Open Space Committee

Open Space Committee minutes for March 9. 2021

Present: Rick Gardner, Cary LeBlanc, Susan Downing, Deb Cary, Karen Rossow, Kelton Burbank

Guests: Erica and Josh Brachy

Meeting began at 7:00 p.m.

1. Minutes were approved for the Feb 9 OSC meeting.

1. Earth Month: OSC is co-sponsoring the cleanup along with EAC. Rick has signed us up to help EAC clean the common, and we will select a date in April to do this task.

1. Trails Presentation: Rick has been asked by the Library to do a presentation on trails via Zoom. Scheduled for April 7 at 7.

1. Vision and Action Plan:

Rick led a section-by-section review of the report that has been drafted. There was little discussion and few changes, including:

• We agreed to talk ab out two items not in the ‘goals’ but instead in the body of the report: (1) desire to use new trail development only where there are no useable existing trails, and (2) that our goal is to keep the trail quiet and not actively promote usage outside of town.
• There are several places where we Talk about HIKING. The report should be generalized to talk about all uses, not just hiking.
• We agreed to get rid of the term ’promotion’. What we are shooting for is to communicate and document information about the trails…not as much to promote the use of trails, especially outside of town.
• We agreed to re-align the ‘Action Plan’ by topic rather than by Objective, but to reference the objectives in the individual tasks.
• On the ‘Funding;’ topic: Kelton suggested that we use the same funding arm as the Parks and Recreation Commission has established. We agreed to build this into the report, rather than planning to build a separate funding arm for OSC.

Next steps:

• Rick will update the document and make it available for the larger committee to review.
• Rick will schedule a meeting of the larger group to review the document section by section.
• There is still a bit more work to be completed with the sub-committees:
  • Rick: Landowner committee to meet one more time to discuss specific strategy to work with key landowners.
  • Cary to hold another meeting to nail down the format of the website.
  • Deb is still working with the Signage group on cost options for the signs.
• At the larger group meeting we will discuss how we want to proceed with a public hearing or ‘Trail Summit’.

1. Trail Around Princeton (TAP) progress:

Calamint Hill Conservation Area: The only remaining step is the wetland replication work, which involved a few hours of digging. Will schedule for the late spring.

Goodnow park: Next steps are:

• Tour of the trails for the Gals and the Historical Society/Parks and Rec as interested: Cary will spearhead. Spring.
• Begin trail work and work on signage: Organize this as soon as the tour has been completed.

Worcester West Trails: We have the needed approvals to start work. Will set up a trail day in the late spring to finish the trail work, and also work on blazing and signage.

Red Fox Farm: Rick has touched bases with the Landowners, and we are still on to begin this project. Next step is to finalize a trail route and to begin the Con Comm / DEP / DCR process. There is bridging required so the approval process will take a while to work through. Trail work could begin in late 2021.

Princeton Hikes:

Participation has dropped way off due to COVID-19 restrictions. With the 5-person max for hikes, we are getting only one group, and that group is primarily non-Princeton residents. There are some Princeton residents who are exploring the promoted trails on their own.

We discussed a timeline for restarting the program and will plan to promote it more actively within Princeton. Timeframe is expected to be late April or Early May. We want to see how the COVID variants play out first.

Kelton, Christian Henderson, and Richard Chase are working out plans for bike routes and a ‘Princeton Bikes’ program of some sort.

Meeting Adjourned: at 8:30

Next Meeting: Tuesday April 13 at 7PM

Respectfully submitted,

Rick