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HomeMy WebLinkAboutLand Conservation And Stewardship Board - Minutes - 08/08/2007MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS LAND CONSERVATION & STEWARDSHIP BOARD Regular Meeting 200 W. Mountain, Suite A August 8, 2007 DATE: Wednesday, August 8, 2007 LOCATION: 200 W. Mountain Avenue, Suite A TIME: 6:00 p.m. For Reference: Bill Bertschy - 491-7377 Mayor Doug Hutchinson - 416-2154 John Stokes, Staff Liaison - 221-6263 Board Members Present Bill Bertschy, Raymond Boyd, Greg Eckert, Michelle Grooms, Trudy Haines, Mayor Doug Hutchinson, Vicky McLane, Linda Stanley, Karyl Ting Board Members Excused Dave Theobald Council Liaison Mayor, Doug Hutchinson Staff Present Natural Resources / Natural Areas Department: Geri Kidawski, Mark Sears, John Stokes, Pat Hayward, Meegan Flenniken Guests Dale Adamy — Air Quality Advisory Board member Meegan Flenniken — Larimer County Open Lands The Board introduced themselves to the two new Board members. Public Comments No public comments Agenda Review Bertschy: The Land Transaction item on today's agenda is cancelled and will be on the September agenda. Land Conservation & Stewardship Board August 8, 2007 Page 2 of 13 Review and Approval of Minutes Stanley: I have a couple of small things. On page five, change withhold to hold, and instead of $14,000 it should read 14,000 acres. Then change holding the property to holding the easements. Ting: On the Hermit park donation it should read $90,000 and not $9,000. Grooms: I was both present and excused last month in the minutes. I was excused for the July Board meeting. Stanley moved to approve the minutes as amended. McLane second, and it was unanimously approved by all. Soapstone Natural Area • Stokes: We will be going to the City Council work session with this on August 28, 2007 to get its perspective on the draft document. I'd like to thank Daylan Figgs and Pat Hayward for working so hard on this. We also received help from Meegan Flenniken from the County, and their staff. One of the good things about this project is that we have many partners who have helped us immensely, and we are very please about that. Daylan will present the plan, and talk about how we crafted it. At the end of Daylan's presentation there will have time for discussion. I'm hoping that the Board will be able to give us your perspectives on this plan. The first two sentences in the news paper article from the other day were incorrect. They stated that we will prohibit hunting and camping and this is not true. What the management plan calls for is to potentially allow those activities, but we need time to ease into the property and understand it better. We need to get it up and running and then have a conversation with the Board and the public about potentially providing those other visitor amenities. It's the same approach we adopted at Bobcat Ridge Natural Area and we feel it's the best moving forward at this point. • Haines: Will they print a correction? Stokes: I haven't talked to them about that yet. Today they posted an editorial and again repeated those mistakes. Now that I know that, I will call the news paper and have a discussion with the reporter. The problem is that once something is published it is almost impossible to have a correction printed. We will have another Soapstone Open House on August 16, 2007, and we would love to see you all there, and we will probable correct that article and editorial at that time. Stanley: Did you receive any comments from the public about it? Stokes: I haven't received any, and I don't think our web site received any either. Hayward: I did go in the next day and on the blog under form discussion posted a correction and maybe fifty people looked at it. Land Conservation & Stewardship Board August 8, 2007 Page 3 of 13 • Mayor Doug Hutchison: I received two calls and an email. • Haines: When you asked them to print a correction include a picture of Soapstone Natural area. • Stanley: On the editorial today, they obviously didn't go in and look at the draft plan. • Bertschy: You could send the editor a copy of the draft and highlight the areas that were written incorrectly. • Ting: You can contact the other newspaper Fort Collins NOW. • Mayor Doug Hutchinson: It is unfortunate that most of the time they do write their editorials based on just the reporters article. Daylan gave a PowerPoint presentation on the Soapstone Natural Area Management Plan Draft. • Daylan: I'll talk about the process we've gone through to get to the point we are at, the process we went through ecologically to identify our targets that we shoot for in the Management Plan and the management actions that came out of that. I will also go through the visitor expectations side of how the recreation people. approached us about recreation on the property and how we evaluated those opportunities and the general management plan that came out of that. I'll talk about how all of that has stepped into the management zone approach that we've adopted to use. Management Zones o Define visitor experience ■ Natural surroundings ■ Experience (recreation, viewing, solitude etc.) o Based in part on ■ Resource values • Recreation value o Carrying capacity o Seamless with Red Mountain • Conservation Targets o Conservation statue — large scale systems o Threats — regional or system wide o Management Actions — maintain process • Nested Targets o Species — on site populations o Threats — local o Management Actions — specific activities • Short grass Prairie o Loss to conversion — conserve regionally (scale) o Loss of large blocks — minimize fragmentation o Loss of diversity/management issues — maintain process • Mountain Plover o Declining 1.5% annually — conserve breeding population Land Conservation & Stewardship Board August 8, 2007 Page 4 of 13 o Tied to prairie dog colonies — maintain/expand prairie dogs o Easily disturbed when nesting — close seasonally • Conservation target: Cultural resources Threat/hnpact Management Strategv 1. Damage to Lindenmeier 1. Provide access via north edge of valley and Valley modify grazing practices in area 2. Loss of artifacts from 2. Collect "at risk" artifacts and establish a site s collection, theft and security system/plan vandalism Visitor standpoint o Visitor Use ■ Levels of solitude ■ Environment and view shed • Management presence ■ Recreation type • Level of difficulty Daylan talked about recreational activity, considerations and current status. • Management Zones o Developed o Frontcountry o Backcountry o Primitive Daylan reviewed the following maps with the Board • Soapstone prairie natural area: ecological system map • Soapstone prairie natural area: wildlife map • Soapstone prairie natural area: management zones map • Soapstone prairie natural area: conceptual trails map • Red Mountain Open Space and Soapstone Prairie Natural Areas management zones and conceptual trails map o Visitor Experience • Hiking, bicycling, horseback riding, ADA trails, shelters, guided tours, backcountry camping, hunting, motorized vehicles, dogs, horse/buggy of public roads, rock climbing o Visitor Use ■ Loop trails originating from Red Mountain Open Space and Cheyenne will remain open 7 days/week • Open 4 days/week (Fri — Mon) sunrise to sunset • Open March 2 — October 31 o Visitor Experience/Education — Proposed Education Products ■ Entrance station(s) and road signs • On -site interpretive panels and features ■ Of -site interpretive panels and features • Kiosks with orientation panels, bulletin boards and brochure racks ■ Site -specific brochure • Plant species brochure ■ Animal species checklist Land Conservation & Stewardship Board August 8, 2007 Page 5 of 13 • Plant species brochures ■ FC museum Display — Preserve America (K-12) o Visitor Experience/Education — Education and Interpretive Topics ■ Birds of Soapstone Prairie ■ Other animals of Soapstone Prairie ■ Geology of the Laramie Foothills ■ Ecology of the sandstone cliffs ■ Ecology of the short grass prairie ■ Ecology of the foothills shrub lands community ■ Cultural history of Soapstone Prairie (including the Lindenmeier Archaeological Site, American Indians and homesteading) Questions from Board • McLane: Help me understand how many horse and buggy members there are that live in the area or take their horse and buggy up there. • Figgs: That's something that is difficult to measure. Meegan and I met with a couple of club representatives, and each club has about a 100 to 200 members. • Flenniken: This is about one percent of the equestrian use in the community. • Haines: Regarding backcountry camping, will you use tent pads or are you looking to use more natural grounds? • Figgs: A nice thing about creating a harden surface is that the area is confined, you don't have an expanding camp grounds and it's easy to manage. In our initial conversation we talked about having hardened camp pads with no fires, and no water on site. However, the question is what do we do for restrooms facilities. • Haines: Are all the trails going to be closed from October to March? • Figgs: Right now we have seasonal winter closure for the entire property. Red Mountain will remain open and you will be able to access a trail system from that area. The trail near the Soapstone entrance may remain open so people cab hike the loop. • Grooms: You mentioned that you will only have the area open Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and that seems short to me because not everyone has weekends off. It could be very disappointing if I drove up there and was not aware of that. I can't think of an open space or a public area that is closed on certain days of the week. What is the reasoning behind the closures? • Figgs: There are two basic categories of reason, one is economics, and if the Natural Area were open the other three days it would require another Ranger. This is proposed so it may change, especially if the public asks us to be open seven days a week. The other is an opportunity for the animals to re -distribute without people around. • Stokes: As we thought about the use of this property we think it's likely that we would get ninety-five percent of use during those days of the week. Physically it would make sense to us to focus our economic or financial resources on those days. The other option is that we expand the days of the week that we are open. The other closure we are talking about is the dead winter closure. We don't know Land Conservation & Stewardship Board August 8, 2007 Page 6 of 13 for sure, but we think that we may not get many visitors during the winter months. There are a couple of issues with winter visitation, one is that the weather can be extreme, and we are not planning on plowing the road up there. • Grooms: I think winter closure is understandable from the public's perspective, however, during the summer months they may be disappointed. • Figgs: The other part is that Red Mountain has not proposed a mid week closure, and will be open seven days a week. • McLane: How did the County justify keeping Red Mountain open seven days a week? • Flenniken: In our joint planning for outlooks we tried to look at the full landscape and look at full property management. From Cheyenne there are three trail heads and a huge landscape, and fifty percent will be open all week long. The other part of this is hunting, which will be on the west side of the Red Mountain property. • Stokes: We try to work together to take advantage of both properties. For example Red Mountain will not have camping, but we may on our property. As a staff, we felt that each property does not have to have the same amenities. We can build on each others strengths and capacities. • Stanley: I think it makes more sense to try being open four days a week first. Then make a decision as to whether or not the extra money on staffing will be worth it. • Grooms: I'm still concerned that if Soapstone is closed on certain days, this will upset the public. • Stokes: There are other Open Spaces that have seasonal and daily closures in Latimer County, and users get to know those regulations and are familiar with them. • McLane: Seasonal or daily closures would kill any economic development possibilities. • Haines: I do vote for keeping Soapstone Natural Area open seven days a week. • Bertschy: Lets have Daylan make mental notes about all of this and then we can come back to this and make a recommendation on some of these points. • Figgs: Regarding closures, we plan on having a sign system within the County roads. If you are going to Soapstone, and we are closed for whatever reason, people would be notified before reaching the Natural Area. • Ting: Will people be allowed to drive on the access road? • Figgs: No, there will a public road for people to drive on. • Ting: The developed area on the access road will be for maintenance purposes? • Figgs: This will be the ranch headquarters; we will likely stage some of our maintenance activities at this area as well. • Ting: Will this road be walk able? • Figgs: Right now no. • Grooms: Is there access to this area from I-25 correct? • Figgs: That side is gated and a second gate will be added. It is a private ranch access road. We can use it for ranching and management purposes, but it is not a public access road. Coming from the north, access will be through Cheyenne Open Space once it is open. Land Conservation & Stewardship Board August 8, 2007 Page 7 of 13 • Ting: Will you post the closed trails? • Figgs: Initially we will post which trails are open and which are closed. It will be an education approach and a regulation if they are closed. • Ting: There will be seepage of people on trails that are closed. • Figgs: The concern I have regarding the seepage is protection of the site we are trying to protect. • Bertschy: What is the main access road for Red Mountain? • Flenniken: County road 21. • Bertschy: It looks like seasonal/daily closure is an issue with the Board. Would the Board like to deal with broader issues and then specific issues or would you like to combine them in a recommendation and talk about each point? • Ting: I'd like to ask the Board in principle to support the Soapstone Management Draft Plan. I totally agree that in principle it is a wonderful plan and can be recommended with modifications. The question is can we accept the draft plan and then list concerns? • Stanley: Who adopts the plan? • Stokes: Typically I adopt management plans administratively. What we had planned to do is come to you and get your feedback, we may modify the plan between now and the time we go to Council based on your feedback this evening. After Council we will continue to modify the plan further, and if there is a need to go back to Council we can certainly do that. • Stanley: I agree with Karyl, this is a good plan. A lot of work has gone into it. • Bertschy: The really sticky issues are in the twelve items. I'd like to say that not only do we support the plan, but that we support each of the twelve issues as well. • Haines: I think it's important to talk about a number of these issues because even if we would be supportive it could be a controversial community issue. • Eckert: I would just like to say that I received the document on Saturday and to have all my comments ready and a recommendation by Wednesday evening, I don't think I'm ready personally to make a recommendation this evening. • Stanley: I thought we could provide input up until the closing date. • Stokes: We were hoping to have this done by the end of October or the beginning of November. There is no closing date. • Stanley: I still think it's important to go through the twelve items. • Stokes: This kind of feedback is helpful to us, and it would be nice to say to Council that we discussed certain issues with the Board, who had concerns about some items that we will address. The Board discussed the twelve individual items listed in the presentation under recreational activity, considerations and current status. 1. Trails — Hiking 2. Trail — Leashed dog walking 3. Trails — Mountain biking 4. Trails — horseback riding 5. Trails — equestrian carriage driving 6. Trails — ADA compliancy 7. Picnic areas Land Conservation & Stewardship Board August 8, 2007 Page 8 of 13 8. Wildlife watching 9. Interpretive walks 10. Rock climbing 11. Hunting 12. Backeountry camping There were some concerns voiced on a few of the items such as equestrian carriage driving, wildlife watching, rock climbing and hunting. As a whole, the Board agreed with the way the items are written in the management draft plan with exception to the few concerns. • Bertschy: Lets discuss the seasonal and days of the week closures. • Haines: The seasonal closure issue seems to be less controversial. I don't know what it's like here in the winter, but in a lot of the Low Countries open space, hiking is done in the winter. Are you thinking that with the wind and the weather up there it isn't possible? • Stokes: It depends on the year, this year it wouldn't have been practical. The roads would have been closed because there was a lot of snow drifting across the roads. There are weather issues up there and we think that a low percent of visitors would visit in winter. And also, it's a stressful time of the year for wildlife. That's when we might have four to six hundred pronghorn wintering on the site. There are also elk and deer on the site, so for that combination of reasons it seems reasonable to shut down for a few months in the winter. We are open for discussion on that. • Haines: During July and August when it's at its hottest visitation may be low also. So why an October 31 closure date, and why not at the end of November? • Figgs: We picked the dates because of what we see going on up there. • Bertschy: I think November would be beautiful up there and I would like to see the date moved up in the spring because of possible resource damage by visitors. • Stanley: Do you think that on those three days you are proposing to close, you could have a volunteer trail host man the trails instead of a Ranger because you think there will be lower visitor numbers? • Stokes: We are hoping to increase our volunteer trail host participation so that they can help us manage the property. One of the reasons that Mark and the Rangers started the program was in anticipation of Soapstone Natural Area, and we are looking forward to a strong volunteer program up there. • Haines: I would be in favor of opening Soapstone seven days a week only because people may feel that the Natural Area will be less busy during the week, and you can staff it with volunteers. • Grooms: My concern is public perception. A number of people in Fort Collins have been very vocal regarding the amount of money spent on this property. If we say that we have budget constraints and can't afford to keep a Ranger at Soapstone, I think that those people who had an issue with its purchase will say why did Fort Collins buy this property if we can't afford to run it. If there are closures they need to be very specific and not make it seem like it's a budgetary issue. • Ting: The other thing we may consider regarding closures is breeding times etc. and issue permits so that you have control over who is up there. Then you are not giving that stone -walled perception that it is not suitable at all. Land Conservation & Stewardship Board August 8, 2007 Page 9of13 • Eckert: Can we arrange for a Master Naturalist to take people up there during closed periods? • Figgs: We can change the dates. One thing we are sensitive of is that we are in a critical wintering area with the pronghorn so we'll need to close that area regardless when our seasonal closure is. • Haines: I think coordinating with the County would make sense. • Bertschy: Is there any dispute on special seasonal closures for those sensitive areas? • Haines: I think describing it from a wildlife management standpoint would be best. • Stokes: Fortuitously the part of the property we would close for wildlife is remote and would be less attractive to the average visitor. • Sears: I think we would be challenged to have Soapstone open four days a week just to have it staffed with enough volunteers and paid staff. Volunteers are only willing to volunteer for short periods and we are stretched thin at Bobcat Ridge already and at Gateway. We need more than just a Ranger at Gateway on the weekends, so we are considering hiring seasonal staff to help next year, and we may have the same situation at Soapstone, we may have a Ranger plus seasonal paid trail hosts. • Haines: Tell us why you need anyone out there because in some backcountry areas there are no law enforcement people patrolling. • Sears: That is a good question, but until we live it and feel it we don't know what issues we will be dealing with. One issue we are struggling with right now is will we have people driving off the road. If you drive off the road on the prairie land that track will be there a year from now. We want to establish a strong presence especially the first few years. We may want to relax the four days after we've been open a while. • Bertschy: You just gave the reason; you will have to have staffing seven days a week. If you are going to protect Lindenmeier and the other resources you will need staff there seven days a week. I predict if you stay open four days a week by the end of the next month you'll be open seven days a week. First of all there will be the attraction of a new place, and with all the publicity there will be a lot of visitors. Then there is the issue if there isn't a Ranger up there you may have vandalism or unhappy people because the Natural Area is closed, I think you're asking for trouble. I'm a strong proponent of seven days a week. • Ting: You only have one Ranger to send up there? • Sears: We currently have six Rangers and will add another in 2009 before the opening of Soapstone. Our six Rangers are spread thin with our local and one regional Natural area all ready. We may have four Rangers going up there four days a week, but the more days we add leaves us with less coverage in the City. What I'd like you to be aware of is that when Soapstone is closed you will not get within three miles of the main gate. There will be a locked electric gate three miles from the entrance and then another locked electric gate at the actual entrance. 0 Ting: Are you really planning on pursuing that. My biggest concern is the plundering of signs if it's not monitored. D Stokes: In managing natural and cultural resources, and I'm in favor of being open seven days a week, there are official presence there, and also the visitors play a role in policing the site. We expect visitors to be good stewards of the property, and Land Conservation & Stewardship Board August 8, 2007 Page 10 of 13 they often help us by calling us on their cell phones. In talking about the Lindenmeier site, the archeology community pointed out to us that we will want people to not get into the site, but to actually see it. If someone is away from the designated view point they will be noticed and that will be reported back to us. This can be an argument for having Soapstone open seven days a week, because we will get enforcement presents from our visitors alone. • McLane: I think if you had Martin Shields' cost benefit analysis you'll find the cost of tourism is way less than the source tax dollars generated by the tourists in Fort Collins. I'm not an economist, but I feel that it would more than cover the cost of having a Ranger patrol Soapstone seven days a week. • Grooms: I think it goes back to the public perception. I'm a huge proponent of having Soapstone Natural Area open seven days a week. • Ting: I think Mark hit on something when he said regarding seeing a Ranger there every other day may make the visitors perceive that there is one patrolling daily. People won't be thinking, I can see the Ranger or I can't see the Ranger. • Stanley: What about sharing a Ranger with the County? • Stokes: That is a possibility. Selfishly, one of the reasons we want to be open four days a week is because this is a big responsibility. We probably will have staff there, but it gives us breathing space to conduct management activities. We can staff it seven days a week. If the Board feels strongly that that's important for all the reasons you've articulated, and those are good reasons, then we should re- consider the closure recommendations. • Tings: Perhaps there is a compromise solution to consider. • Stokes: Once we get into the rhythm of the area we will understand when it is important to have more or less staff up there. • Grooms: Fundamentally I agree with what you've said and respect your opinions, but I'm trying to think of the citizens of Fort Collins who are footing the bill. There has been controversy over this and I just don't want to see more controversy over Soapstone being closed three days a week. • Eckert: Daylan mentioned that the wildlife needs consideration. Can you explain that? • Figgs: No matter what we do the wildlife will get pushed around, so having certain days closed to visitation gives the wildlife a chance to redistribute and get back into patterns that are important to them. We try to protect the habitat and probably haven't identified all of them, so we do try to error on the side of caution. • Haines: Is there any other properties that the City or the County has, that on the non -weekend days, we would know what the use is? • Stokes: We did a user survey last year so we do have data from our local natural areas. • Stanley: What about Horsetooth Mountain Park? • Flenniken: The data on Devil's backbone shows that there are 50,000 visitors a year with fifty percent use on Saturday and Sunday and the fifty percent on weekdays. • Haines: I guess a third option is to tell people that the plan is to be open seven days a week, but we are starting with four days because we want to understand the Land Conservation & Stewardship Board August 8, 2007 Page 11 of 13 impact visitors have on wildlife. I'm a proponent of being open seven days a week also. Eckert: I'm a proponent of starting out at four days and then gearing up. Stanley: I think people would understand that. Stokes: We have a Soapstone open house next week, and based on all of the input we will revise the plan accordingly. We will bring this back to the September meeting and talk about any thing else that needs to be discussed. Department of Agriculture Monitoring Well Request • Sears: My memo may be going to Council on August 21, 2007. The memo is regarding a resolution that Council will approve to allow the Department of Agriculture to install several ground water monitoring wells at various local natural areas and parks. At the moment they are looking at three different natural areas and I'm not sure how many park sites. Monitoring wells would be placed in a situation that we would approve, probably close to a trail, road or a parking lot to limit the disturbance and to make them easy to access for installation and monitoring. The purpose of the monitoring wells is to monitor levels of pesticide in the water over a 30 year period. The monitoring lids would be flush with the ground and have a locked lid, which would almost be totally innocuous. The current natural areas sites would be NIX, Redtail and Ross. • Grooms: Is this purely a monitoring site? • Sears: Yes. They are trying to understand the effects of pesticides on urban agricultural setting. • Eckert: These are not many wells, but it will give them an early indicator/ warning. • Haines: Are there several areas that they are looking for and it just happens to be natural areas that were selected? • Sears: They are looking for areas along the drainages, and taking the easy route by coming to the City of Fort Collins instead of a dozen different private land owners. Their goal is to get it all done by the end of October. I feel this is an environmentally good thing to be monitoring. Haines motioned to recommend to Council that they approve the Colorado Department of Agriculture's request to install monitoring wells. Grooms second, and it was unanimously approved. Board Procedures Related to Land Deals Bertschy: Sometimes after a meeting or in email discussions, I have had discussion with Board Members relating to our process of not only land deals but also easement requests, and recommendations on management plans. One common concern is, it seems that items are brought to the Board at the last minute and we are asked to make a decision without a lot of exposure. For instance, no Land Conservation & Stewardship Board August 8, 2007 Page 12 of 13 one has been to the site, since we don't have field trips. I have never served on the Natural Resources Advisory Board, but from my understanding when they were active in these sorts of things there was active involvement by the Board. When individuals make recommendations on management plans or on easement requests there is a feeling that they haven't been heard or that their recommendations weren't incorporated into what is being presented to Council. • Stanley: I would benefit a lot from field trips. I'm not sure if you can do field trips to an area discussed in Executive Session. • Stokes: Any time we travel as a Board it has to be posted. • Bertschy: I've served on two other Boards and I was also a liaison to another Board where they had subcommittees that did field trips. The field trips have to do with a quorum, which could be as many as four members without being posted. • Stokes: It's a point well taken we used to do more field trips. The only thing we ask is when scheduling staff time to go out to sites, the subcommittee or other people on the Board who are interested, please try to come. • Bertschy: That is why I suggested a subcommittee, because it may be easier to schedule with a smaller group. • Stanley: I have talked about this with other members of the Board, and it seems that things have come to us pretty much after they have been done and we as a Board didn't know anything about it. • Stokes: The only thing I might add to that is for instance we may bring to the Board something in June that by December may have warped into something else. We can keep you regularly updated on how that transaction is warping. I'm hoping that sometimes you may leave it up to us to make a judgment call about using your time or not. This is a point well taken and we can do a better job. • Bertschy: If it is something that can be publicly discussed we can note it as a second page on the agenda so we don't have to take up meeting time. • Stanley: Just let us know where you are looking at parcels, it would be nice to see those things before you get in the mist of the negotiations. • Sears: Currently we have about fifty land transactions going on in various stages, which can go from hot to cold in a week. Sometimes they stay cold for maybe a year and then become hot again. We'd be glad to periodically, wholesale and lay out the maps and discuss what is going on. • Bertschy: I think that would give you all ownership from the Board. • Sears: I think we should schedule a generic conservation update on the agenda as soon as we can. • Eckert: I think we should take people out in general, saying that we have a concentration of things now and let's go out and look at them. • Grooms: Is it possible to have a special meeting? • Ting: I think we know what is on the table and we can take the initiative to go out and see it ourselves. It's not something that you have to arrange as an activity. • Eckert: There is definitely added value when staff is there to sort things out. • Grooms: Maybe we can have a special meeting one evening where we all can look at the map and then take the initiative to go out on our own. Land Conservation & Stewardship Board August 8, 2007 Page 13 of 13 • Stokes: I feel a committee would be very helpful for some of these complicated transactions that we are looking at. If you want to form a subcommittee this evening it would be potentially helpful in the short term, because there is at least one project we are working on that it will be important for the Board members to be steeped on that project. If there are any volunteers, I would like to have a field trip within the next two weeks. • Stanley: Would these field trips be during the week? • Stokes: It could be during the week, but we can do weekends if that works for people or an evening. • Bertschy: Do we have any volunteers? Volunteers are Linda Stanley, Raymond Boyd, Trudy Haines, and a floating Board member(s). Elections • Bertschy: Do we have a nomination for Chair? Vicky McLane nominated Bill Bertschy to serve until the end of the term. Karyl Ting second the nomination. It was unanimously approved. • Bertschy: Do we have a nomination for Vice Chair? Michelle Grooms nominated Linda Stanley to serve as Vice Chair. Vicky McLane second. It was unanimously approved. New Business: No new business. Announcements: No announcements. Adjourn The meeting adjourned at 9 p.m. Submitted by Geri Kidawski Administrative Secretary