Open Space Committee

Open Space Committee - Trail Vision Team Meeting              January 26, 2021

Present: Rick Gardner, Deb Cary, Susan Downing, Tom Trigg, Dominik Kulakoski, Kelton Burbank, Jaye Fitzgerald

Meeting began at 7:05 pm on Goto Meeting.

Rick reviewed the overall status and plan for the project. Go forward steps are:

Complete sub-committee work and summarize results and action steps

Write up a vision document showing the overall vision and objectives and summary of other aspects of the trail program.

Review the map of trails and develop a list of action items associated with trail development

Hold a public hearing

Brief Sub-Committee Reports:

Survey: Survey has been completed and we summarized the results. Rick will send out a more in-depth summary to the committee soon. Key points:

Small number of returns. Dominik suggested that this may be partially because of technical problems with the survey. Only 122 responses collected by end of December.

Returns seemed clearly to be mostly from people who like to hike!! Not a lot of returns from bikers or horse riders.

Greatest improvement needs were for better documentation and signage. Also rating highly were better connections between areas of town and more trails in general.

There were a LOT of suggestions for trail connections. This varied by neighborhood. High on the list of places to connect to were: East Princeton to the rest of town, connections to the School, to the Business Center, and to the center of town.

There were also a small but significant number of responses stating that we have enough trails in town, and worried that we were doing too much destruction of wild habitats. The message seems to be that we need to be sensitive to this issue, and to balance trails vs wildness.

Signage: Deb Cary reviewed the committee recommendations for signage at each of the public hiking areas in Princeton.

This team will be working to nail down specific format recommendations, to cost out the project, and to figure out how to fund it.

We also need to review proposal with Princeton Land Trust and perhaps other owners.

Communication/Promotion: Cary was not able to make the meeting, Rick reported that we are working on ways to reorganize and simplify the website. Cary is working to set up a next meeting.

Landowner: Landowner approach will depend on the priorities that we give to the trail segments on the map. We agreed (later in the meeting) that we should have a clearer picture of the trail, to-date status, etc before meeting with landowners. So a next meeting of this group may not happen for another month or so.

Map Review: Rick showed a slide of his view of a connecting/backbone trail running around Princeton. This circling trail is based on using EXISTING trails (mostly) and connections that seem doable. There are around 60 segments including short road walks in places.

Rick split the backbone into five major segments and we talked through the trails on each of the major segments. In each segment there are some

Susan suggested that there may be a way to use the DCR land west of Route 31 (an area that we have not explored).

Consensus from the meeting was that we should use this model and figure out what the priorities are for working on specific segments. In a small number of cases we need to build trail. For many we need to talk to Landowners, and for some landowner situations we will then need to build or fix trails.

We also need to think about how biking and horse riding can best factor into this design. But that can be done in parallel.

We should continue to work on the individual segments. Complete pieces and promote them as we go. An evolutionary model.

Tom suggested that we keep track of statistics: how much of the trail is built? How much CAN be walked as is?

We will need a SIMPLIFIED view of the map for presentation purposes.

Rick will work on completing the documentation of the segments, and a way to measure completeness, and will send out to the team. We can then begin working on priorities.

Development of Vision Document: Rick suggested that it would be useful to write up a document that summarizes the overall vision and objectives of the project, along with several other elements such as trail organization, parking plan, funding plan, promotion plan, documentation/communication, etc.

We could pull a lot of ideas around these topics from the ‘vision’ discussions from the last meeting.

Cary Leblanc is working on pulling out a vision. Rick will discuss with Cary how best to deal with the other aspects of the report.

We will develop a strawman for this document and send around for review.

This needs to be concise and aimed at explaining the vision to Princeton residents. We may want to tailor this for other groups, like DCR and Mass Audubon, as needed when we hold landowner meetings.

Next meeting will be scheduled when two things have occurred:

Revised map with opportunity to prioritize segments

Draft of the vision statement.

We also have a small number of issues that are worthy of a larger group discussion. Rick will make a list and inform people prior to the next meeting.

Meeting adjourned at 8:30

Respectfully submitted, Rick Gardner