand side is um does the home have a windbreak or is it exposed to that blasting winter wind right 24 7. right those that can save a household five grand to have a tree line protecting it from the wind yeah so things like that make a lot of sense to me julia

me forever to find the music no i was just raising my hands you asked you know who who needs window dressers hi julietas i have a question oh go ahead julia did you have more i was support for the window dressing great my question was and i don't know whether we have to really get into it now but just how window dressers could tie in because i think the normal model is the homeowner would pay for the inserts but then there's always the homeowners that can't afford it and that i can see um you know grant monies going towards the people that can't afford the inserts is do you think that would be the tie-in other i mean yeah i guess i'm just trying to well it might be too knitting 30 of the project needs to be for low income and they provide the support for that they provide the materials we we have to assemble the volunteers yeah we've got to find the location we've got to you know do the work of it but they would provide

the materials for that 30 percent that were low income they have window dressers without a charge okay so then that's i'm just thinking like you know grant money where's the money but yeah okay but if we had more grant money could that be applied to something like this and we could cover 100 of the cost yeah energy audits we will scour that list of fundable projects without a catch and see if we can yeah but we will also find i again i can tell you that winter dressers is funded by at least the new england grassroots environment fund and they offer all kinds of little grants um some of your projects that the state of maine will fund they may fund especially if you want to program that ties i said it even with kobe

have like a rolling window dressers program happening in durham because you can only do so much now and you only have so much outreach but you know you estimate that you only reach half of the people um but you want to keep doing it again maybe you can find additional funds maybe even a local philanthropist who would invest in something like that okay

the soil conservation group you emphasize storm water um as an angle that they have a lot of expertise in but i'm assuming also drought and you know excessive heat i mean i'm thinking about our agricultural sector and the fact that the world is changing and they're really struggling you know when you go to the farmers markets and things like that so it's happening pretty fast as we've all been experiencing and so getting that type of specialized soil science expertise it'd be a longer term thing but i imagine we're talking about shifting crops maybe even types of livestock you know yeah this this is where my background of permaculture and soil science comes in as well so cumberland county soil and water district is wonderful but from a from a climate activist standpoint from my vantage point there's still problematic in the sense that they define agricultural soil as tillable oh and the soil science in the past decade

has advanced so far that no-till is by far superior drought conditions especially yeah and perennial agriculture is another option for not only diversifying crops or business resilience of a farm but also just putting those foods in the landscape for the local community harvest for the food resilience people there's a small counter culture of people the permaculture people the regenerative agriculture people who are banking these perennial foods in the landscape and nursing those crops so that they can be um planted in more places in the landscape for a time when there is scarcity right we're already dealing with the escalating prices of food right so average people struggling i mean we're just getting hit on so many fronts i'm just thinking about the excessive heat and people that don't have air conditioning so yeah yeah yeah so yes these are the things that i really love that you're bringing up i'm

i'm so happy to be in the room with you robin because these are the things that i want to ground this work in and why i stepped in when gp cog was willing to step in uh i wanted to get in ahead of them and say you know what you guys are way too experts your authorities on development and development is part of the problem so far so let's just talk about the wisdom that's in the community get the practical projects underway and see what we can get funded and then if if the community identifies a gp cog local expert um great but dude on the soil side do you know dr elaine ingham have you heard of her no she kind of brought in the sustainability world she brought biodiversity to the forefront as a matter of climate resilience and she specifically does it with soil science [Music] she's a professor she was a professor of oregon um soil scientists her whole life

academia because they're funded by monsanto and some of her students research was making them angry and she talked about it openly on an international stage without their permission so she got part but she is teaching um globally the the new soil science and last year this year actually in february i was certified as a um biologic biological what's it called i'm so coded right now um soil food web

lab technician so i can test soil to see if the microbiome of that soil is in a good place for its resilience for crop nutrient uptake and yield and things like that but my friends in that soil food web network are consultants in their own right and soil and they haven't had the time to give a letter of support but i guarantee that they're in support in fact i am i included them on a project i did in gray to restore basically a brownfield into a food forest that's wonderful and i um we got it funded that they would we got a community and economic development grant block grant and we hired the soil consultant to come in and reset the microbiome of the soil and in in two years all of the vegetation is thriving if we hadn't done that it wouldn't happen it would look like every other hell strip tree planting where half the trees die in two years because there's no biology to support them but so i'm excited that that model is

proximal you know it's the neighboring town from you yeah but literally every erosion problem can be solved with soil management um every erosion problem is a pattern for knowing how we can increase fertility in the landscape i can go on and geek out about soil all day at the end of this whole cycle though i i will refrain from being a soil geek for the project and and let the experts do it and listen but at the end of it i am really looking for the people who get really excited about soil because that's where i'm going after all this yeah that's great and that would be the best place i think to do it at the end because i think if it were it at the beginning there would be people that would turn their heads and that would be that but by the end it'll be better i got a remaining time warning of seven minutes on my screen yes yeah i can start a new one after or or you can use that as your your

countdown okay so i'm gonna try to screen share one more time sure it missed five minutes um let's see stopping video sharing screen let's see if it'll do it yes oh sweet i wouldn't say it's super nice it's small it's not legible okay well it's small we're just all looking at a laptop so it's a it's not full screen on this screen yeah too bad we don't have it projected on the oh yeah yeah he tried he tried oh yeah yeah we'll get there this is the one i wanted to show you the timeline

join the partnership and hopefully write your first climate action grant proposal to the state of maine end i hope we have a kick off an actual public event we say this is what we're up to we invite people to think about it i have an event um description i can give you in a moment about the kickoff but we'll give kind of a we'll give this macro agenda or the big picture view of what we're up to in the first month after we've uh the service provider grant has been awarded the second through fourth month i really want to connect around the intention looking using the state of maine's self-assessment and then i'm going to add an addendum to the self-assessment that has more on the soil that has more on the food system and sort of a localist point of view a permaculture point of view just to see what people might select for interest then i want to go into a stage of network engagement so workshops

interviews and research now the roles of people doing different things at that time is pretty diverse that's sort of the bow tie of the whole project and the most intense so the workshops will be hopefully yourselves and the public at large and hopefully some of select board members might be interested the subject matter experts will be there as they are needed the interviews will be something that i may be doing you may be doing we might not do it all it depends on it depends on a few of the initial conversations that we have the research piece sometimes some of that will be a subject matter expert some of that will be you know poking around to see what's out there what's available we're starting to get some hunches and we want to get some more data and we want to share that data with other people so that's what the research bit is about and hopefully all of that funnels towards prioritization

[Music] and really knowing what the motivation here is in the community because we all will have some motivation in our own hearts in our own backyards and then we'll start connecting what other people in our constellation are interested in the same things and respecting differences will actually lead to a greater impact for all of us because everybody can pursue their interest instead of everybody doing everything we can kind of diversify

resolution forward one of the qualifications of joining the community resilience partnership is to bring an ordinance forward at the council level at the board level and so we want we have a draft of that ordinance provided by this program we want to make that our own we want that language to speak the people's voices in durham we don't want to be coming top down from the state of maine i just have a lot of concern for generating these things from the grassroots and not um not imposing them from the top down so um that will happen hopefully in the seven to nine month time frame and then from month 10 to 12 we will be um honing in on what funding we're going for what projects we're going to be doing and that will be another implementation round follow hopefully

um but my idea as a research as a action researcher as a permaculture designer is that the the process is the resilience work we're not going to petition to the state of maine can you please bestow resilience upon our community we are a resilient community we're going to we're going to embody that and express that to the state and hopefully they'll fund some of our work but we will also be open to other funding sources uh i'm happy to bring those forward as i as i recognize them

screen because this screen is a busy screen but it's basically my process and it's on my website 207permaculture.com how are you all feeling do you have any more questions might get cut off during right in the middle of it was whether it was worthwhile reaching out to some people

beforehand at all and just mentioning that we're going to be having a project like i was thinking well i reached out to the principal of the kindergarten through a uh school a little bit just to see what kind of teams they might have or something at the school they do have a green team he gave me a couple of names but with the fire chief like get an idea of like what who holds what kind of list about people that might be socially vulnerable you know people living in trailers near flood zones food insecure living alone self-employed you know their livelihood low income elderly these are great questions for that research phase that's what i was thinking i'm doing it before before i get awarded to help you this is great yeah yeah yeah that's what i was thinking okay i feel really strongly about working with the youth and um

more more workshops than is required for this grant in order to get the kids in in leadership roles because they are going to inherit these communities so yeah we want to make sure we're listening yep i have a quick question um i might get cut off but when what what timeline are we in right now do we when do we yep there we go

you know ads for discount presume like get on board now discounts like i don't think on you should send it to the town yeah they have they had all our meetings right for a year and a half question looks like she's she there here she comes question juliet i knew that would happen seamless seamless actually i'll step back a little bit so it's the idea to have a couple of projects including maybe the window dressing dresser sorry um and a couple others to throw out to the community to get an idea of what folks are thinking of what we're thinking here or are we picking one and going forward with that let's i would say both and yep so i'm in the business of transforming communities to make them more resilient and so the reason it's both and is that you are you have agency as a group you're already ahead of the conversation you're going to be hosting dialogue with the community but not in a way that says we're doing this

what do you think um it's more like and we want to know where the community is at with regard to resilience and answer questions that we can't answer so we're not going to assume we know where the community wants to go yet and we're not going to only do things that we as a group think are the best things to do and the reason is that that's the leadership dynamic that created the problems that we have in the world today sort of a paternalistic approach and so i really like the kind of leadership that's dialogue based that is high participation high engagement and a lot of people would say i am naive about that like that's not how things get done but by golly i've seen a lot of things get done that way and i like it so when when do we need that plan bye

ten mo ten months from september oh next year this time grant generally and then we're going to figure out how to use the money if we get it is that yes so there's two grants the state provides um a grant for service providers that's me service providers are serving communities to help them get on board so they can apply for their own funding for their projects but there's a priming of the of the community in the process where you get to prioritize you get to analyze and assess your community and see where it's at um i think it's iterative so for instance as soon as we're out of the gates with funding and i don't think you could do this now you don't need to wait for me but looking at that self-assessment document as a community and finding out what you don't know and what you do know as a group and that will get to where roberta was saying should i go talk to public safety director should i talk to the fire chief

about this and that and that will help to shape out some of those questions that we need answers to and by the time we have a kickoff and we're we're inviting the community to look at that self-assessment document and to have a bit of a design conversation a bit of a charette if you will about what resilience looks like in the now and in the future then they have the benefit of our foretelling our iteration as a smaller group we talked about this this is what questions we'd like to answer and then people will start joining you they'll start getting on board yeah i want to know the answer to that question keep me informed um and that's hopefully how it will work um the research piece is sort of sort of important for digging deeper when i look at that self-assessment in the community that i know best which is gray i answered no to every single question on that resilient survey the self-assessment survey

but that wasn't the most exciting thing about it that the exciting thing about it was that i really didn't know what some of the drill down questions would be to answer those things and that's where it gets good is when you start connecting people in the community who do know how to answer those questions and then we find experts who can get even more specific about durham on those questions

yes yes so for a while we've got a while to be able to plan this thing that you know we don't need a plan by september of this year that's right so it's that's good you could even you could even get to the end of this time with me and decide that what you really really need is a resiliency plan and then you could get a grant that would fund you to to uh get one done

have a you know a cookie cutter way to do it the funds start when can we start applying for the funds as early as uh it's always a month after service providers so if you were eligible right now you could apply for funds in september okay september and march i believe those are the two okay and are they going to run out do they run out it's a great question the gubernatorial race will probably jeopardize this this fund it depends it depends if climate denial is a voter issue

[Laughter] shall we leave that where that is it just got really like gloomy oh well you know resilience is deeper i mean this is the first time a state has funded the state this is the first time in my uh 20 years working in community resilience and permaculture that a state has provided funding this is the first time the federal government has provided funding and sorry to say the biden administration they weren't at the forefront of climate action so you know this money um is not the point and i would hate i would hate to have all the non-profit and policy walks you know getting in there and getting all this money like it's not about the money it's about the community resilience so we don't want to lose sight of that there's a lot like in this in the same vein as robin was asking about clean energy the energy you don't spend is the cleanest energy i love that the community resilience that we

don't uh that we have already is the best community resilience that we're gonna have in the future but if we are thinking that we need outside experts and leaders to get there i might be yeah okay that's fair energy yeah i'm sorry no no i can't believe you you powered through that okay well thanks for um thank you thank you thank you my pleasure i'm gonna stay on because i'm so curious what adam's gonna talk about sure okay and hey feel better thank you

brief or brief so i'm from royal river conservation trust i'm also here on behalf of maine farmland trust and we are working with on a conservation project with dave and chris colson a new leaf farm at the corner of davis road and chesley hill road their property is 80 or so acres and we're working with maine farmland trust to place a 74 acre or so conservation easement on their land which would include their woods in their fields their fields are about 25 acres and their woods are about 44 acres and they've got their house and some farm infrastructure making up the rest of the acreage maine farmland trust is leading the project in the sense that they're doing all the pre-acquisition work so all the according to the survey the project management working with the colsons for the most part on the actual terms of the conservation easement and then royal river conservation trust will be the holder of the conservation

easement which just means that it's our responsibility to monitor and enforce the easement in making sure that the terms are being met maine farmland trust has 50 of the funds to purchase the conservation easement you can either purchase a conservation easement or have it donated um in this instance we're purchasing the conservation easement from the coulsons they've already donated 23 or 24 or 25 acres something like that of chesley meadows preserve to roy river conservation trust so they've already been more than generous and so we'll be purchasing the conservation easement from them so we're basically paying for the appraised development value of the property since we'll be taking that development value off of um or we'll be restricting the property so it can't be developed um and so maine farmland trust has 50 of the money and the other 50 of the money that we need would come from land for maine's future

um i might have talked about it last time i was in here um but essentially the state has 40 million dollars um they've already spent a good amount of it but this was the first year um and this is the funding round for working farms in forests so that's why the colson project is being submitted right now and so land for maine's future would pay for the other 50 percent but what they really prioritize when they're looking at applications is municipal support or the demonstration of municipal support last night i gave my uh kind of overview of the project to the select board they were unanimous in their support of the project um and thought that it was a good thing for the community um rachel would probably be pretty happy if she got out there and tested the soil i think but it's a it's a it's a really special project um sam probably knows much more of the far about the farm than i do um i kind of know more of the contextual

factors as opposed to the on the ground factors but the farm itself dave and chris have been farming it for they farmed it commercially for 30 years and they've been there for 40 years it's really important to them that the next people who own that land farm it um and so in their future plans in the near future call it five to ten years um they'll be looking for uh the next farmers to take over that land um and it's set up very well for success i think for the next farmers who take it over um and and and say i'm correct me if i'm wrong but they really want the farm to be farmed commercially um and provide local food to the communities that's what they did for 30 years um and it's been from what i have heard and can tell really positive impact to the community um and so the coulsons want to continue to see that happen on the land and so along with the conservation he's meant sometimes just

from an educational standpoint so sometimes we'll place a conservation easement on land um and it could be farmed but someone will purchase it and then not farm it um and just kind of have their estate so to speak in their private space so part of this transaction would include an option to purchase at agricultural value so if maine farmland trust can sort of evaluate who would be the next purchaser and to make sure that they would be then farming the land and bringing food the community instead of just having a little privacy buffer in a field which of course has its own intrinsic benefits as well but so that's the idea it's next to the coulson's project is next to 340 acres of conserved land around runaround pond so we're continuing to build out a large intact block of conserved land we have another project that we'll complete in the next zero to three years on runaround pond where we'll protect on

the three quarters of a mile stream frontage and 70 or so acres so positive things are happening in that area of durham which is really important because when you zoom out and look at greater portland or you can classify it in any which way we've classified 20 towns as greater portland i know we're next to lewiston auburn and all that but when you look at greater portland you look at where are the largest blocks of unfragmented habitat and undeveloped land that concentration is right in durham or part of it is in durham um and so the coulson's project is adding to um what's conserving land within that block of really valuable land for climate resilience as species migrate and as we need to put food on the table locally and not ship tomatoes ship tomatoes from california

i think i mean i could keep talking about this project for a while um but i'm happy to answer any questions and in the packet i sent out i have just a draft motion you can edit it in any way you see fit where you can choose not to vote on it or vote on it um benno lmf would would appreciate seeing both the select board and the conservation commissions supporting the project because i can't speak for them but i feel like they remember when they see

commissions within towns supporting conservation projects um and it can make help feed further conservation projects so that resolution would be signed by uh the select board and the cons like it would be just the one resolution those two entities together yeah should we work with them for the language good question the way i did it yesterday it's the exact same resolution except i changed the names on it um so it would be two resolutions it would come from you okay separately than the select board okay all right so we don't have to like negotiate stuff yeah yeah yeah i know i read it i can't remember the details but i mean i didn't see any problems with them did everybody read it and get to read the full thing but i will do you have a timeline just get that to you asa um as soon as possible is always good also you all are busy um i know that the plan for means future board presentation i think is on

september 27th so you have a large window in order to get that letter and i think i said it sent it in a pdf so i could send it in a word document just to make things easier we just meet once a month so i wonder if it would be a good idea to um have a vote that we are going to [Music] write a supporting resolution to at least you know take that home with you that we're going to support a resolution to

the farm and environment um under easement and just start with that should we you want to vote on it yeah all those in favor of supporting this easement and we have to second that's the motion second i second okay all in favor how many were there yeah i'm sure that's on there okay yes there we go great work on that yeah and what rachel was talking about makes me think of another semi-related topic which is that we have no board members in durham um so in terms of understanding community needs and what types of projects we should be looking for and what landowners we should be speaking with to advance certain interests of the town what the community needs we do our best and we talk with folks in town but it always helps to have someone on our board advocating for the town expressing the town's needs so the select board they're gonna have to put out they're not thinking is it kind of not capped

it's it's not we don't have a capped board so we could we could add is that something we could put in our rotating announcement that you know we're helping to raise awareness about the opportunity does that make sense for us to do that i don't know how do you feel about it if we just put it now you just mean every person like or should we just have private conversations with people that we think would be a good idea joe's here

we're supporting um we're going to have a resolution to support you must have read about the colson farm yeah yeah to support it we haven't we don't have the wordage yet but we yeah it's like one of those spots in town so yeah there's landing turtles associated with the river there yeah yeah i don't know if anyone's seen any of them recently yeah i i don't know if it's been spotted recently but i know it's been recorded but without mike

yeah i don't know it's just with the land use further downstream mowing as close as they do to the water source it's not sure like what makes it up there but either way it's really great because it's a lot of good co-occurrence on our beginning with habitat model and it's just awesome so this was just saying oh sorry that they could use a durham representative on their board and we were just talking before you walked in about how do we help them find that person i think private conversations would be more serious yeah yeah yeah because then you have to people that might not be suitable will come forward and then you gotta what's the talk what's the time commitment um so our board has meetings once per month um typically board members then serve on a committee as well [Music] [Laughter]

i don't believe so we've had folks be on select boards planning boards all sorts of boards in different towns i don't know i think it would be more up to your policies than our policies i don't think our policies were further than that

so i'd be inclined to volunteer if it wasn't a problem with our policy you know no i'm thinking if it's just one so if it's just two means once a month he's got the expertise he's got a ton of not everybody has i'd be useless not my area [Music] but yeah that thought popped in my head so i thought i would share that yeah and it works i need to continue doing more work in durham i mean we've done some work around run around like you said it's a hot spot it's a critical area yeah i mean i read your letter and it's just i'm sorry yeah no no um i read your letter and it's just like it's like we've been those are the things we've been talking about just in terms of like development pressure and the fact that you know it's got a lot of we've got a lot of un interrupted habitat we have you know a fairly robust like um uh zoning for most towns in the area and you know it might even be getting changing

so like being able to get conservation on the landscape and we know that our town has indicated that they really pro conservation but also pro farming so like partnering with the maine farmland trust and being able to be like we know that in perpetuity there's going to be a lot of conserved land and farmland it just meets really well with like the people of durham's desires for what durham wants to look like and like 2018 was our comprehensive plan so we know that this these data are not that old in terms of what people are looking for so it's really good that your town is uh where one tool in the toolkit seems like your town is leveraging all the different

right we're going to be having more engagement than we have had in the coming months so we'll be meeting people that might fit that profile beautiful map behind there there's all the green yeah so there it is yeah the colson should be able to find they in turn they had interns for i think they were one of the first farms to really use interns for an organic farm so they did it for years and years and years so i you know be nice if some of the people they mentored

out there that you know yeah especially i find that with a lot of like farmers especially when because they definitely see the decreasing in farm land and the decreasing in people staying in farmland and then in terms of like the price of land it's like you know you're trying to change that farm from one generation to the next right you've got someone saying how's you know six hundred thousand dollars sound it's really you know enticing so being able to say like hey let's get a forever you know like uh farm sort of designation on here i think that a lot of farmers are like good it keeps the farming tradition because everyone forgets about farms until they want food and then it's like oh what happened to all the farms around here we used to have a great farmer's market it's like yeah you know and then the same way just like i also think of it as like great for like resiliency for climate change

initiatives 100 it's like especially not just in like the physical like flood plain type area but as the changing climate is putting pressure on at risk wildlife species being able to help highlight areas for conservation so yeah their fields can be preserved i'm always worried about our grassland first yeah the the person down the road for me they mowed on july 14th and i saw nesting

bobblings there but it rained so they had to stop mowing so they delayed another week on it was they had mowed the exterior so they left this like doughnut hole in the middle and i was like i'm almost certain there's a bubbling nest in there and then they didn't move for the week after so actually at week two and three of july they might be able to fledge so i was like yeah we might have had bubblings crop this year in durham so july should be okay yeah but but that's another thing we're talking about changing you know agricultural landscapes like the hay fields are definitely starting to

is changing and it's earlier or something some landowners who would be interested in delay mowing but when you have droughts like we've had the last two summers and then it comes down to like do i call my dairy cattle or do i get rid of the bobble legs habitat for a lot of farmers has a pretty easy decision to make and it's like you can't really like ask them like no please kill your livelihood for that you know so it's tough but either way i'm sure you all have talked about most of the stuff i don't need to carry the conversation along well thank you adam for coming to durham two nights in a row i had a quick other question i thought i saw a large chunk of land that was for sale off a runaround pond road that was like a lot of acreage so i is it the sign where i saw that it's not 50 acres it's 5.05 oh that threw me off because i was like is that yeah i saw this

i'm fairly certain it's only five acres projects come from community members telling us about things like that um and because it's a lot different when you're talking to your neighbor than when i'm talking to your neighbor so yeah yeah i know that i just checked today on land for sale in durham and the largest parcel is 148 acres and it's on plumber mill road um it is actually got like a nice strip of resource protection going through the entrance of it and uh it's held by a development company but it's like they want like 1.3 million dollars for it but the side north of the road [Music] i think that it hasn't sold and inside north of the road i think would be hard because it's like a smaller parcel there but there's so much wetland there that you could not do a cluster subdivision because you wouldn't have the enough upland for the open space so rachel and your economist data i don't know it's just an interesting sentence

i'm i'm sure land trust i'm sure maine land trust could provide some interesting data on the cost of protecting land uh since 2020 and how land prices have doubled and um i was making it more difficult to i mean the effects of yeah wow that's interesting

that is really interesting data to actually put in with the migration data thank you for that well any questions for adam nope i said sorry i know i these have probably been asked already the nature of the easement is it like similar to like forever wild like it's like no it's in perpetuity okay okay opportunity um now for the next you know 100 200 years i don't really receive that many issues with that yeah but 500 years old yeah yeah i think there's going to be legislation that probably deals with that issue at a further date yeah yeah and with your the the conservation go ahead so i was gonna say right now in order to you'd have to if you wanted to extinguish say that conservation easement it would have to go to the attorney general of maine and so it's pretty difficult yeah now with that conservation easement does it allow is it more of like a completely hands-off preservation model or does it

allow for some sort of active management if they wanted to you know improve wildlife habitat and stuff like that yeah um so i know some are different yeah yeah dave and chris coulson want the land to be farms so it would continue to be farmed uh up until 2014 it was commercially fired and now on a much smaller scale but so they want that to continue happening and then of course there are all the benefits that come along i mean i assume that they will find farmers that care for that land and that traditional will pass down on that farm um there may be some terms in the easement that helped promote that and then of course um that's just that's just the 24 acres of fields and there's the woods which would possibly have a voice management plan that would have to be required for it um and so i kind of lost what your exact question is it will be yeah the idea is for it to be farmed but of course there are all

the other benefits that yeah that's well managed provide for habitat yeah because my question is just you know i was not that it changes my opinion on whether we should support it or not because i'm totally in favor but just i know that for like some folks i know that have the easement on their woodlot they are allowed to you know go in and say we'd like to do some habitat management which would include forestry and others are their easement is just like purely a preservation model no touch so i just wasn't sure what the this one was the preservation no touch is pretty rare yeah um typically it'll be more of the route of if it's a woodlot you need a forest management plan yeah and some easements to strengthen that will say it needs to be approved by the holder of the conservation easement so yeah yeah because i know some people have got done that before you know so the holder was like yeah no that's fine because

like there was a farmer who was like he was doing some you know firewood and a little bit of maple syrup you know stuff so doing a little management so i was just kind of curious since 1983 i think yeah that's is it obviously stipulation that continue to be certified i'm not sure i don't know is that possible i would put a language

could just ask people yeah yeah other feel free to either okay thanks for coming thank you for coming thank you good to see you and we'll get that letter out yeah you'll send us the word yes yeah perfect awesome thank you let's go thank you

the zoo yeah juliet's gonna lose out on this so bye-bye thanks rachel take care you know i sent you an email already it's cool that we have microphones now we go yeah i can make a third meeting for you if you want or you could kind of so i would love it yeah if we're going to continue to eat we only have six minutes left yep i'll make another one yeah okay sorry thanks i'll start one now how about that so it's ready to go so is this like live stream then nor oh okay rachel had covets yeah oh obama live streamed this is the audio is live stream though i wasn't sure yeah i wasn't sure if we'd get that stuff set up now or whatnot it's all cool um the other thing on the list was the um foia requirements and kind of the discussion around that which was an interesting response which they're saying that up and we should talk through that because i have more information so i don't share what you you want to say a little bit about

the background yeah what's this i don't even know i know what foia is but yeah workshop to see if the town had access to outlook tools and he basically shut it down and said and foia we're not able to have collaboration tools like that like you can't edit a document outside of a meeting time which

yeah i was very disturbed because you know we're talking about some complex work here whether it's the resiliency stuff the window dressers there's volunteers there's tasks there's donations of lunch there's space or reservations and you know in my job a lot of complex project management and we use all the google tools and i work with the federal government we have faka and foia required yeah i was going to say i work for cigarettes i was just like i don't really understand so i contacted and had a dialogue back and forth several iterations with the ombuds person for the state of maine asking her about this and the white person on buds person for the f-o-a-a oh yeah yeah access yes um julia and she wouldn't even start a new one a straight answer she just wouldn't give me a straight answer i just said you know are you saying that if these are tasks related to a non-profit volunteer project that

doesn't require you know local funds that we can't use these tools and she just wouldn't answer so then i said well let me try this a different way so i contacted window dressers and i said you're doing these projects with all of these communities over all of these years she's like yep and i said and they also have to organize the volunteers and the tasks and all that and she's like yep and i'm like are there any foa and she was just like what yeah and i said well would you do me a favor and reach out to some of the communities that you're actively working with and i said just the question i want to ask them is how are they managing the tasks and the volunteers and the assignments and tracking progress how are they doing that and the answer came back oh they're using outlook tools they're using google tools they're using this software yeah it's like okay just checking robin did you see this because

i sent that around the main municipal read through all of the stuff that they have online and i couldn't understand why we were being told that it wasn't appropriate yeah i'm a little confused because like i know like with the planning board if they request that the applicant submits an amendment to their documentation or like they can like like george can interact with them in between planning board meetings because it'd be like no you know you got to get do this and that so yeah so it's like it's impossible rpa work with the window dressers project i i told him i responded and said we're just looking to kind of keep track of things contactless to do right i mean it's not so i would think well first off we can't vote on any we don't make any policies anyway so it's not like we're well we are a group of volunteers that are trying to do something for the benefit of the townspeople so i was just because

yeah our email accounts extend to the documents within outlook that we're using yeah we're using so in my experience yeah it's just is like what i have working in government it's just like people can foia our emails so it's like it's right it's like where you get into troubles like you can't delete emails you have to remain things so it's like if you're sharing information via email that's publicly available it's like i mean every one of us knows that our emails are publicly incited i might have please i might have a few technical things sure um we're all ears because i know how we're currently set up so right now with what we have for your emails they are what is called exchange online plan one it's not 365. okay right 365 includes

your powerpoint excel and word right right right there's an associated cost with that yes that i don't have a budget for right yeah i went for that roughly 18 per person per month so you can see how that can add up um if you push for it maybe the select board can consider it i'm for it um but right now all committees yeah i mean i'm very shocked that we don't have the ability in for durham to operate with cloud-based resources because it's like it is 2022. yeah you know a sense of how many town emails there are like who would require there are currently 56 email licenses that we pay for um not all of them would need access not all of them would um and we can dull it out to people that either request it or need it um especially the people that are on committees who would be doing the most collaboration um or what about even just like one per committee member having it you know i feel like but then you can't

collaborate yeah yeah way because some computers here have it but it's a computer-based it's just that license right right right we would have it be account based so yeah accounts would have it yeah we should press the select board or yeah i can bring it up with them next time i just

tools that you really do need i mean to 100 percent operate in the 21st century um especially when you're dealing with partner organizations and it's just like you know you can't have a meeting be like oh let's go have a meeting next week to talk about who is willing to sign up for a volunteer sheet right because some of that stuff is so dynamic it's like yes all the time i don't make a commitment and then i have something pack out with something else so i can go online and say cool there's an opening sign up you know yeah or even just you know without you having to go to the eureka to see how many people are there you're like oh i know i'm filtered right absolutely joe covid we need someone to fill in you know that sort of stuff for us to have the worksheet of the different organizations because i already reached out to shiloh i've got a couple of other organizations that said they would be

willing to volunteer people but i want to share that information with you right dynamic you guys see that and then you're able to say hey so and so said they're going to have volunteers are you guys interested and it kind of starts creating momentum but it has to be yeah cloud-based resources are so useful too just for like then we can know oh eureka is taken today because it's worked out you know yeah that would be really nice what a concept yeah is this something that you all have talked about with planning ward at all um how do you mean like sharing of documents between members yeah like the broad idea of that yes we have from back in the day when i first started it's always been a very gray topic like what can we do and what can't we do um i like the idea of office or outlook 365 um but i feel like it's almost doing the same thing i mean we could share a document too right it would you know

they don't need to have 365 to share document we can still do that i think it's the process of doing that that's the question of sharing outside of open eating which is what kevin was saying in the show yeah yeah right so that idea is but yeah in my mind these this would be more transparent because like right now it's like if robin has a sign up sheet and so she's emailing it

it's like would the foe be okay if they were like that everyone in the town of durham can access this to check to see the crazy volunteer list yeah definitely no but like you said i mean we're on outlook it has those tools and that should all be accessible under the freedom of information if there was a request there it is i 100 understand like the whole concept of like you know especially with like select board like they shouldn't be having deep policy conversations via you know uh email or whatever because they're voting on changing policies and stuff like that so i can understand saying like that needs to happen in the public sphere but stuff like hey can you volunteer on thursday i feel like weekends for window dressers so i don't know yeah i don't know if there's like some training that talks about like things that are foyable versus aren't or things that we're concerned about because it's like

you know yeah yeah that's my point like i don't know what you can and can't do right i'm not clear on all of that and maybe it would be a good idea does anyone know anyone else in another town nearby that we could like i do what do you guys do right like an active town tops oh yeah that's like robin robin already did that and they're all they're all using these like who would you talk to like a young woman megan the windows dressers well it's not fcc but nonprofit programs right i i know i know some people that aren't suck board of nearby towns i could ask them that would be great more information is yeah you know the more the better and you don't think robin that the main municipal association is having a whole workshop at the end of august on understanding how do you just think it's overkill just like i said because some of us already work for government and we're already obligated through foia you know to

provide public access and there's like task work on projects and then there's policy work and it's different right and so that's where everyone is doing in terms of like no one's ever talked to us about retention schedule of emails or anything like that which is normally there's a policy if you're concerned about foia it's like you know you can't delete emails pertaining to this for five years i mean at our department it's like this paper record has to be kept for x amount of years and this version has to be kept for this you know so it's like that's where you get these everyone has a filing cabinet with dusty things from the 80s but it was explained yeah but it's like explained to staff this is your expectation it's like i was given the email address and no one was like hey here's what needs to happen it was just one day when i shared opinion like i think that this is what we should talk about at meaning they're like

whoa you can't do that i was like i'm just dictating what i'm going to say at meaning like today it's like i was confused because i couldn't make the meeting but i said i support the letter does that mean that you know i just violated freedom of information act because but it's like but no because if someone called up durham and said can you give me joe's emails hey roberta what were you saying is there a meeting at the end of the month regarding this yeah maine municipal association has a workshop understanding the freedom of access act workshop webinar wednesday august 31st uh that's getting her pen out registration 132 yeah i'll send it i've sent it around are you the new i.t person oh cool nice to meet you devin i've seen you like it's like the guy from wizard of oz in the back

i'll send it around attorneys and staff from the mma legal services department jack somebody town manager town of dover foxcroft who should attend municipal staffs public access officers and elected and appointed officials overview including open meeting requirements why forward requests are filed and how to handle them properly um that does seem like overkill for what we need to know does your board meetings need to be

yeah yeah yes yes i will do that you know we're doing on behalf of the planning board and like my question is like there might like like because you know we have like we started our subcommittee for you know the events that we need to do for rp does that mean like any time jess and i want to talk about adding a comma or removing a period on one of the questions we have to go to eureka and meet and it's like if it's it's just like that makes things a lot more difficult um you know well i was just saying that it was impossible to try and organize these complex projects if we can't have collaborative tools right it's a huge effort it's like so roberta if you want to send that out i will at least try to to attend the beginning part of it the open evening yeah i think a lot of this is education right is educating yes and it might be overkill for us but i mean you know there might be chat you might be

able to ask questions yeah but my question is like if the george is pulling together the letter for the mailer for the resource protection adjustments and we have told him like we want to work on a draft does that mean that like if you know roberto wants to work on draft she has to be typing it in front of us at this meeting roberta has typed the following statements okay i suggest we put in a comma here and it's like because it's just like some of this stuff it's like we could be done that letter if we were allowed to have a shared document or even like even if we were just doing track changes and saving it so it was always shared it's like versus like sitting here and being like okay everyone bring their version of the letter next week and we're gonna yeah hold them in front of the camera and then do it like sans and i i do 100 understand the transparency

that is exactly what we did when we all met we did that drafting and the editing all in-house yeah and i i i understand was it once a month though but the other thing is more often but i feel like the comp plan is a much different that's a policy that's a huge problem and where i understand that the the difference i'm looking for is a comp plan is a much different document than who can work thursday at night [Laughter] like so like and like so i understand like some of this stuff needs to be talked about it's like but like when jo like george can send us the letter and we can send back here's what we think over email we don't have to have george come here and then hand him a paper copy and like you know when we had comments on the presentation and stuff suggesting wording and stuff we responded with like i think we should use some more neutral terms here and things like that via email like

but again like that's not changing the policy that's talking about presenting something the policy change is the public hearing where they announced the warrants and then the vote on it at the public meeting so it's like you know where it's like i understand with like the select board where like they can spend money that is the town's money and they can hire or fire and that sort of stuff so i understand that needing to be public um but like dude like is it okay for the select board to email each other and say hey can we move tomorrow's meeting to 6 30 because i have a car appointment like is that something that's like you're going to meet to talk about the meeting you know it's like i don't know who can who can we contact within the town who knows i think that would be town manager normally who would know that you mean like regarding all of this yeah like i could ask i honestly i think we all need to be educated i really feel

like that like that's what i'm talking about seminar i think we're all going to get a different version of what needs to happen so i think we'll just need to hear it from this lawyer whoever's presenting you know and then i really do yeah even to get i think it's helpful just to have the um vocabulary and everything you know to attend that just to have the vocabulary know what questions to ask how to you know word them because i got a skedaddle i got house guests

oh boy hands full okay meeting a journalist i have not had dinner either and i'm so hungry i'm not quitting yet