Conservation Commission meeting notes 8/13/2009

The Conservation Commission meets on the second Thursday of every month at 7pm. The most recent meeting was held on August 13th and there was much to discuss.

Due to the success of the spring Letterbox Launch, the Commission decided to have a fall letterbox event to showcase another one of Middletown's beautiful open space and trails properties. The event is tentatively scheduled for October 17th at the Wilcox property - more details to follow.

The Commission also discussed a vote that will be before the Common Council next week that will facilitate the final step in securing the development rights to the beautiful and historic 44 acre Brock Farm property. The Commission discussed steps to take that will help provide the maximum benefit to the City and its Open Space program with the acquisition of this property. This is the first property where development rights will be purchased with a combination of funds from the Open Space Bond Referendum, Department of Environmental Protection grant money, and grant money from the Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The Commission discussed the proposals that were submitted to the City for development of Maromas parcels and it was resolved that the Commission would support proposals that uphold these key principles: 1) maintain public accessibilty to the land and maintain ecological integrity of the land and 2) take into serious and thorough consideration all of the public comments that were obtained during the many public informational sessions that were held prior to the Request for Proposal (RFP) process.