 Hello, this is Alex Farr. This is the land use subcommittee of the Amherst Conservation Commission for our April 2 meeting. And we have an agenda where we're going to start by going over our site schedules, our site visit schedule. Then we're going to focus on our agriculture policy and then we'll talk about next agenda topics. So we have with us Bruce Steadman and Michelle Lab and Eric Jacques. And I think Dave Zomak is probably going to join us. So the first item of business is to go over our site visits. And I looked at my calendar, Erin, I don't see any. That's correct. So we've been through our site visits that had been previously scheduled. And I can certainly schedule another round. So we've been so far to Zala in North Amherst. We've been to Haskins Meadow. We've been to Belchartown Road, excuse me. Fort River Farm on Belchartown Road. And we've been to Amethyst Brook. They're in terms of existing agriculture, the only other potential sites that we were talking about visiting were potentially Wentworth Farm. And then we had talked about potentially visiting Elf Meadow. So those were the only other two sites and I can send a doodle poll around for possible times. Michelle, would you mind sending me your availability? What might work for you first? And then I can plug that into the doodle poll since your schedule might be tough. Yeah, so is this generally for the next month or two or what's the scope that we would like to see? Why don't you do like the next six weeks and we're only trying to pin down two additional site visits? Bruce? Yeah. So our effort is to try to wrap up this agricultural policy. Will the site visits actually help us do anything more with this document than we've already done or we're already getting close to the end of? And if so, do we really need to do them? Or is it also the case that we simply should have in our minds a picture of all the conservation land that this subcommittee is focusing on and therefore maybe we should go to other conservation sites rather than agricultural ones? That's my question. I think those are all great points. So I think Bruce, the priority was to visit agricultural sites because we were working on that policy document and if Michelle will allow, maybe we could tighten up the schedule to just the next couple of weeks. Okay. I don't know if her schedule will allow that, but it makes sense. Yeah, I don't know when spring break is, Erin, but is that the 16th? I'll be out of town then. So next week would be available and then after that mid-April week. Yeah, the 15th and the 19th is the spring break. So will you be gone, Michelle, for our next subcommittee meeting? I will be here next, oh, yes, I guess so. Yeah, I mean, there's a chance I can join, but just probably count me out. Well, if you're in Disneyland, I don't wanna interrupt that. I'm gonna have a scheduling difficulty too. So... All right. What is it, April 12th is the next one? 16th. 16th, oh yes. And the May 7th, May 21st, June 4th. Now that I'm a phishing surveyor, the schedule calls for times that either go from eight to one or go from one to six. But all of those are problematic for this meeting because I have to drive there and get there by one or I won't, if it's over at one, I missed the whole thing. So I hate to thought I'm trying to have a different time, but those are gonna, all of the next four meetings are gonna be problematic. Is it every day of the week as well, or is it two days? It is a given schedule by the Fish and Wildlife Service as to when this gets done. I have very little latitude. Are we talking about, sorry, I was a minute or two later. Are we talking about site visits here? Yeah. Well, and I got to talk about this meeting. Yeah, so we were talking about site visits, but now we have moved into an awkwardness with the timing of this meeting because Bruce is now gainfully employed, right? So if it's helpful, I could be available at like nine or eight thirty for this. And we could make it temporary or whatever, but I have flexibility. Yeah, can you meet before your folks on the West Coast get up? Yeah, yeah. So why don't we leave it to Aaron to, unless we can just identify a time now and then move on, sounds like Aaron, Michelle, this meeting is set up pretty much to accommodate your schedule. So why don't you tell us what you can do and the rest of us can do it, we'll join you. Okay, so I guess just to summarize, if it's possible to have like a short term change in time, that would be ideal for me. And then roll back to noon when Bruce is available again. That would work. Okay. So we're talking nine o'clock on Wednesday. Nine o'clock on Wednesday. Tuesday or Wednesday? Tuesday. My Tuesday mornings are not good. They're just full all the time. And so I don't have a nine o'clock on Tuesday. If we want to move it to Wednesday, I could do that. I can do Wednesday. Aaron, can you do Wednesday? As long as it's not a concom day, that would be fine for me. Yeah, well, these are set up to be opposite of the concom weeks, right? Yeah, Wednesday works for me, Wednesday mornings. So that doesn't solve our issue on the 16th. Do we want to move the meeting on the 16th to the 30th and schedule it for 9 a.m. that morning? I could meet at nine on the 16th maybe. Does that work for you, Bruce? I don't know, it's too complicated. Let's just do what Michelle, let's move it to what Michelle can do and I'll try to come through as many of them as I can. Okay. That's all that we have for that. Alex, can I just say one thing about site visits? There's a part of me that feels like, I don't know, it feels like we should just keep moving on the policy. I'm not sure how much more site visits are going to inform the policy in my mind. I don't know, I read through this this morning and I was like, do we need to get out to see lots more sites to inform this policy? That's just my thought this morning. Just real quickly, I think we wanted to see as many conservation areas as we could. You know them by heart, we don't. Yeah, I'm just thinking for the sake of time and getting this to the commission. I mean, there's 75 parcels, there's a lot to see out there and I just concerned about time. We want to see agricultural land first. So how about if we, I favor the site visits and I just show of hands between my other commissioners here on how you feel about site visits, not just agricultural land. Well, yeah, I want to see other places that are not agriculture. My preference is if we're going to do a site visit that we have like a specific intent for it. So, you know, if we're at a place where we're evaluating sites for agriculture then seeing the other ones with Dave or Erin is useful. But if we're just sort of visiting then I could probably just check it out on my own time. Yeah, I think like just. So that's a yes. It's a yes and no. I mean, I agree with Bruce and Dave that maybe we don't need the site visits to finish up the policy. So I agree with that because it's not gonna further inform us, is it? But are we talking about the agricultural section of the whole policy or the whole policy itself? Okay, if we're talking about the whole policy I think that site visits are useful but as far as agriculture section I don't think that we need to go visit more sites to finish up that section unless Dave thinks that we are missing something at those other two split work. And I'd like to know, I'm gonna move this conversation but if we're not gonna visit more ag sites I would like to know where they are and I'll go see on myself. So I'd like to close this conversation and because we allocated only 10 minutes for it we've already gone over that. So that eats into Bruce's 40 minutes to talk about agriculture. So with you will bear with me, we'll move along. Bruce sent out a version this morning that incorporates my comments and he's done a very nice job of putting the policy matters at the top and the procedures and requirements below that. So they're not all mixed up. So I'm gonna turn this over to Bruce and Bruce, we're now at 13 past so I'm sorry we ate up some of your time. It's okay, we'll see what we can do. And we're gonna give 40 minutes to this but I wanna reserve time at the end to talk about future agenda items. Okay. And we will close at one. Okay. So this is draft 10 is the one you should have. There are yellow sections that are new. Some of those are held over from the previous version nine that were new in that one too. Alex did a pretty careful read of this this morning. So what I'd like to try to do is just agree like we did last time, agree to the things that are easy to agree to and see what's left to then swing back and see if we can solve the more complicated one. Okay. So I'd like to ask if Aaron can bring share screens and bring up whatever document Bruce wants. And I'd like to give some guidelines for discussion just to help move this along if we could say things once and minimize examples unless somebody asks for one. That might help us move along through the document. We're hoping that we're near the end of this particular one. And Bruce has told me we probably need one more meeting to talk about this, but I'm going to bring to the next meeting all the items that I think are wrapped up so that we can talk about what goes to the commission. Thank you, Bruce. Hi, Aaron, can you make it slightly larger? Yes. There we go. So Alex raised a question about the goal and the goals and scenes, et cetera, that first comment there. I'll deal with that later. He asked that we use the words allow instead of a courage and suitable instead of offered. Any concerns about that as the very first thing that someone would read? No concerns. I had a comment for it if we're taking comments. Yeah. I was just wondering if we should add something like buy-in for the community or something like that just to some broad sweeping goals. Type the language you'd like in an email and I'll take it in. Okay. Okay, so Alex also added this thing about the licenses, really explaining why it's a license, which seemed good and any concerns about leaving that the way it is. And number one, on your policies. It's fine. Number two, I think this is a revised sentence, but in any case, I wanted you to read it. Well, it's been reformatted. Yeah. Okay. Then we, I put these in bullets because the sentences were getting kind of long. I think one of us has added climate change, mission-oriented alternative uses, opportunities gained on foregone as aspects that the commission would consider. Yeah, the only thing I would add under other factors, and maybe this is site history, but there is a significant amount of Amherst Conservation Land that has been purchased using state and federal grants. That's lower. That's down, that's their job, Dave. I'm on number two section. Page one, number two, the three points there. Yeah, where is the grant? It's down below. It's on the next page. Oh, next page, sorry. Okay, so those are okay. Alex added Bs in number four. That's to be consistent because they're mentioned down below. Okay. It's an easy one. Okay, now in number six is approval. And we have some comments about that. Trying to see who's- I, my comment, I didn't, Bruce, I didn't know what you were trying to say here. Well, keep in mind, it wasn't necessarily me. It could have come from something from five years ago, but fair enough, I take responsibility for it. Well, I- Anyway, we wanna address the thing that Alex has raised in A-H-6, in number six, approval. So if you, you should read this and let's try to figure out what to do with it. Yeah, if you look at my comment, it begins with a blue-hided statement, blue highlighted statement. I think if Aaron, you would click on the arrow, it would come up. And you might be able to handle that one by yourself, Bruce, but it says, may be granted that the commission sold discretion. I didn't know if we were flaunting our authority or what, I mean, I would expect us to grant something by our own authority or by our discretion. I don't know what this approval wants to say and can it be said differently? So I think you could probably do that one by yourself. Okay, I'll take care of it. Unless somebody just wants to jump out and- Well, it may be that it's also a question of sort of the broader, what is the commission enabled and entitled to do under the town's bylaws and things. I'll check in with Dave and Aaron about that one. I mean, it's not inaccurate. It's just written quite politely, yeah. I'll work on it. Number seven. If you're citing our authority, why not just do that and put it right at the top? Okay. Number seven. Did we talk about number five? No, I didn't. Go ahead and go back to it. Yeah, I gotta think about number five. I'm not 100% sure commercial activities. I know direct sales are not allowed on land, conservation land purchase with mass DCS, but I'm not sure it precludes commercial activities. And then later on, I see Alex, was it Alex saying this broad sweeping statement? Are we saying no commercial? Yeah, I didn't know we were going as far as say no commercial activities. Yeah, that's new language, isn't it? That's new. We worked on this two or three meetings, two or three sessions ago. So I may have gotten it wrong. Let's fix it. So I think what was previously restricted was direct sales, so meaning that they couldn't set up, say like a farm stand on the land and have people coming to purchase directly at the site, but we have had agricultural producers who were commercially selling the material, you know, the produce or whatever that they were growing. And they would all want to do that, presumably. Well, unless they consume it themselves, but Aaron, can you bring up my comment on that last sentence? Number five. Yeah, right there. Yeah, I mean, the Fort River Farm is, I mean, the reason we bought it was with the potential that commercial farming could be done there. So yeah, I think this one's a little, in my mind, a little too tight. I think it excludes a lot of agricultural activities. Maybe we just drop out the whole sentence, Bruce. The last sentence in general. Or you could just take out commercial activities and say direct sale of farm goods and just in front of commercial, say direct commercial or something like that to make it clear that we're just talking about direct sales. Yeah, I like that. What's wrong? If they're going to sell it, why put limits on how they can sell it? If they're going to cart it off site and sell it, what's the difference between that and having a pick your own strawberry field? That's what we're saying. All land protected with self-help funds, you cannot do direct sales. We've had over 40 self-help grants, so my guess is we'll be very hard-pressed to find a parcel that doesn't have self-help funding in it so that we can't do direct sales on conservation land. That's... Okay, so Dave, the kicker then is on conservation land. Correct. So a direct sale on conservation land. Right. I understand that. I was having trouble with direct sale. Yeah, so they can take it off site and sell it wherever they want. Yeah, so just to be clear, the last sentence is not really true. Yeah, let's just drop it out. Okay. Yep. All right. We can tighten up number five and really focus, as Erin said, on direct sales. Got it. And not allowing direct sales on the land. Okay. Dave, you want to suggest some language offline? No, I got it. I'll work on it. We can... When we read it one last time, we'll have it. Number seven. So this is mostly new or highly revised. Can you click on the Alex? This assumes that, Erin. Sorry, could you say that again, Bruce? I missed it. Click on Alex's This Assumes That, so we can read it. Oh, okay. Well, this assumes that. There we go. It's a question to Dave. Wait, I'm sorry. Number seven is issue Alex's question. Who issues the license? I think the commission issues the license throughout this document. I am kind of going through in my head what role the department will play, because I do think it's going to be, in most cases, more of a department relationship with the person holding the license. And through the department, we'll come reports. Through the department, we'll come report and neglect. Oh, commission. Yeah. You know, nobody's... Yeah, that kind of thing. We actually deal with that in another section. So I think you're right. It is the commission who issues the license. And it is the commission who revokes the license. But it is the director who administers the license. Right. Got it. That's clarified down below. And okay. Okay, so what we attempted to do here was to divide the policies from the procedures. And this came about because of that discussion we all had out there at Fort River Farm about the difference. So we thought, oh, okay, let's give it a try. So this is our attempt. So if you see something in the procedure section that to you really is more of a policy, let me know and I'll move it. But for now, this is the divider. A, is something Alex added, I think it's to good effect, explaining what is the situation of our request for proposals? Procedure A. So Dave, is that consistent with past stuff? Has the commission selected for the RFP? How has that been done previously? Just curious. Yeah, what we've done in the past is we've had one or two commission members, a staff member or two. We even had historically a member of the Ag Commission and they selected, granted we didn't have 20 applicants, but this is the ideal, right? You might have somebody from the Ag Commission. We did in the past have somebody from Ag Commission, Concom and staff and they reviewed the documents. They even did an interview and they selected the folks to get license. Okay, so hearing no concerns about bad language in B, the question is, does an application form exist? And if not, who's gonna create it? I think we have a draft application form and staff would, we could update that for 2024 and 25. Can I just, I'm sorry to go back to A again. We'll review applications filed in response to an RFP and we'll determine if any applicants, I think more properly it is we'll recommend to the commission, again, the commission, the committee, you know, the commission, okay, the commission working with staff. Okay, that's fine. I'm sorry. I think that's fine. All right. B. And I think this is sort of a reworking. We've got to have something in the e-appendix. What constitutes in a butter? Oh, excuse me. I'm in E, section E. I misunderstood. I thought you said B. Oh, no. Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't looked at this closely. Erin, yeah, what do you think about that? I mean, the only challenge I see is you have a parcel like Wentworth farm. And before you know it, you have, you could have a hundred of butters. Yeah. I mean, what have, have we done that historically, Dave? No. No. I mean, I don't think it's a bad idea, but it just, it's one more thing, one more step. And in this case, the question might be, are they direct butters in the sense that their boundary line touches the boundary line of the site? Or is it a distance thing? Like some other types of abutting can be. I think this would have to be. Share a property line. I don't think we can do 300 feet or I mean. It just, yeah, it gets huge. It just balloons out into. Okay. Okay. So, I mean, I guess I have a couple of thoughts on this, which are if it's not a piece of land that's been in agricultural production in the last five years, meaning it's gone fallow in order and it's near resource area within jurisdiction or a buffer zone, we would need to file a permit to convert it to an agricultural use. In that process, we'd be notifying a butters if we were converting it back to an agricultural use. If we were converting it back to an agricultural use, otherwise it was in agricultural use for the last five years and we have the legal ability to, to use it for that purpose. So I'm a little on the fence about this one, particularly, I know a butters sometimes are objection, have objections to being near farms. The site smells sounds of being next to a farm can be offensive to people. So just like how we approach this could. Okay, so Jaren, Aaron, no, we're in here. Is there any mention of a permit process? And so that's a gap. In this document that needs to be filled. So would you work with Bruce on that? And leave it to Bruce to. I'm coming to you, Michelle. Would you work with Bruce on. Getting something in here about what you just said. I certainly could. Do we think it's necessary? I mean, is that, do you guys think that's necessary? Okay. You're going to convert land use and we need a permit. It's a good idea because it's a, it tells the reader. The lesson, you know, the person out there, there is a mechanism for having a hearing about this. This particular condition. Also tell future commissioners. Yes, Michelle. I just, I just think that what Aaron said about the process and the mechanism for having a butter for notification that it's been out of use for five years is, is good and that we may not need this. I don't think we should have a butter notification if it's like, you know, within five years as agriculture, the, the parcel is agriculture. It's recreation. Like they. I don't know that it's already a right that exists. And I think this is a little above and beyond and sort of problematic. So I think using the mechanism that Aaron suggested and then removing this additional notification is. What I'm at. Okay. Can you two work that out, please? Alex, I'm just going to suggest one thing to Aaron and Bruce. Maybe there's a way to do this like a, what do you call it a master and a Y or whatever it's called Aaron. Because I, if we want to do this, I think it's on us. It's not on the farmer to do this process. So if we select, pick a number, six places to do agriculture, I think we need to permit that. You know, and, and I will tell you right now, I'm trying to rack my brain. What area has been an active agricultural use in the last five years? I, I don't even think Zala and. Zala. Zala. We'll talk offline, but I don't even think Zala has. Haskins Meadow. Yeah. I'm not many. I'm delighted we found this area that needs discussion. That's exactly what. That's, that's. That's good that we found it. Okay. Moving on. So that's, that subsection was called. We're not doing a license. So now once you have a license. The question is what, what kind of license, what is it authorizing? So that's agricultural use on page three. Starts with letter I. And Alex added a couple of extra pieces to it. For the crops section. You want one other crops? Yeah. So. You're. I. Any, any interest there to. What the change he suggested letter J. The highlighted part, I think Alex added this, but it may have been a reworking of the words. You're talking about the highlighted. Yeah. It seemed new to me, but it maybe it was a read. I added the business of a livestock being along streams. Okay, I just worded it in terms of being a protected resource here in bubbers. Yeah. And I did you comment on how I like your comment or your question of above how does how does how do crops improve water quality. Are you talking about like cover crops buffer. You pose that question right. Yeah, I don't know how agriculture water quality. Anybody. How does agriculture improve water quality. Yeah. I cannot. Well, I guess it depends on the existing site conditions, you know what you're going from and to right if the site is a, you know, I just don't think of agriculture as a method for improving water quality. But if we assume every ag field that we currently manage and own is a fallow field, how does converting it to agriculture improve water quality from a fallow field. So, maybe just just thinking about that a little bit. Let's say we have an existing field and it's not very well seated, for example, let's say it's overgrown with like some kind of invasive like reed canary grass or something like that and somebody comes in and they put in a buffer strip of vegetation around the field that's like a native grass or something and then they're planting it and using methods that prevent erosion then that could be an improvement I would say, but I do totally see your point and it's kind of, you know, it would take steps of meaningful actions and also take into account existing site conditions to kind of assess that. Yeah, so when I commented, I'm thinking Dave's not here and somebody else might be in his position that thinks differently than Dave. And I don't know what the life expectancy of this policy document is but I would hate to have somebody different than Dave and Dave's position pointing to this saying agriculture improves water quality. I don't think agriculture improves water quality. My vote's just to take it out until it somehow does and some version of our future. Okay, I'm taking it out. Now my apologies to you because I got ahead of ourselves a little bit and we go back to letter I line two. And then can you put where it says discuss include what animals can you make that bigger Aaron so we can read it. The second line of I, and it says Bruce Devman discussed wild edibles and we need the thing bigger so I can know not that one the other one. No, that one. There we go. So these came up in the context of the review that several people did from the farming point of view. And then Alex also had a point in a past document in this, in this particular area. So, can we solve this now or is this going to be one that we circle back to. I think my, my comment about opposing removal of mass crops from forest land is comes from the forestry section. I don't remember talking about I just mass mass trees being I don't see how they're involved in agriculture. So that part of it I think is out of place. The rest of it. I'll leave to others. Okay. So if we just say wild edibles and that leave it at that the question is, is that part of agriculture. Leaning wild edibles from, from conservation land. Oh, I see what you're saying. Oh, I misunderstood. And this may not be the proper section but it's a great question like ramps and mushrooms and stuff like that people frequently go and harvest them without any kind of approval. So, I think that's an area of the another section in our policy document we do address that I don't think it's agriculture agriculture is like cultivation so Okay, I just don't consider them to be the same thing. Yeah, I thought we covered it in like our rules and regulations. No, no removal of plants. And I thought it was in the rules. Yeah, it's somewhere else very picking which hopefully still is loud but yeah. Okay, I will deal with that later, but I'll take that. There's no particular thing in the letter I that needs to be changed it was a question about other things like tree crops. Okay. Let's see. And the rest of that in I in J best management practices and I said according to whom or who. So, Aaron, can you put up. Did I say anything else about it in there. Yeah, I thought you had a comma, where you said a comment according to who I thought you went on. I'm trying to find it on my own sheet here. Oh, who defines reasonable stocking limits over grazing etc look at Department of Agriculture USDA follow the extension service. Okay, we've lost the chair. There was a hiccup in internet service there. I got kicked out for a minute. Likewise. Sorry, I may have missed some of what you said Bruce could you just reorient where we are page three. And where I'm sorry where are we on page three I know we just talked about the crop edible crops but then I missed the start of the down in that it says shoot. Oh, it has to do with what is best manager practices. It's down towards the middle of the end there. Well BS 24 is the comment. But I don't see the share so it gets hard to. I think the point that I was trying to make is that are we going to point to a document that identifies best manager and practices, rather than leaving it up to the imagination of the commission. I have some experience with stocking rates and conservation lands, and it's not uncomplicated I don't know how it's done in New England but you can obviously walk out and see if something isn't looking good. But I don't, I mean I don't know how to do it it's about like taking rdm surveys and seeing how much grass is still there and stuff but if there's some like easy cheat sheet that could be hyperlinked in there for some kind of reference that might be useful just to have some like actual guidance, other than saying this doesn't look good. It's eroding. It's bare ground. I mean, do you have something like that Michelle? It's but it's for California and it's, I mean, that's a long ways away. Well research. It says research, and so I look for that. Okay, move on. So we're in. Bruce, if we come to a dead end on this in the world's not going to come to an end if we just simply say best management practice. Yeah, I know. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it either, but I just want to double check if there's something about it. In L, Alex has asked, if you could one more Aaron down, do we license facilities? I don't know. Letter L. Do we have any buildings? I don't know what a facility is, but I assume it's a building. There we go. Thank you. Do we have any buildings that we license? Not the conservation department. I think it's just land. Yeah, so I was just wondering. We can take out the word facilities. That'd be great. Okay. All right. Do we need to say license rights are not transferable? Why wouldn't you just say licenses are not transferable? Licenses, okay. Well, so just to piggyback on that, Dave, a little bit, we've had situate, and I'm not sure where else we mentioned this in the policy. But I know in the past we've had issues with somebody who has a lease or a license rather, and they allowed somebody else to participate without the town knowing about it. Is this referring to that? Because I, even though they're not the, I think the point being, if you're not the licensee, you shouldn't be doing work on the land, right? You're not approved to do work on the land if you're not the licensee. Yeah, absolutely. And I think in the next sentence, you know, producer's license shall not. Contracts, subcontracts, sublet or partner with other users for any purpose, unless explicitly reviewed and approved. Does that cover it, Aaron? Yeah, I think so. Okay. Because that is a problem. The farmers go, Hey, you know, I got this half acre over here. I'm not using it. One of you use it. Right. Right. Dave, the reason I said licensed rights, I have a discussion down below about a license being a contract. And rather than saying the license is not transferable, the rights that somebody has under the license are not transferable. Just like you just said, I have a half acre over here. That's not being used. Why don't you go use it? I don't feel strongly either way. You can keep license rights. Leave it in. Yeah. No problem. Okay. Yeah. Section down hours of operations. Yeah, the main point here is consistency between dusk and dawn and normal hours of operation. Regular during date regular occur regularly. And then we've got dusk and dawn versus another timeframe. I think we should leave regular out. I agree. I put a line through it. And who knows what normal hours of operation are. That that's, that's like, that's in the eyes. But the conservation lands are just a dawn. So it's. You know, a lot of time in the summer. It is long, long days. I just recall that this, this was discussed before because of hanging and if they're, they need to get up pre dawn or something to get a start on the hanging or collected or something. That's, that's what I recall about what, when there might be an outside of. Right. We try to address that in the second half of the paragraph. Okay. Looks fine to me. So we're going to take out normal hours of operation. I agree. I think there's a typo in there. Here we go. Research. How does the town define permanent structures. And P. We can. Erin could have a conversation with our building commissioner, but I think. I think we could define that using some building terms for instance. Having a foundation. You know, to me, the difference between a high tunnel and a. Green house with a poured concrete. Floor that to me. You know, when you're pouring concrete for flooring, when you're. You know, so we can ask our, our building officials. For a little guidance on that, but that's kind of my. My tank. Oh, did we just get bumped? Okay. What do others. Aaron, do you have any thoughts? For instance, a well is a well, a permanent structure. Yeah. I mean, I would say anything that requires a permit to anything that triggers a permit, like for example, sheds under a certain size. Don't require permitting. I just went. I just went through this. I just went through this. I think I do. I think I'm going to go down where I own property in New Hampshire. And a structure is anything man made. I think we should be consistent with other. Features that the building inspector, the building department. Is concerned with. The. Like to watch out for Bruce is. These temporary car shelters that are. Yeah. Like a tent. just laying on the ground and versus a permanent something with a foundation but I'll let you work that out with Aaron yeah okay so in queue there's some additional language about stuff left overnight and then in our Alex had enough thought about how to address the delegating of authority whether it's in the proper place so I could do some reorganizing there and then I had a research question which I haven't fully addressed yet so I'll try to do that do it on the delegate party I'm not sure I need some input maybe you can give it some thought and provide some feedback if this is a long discussion on what Alex or delegation authority for if you have a quick answer great if you need to think about this or talk to somebody maybe we can highlight this to bring it up next time we meet I don't see too too much I like section are included in it if you read my comment let me try to put it in a different place and rework it and give days feedback and because we're almost to the end of this and we're at 10 minutes to go I do think that I do think that Alex might be on something with the delegation of authority thing because if there's a situation where the commission we're in between meetings or something and there's some immediate action that needs to be taken it seems like it's appropriate for a staff to be able to act you know it could be I would I would even add you know these are there's these are interpersonal relationships a lot of times somebody is you know so I think at all costs you don't want these things going to a commission meeting they're gonna take a valuable time that you have more important things to do you know you know farmer to farmer interaction you know farmer to user of the conservation land those should you know in most instances those should be dealt with by staff you know because you you need a whole meeting to deal with them you have to meet as a body to discuss a resolution that's what our is attempting to achieve and I think it does and Alex's point is it sort of buried here that it needs to be in a different place to give it more authority at the beginning Michelle wherever you'd like to put it I just wanted to clarify there's I was looking at you there's somewhere where it says any equipment that is left over is and if it's stolen is not the responsibility of anybody except the farmer just I'm sure that it's already there but it just made me think of it okay I'll look around and see if not okay we're running into we're running into all right well we're not gonna get to the end then so we're close so I will let's how about if we do this we pause let's cover our our next agenda items which maybe we don't need all remaining time and then come back to this document okay can I have one minute to just add something about agriculture for like food for thought right now okay so something that I've been seeing is like tribal engagement and sort of land use given to tribe so this is a big big movement in landholding entities and it could be in the future for Amherst and one of the models of this is where a municipality or a land trust or something gives some portion of land to a tribe to use for subsistence farming and in some cases that involves them actually planting like native traditional species so it's a it's a different model than we're talking about agriculture here because the wild edible thing maybe think of it because it is a cultivation but it's a bit different so I just wanted to throw this out there as food for thought and if it should be handled maybe somewhere else or talk about it later okay so that goes right to next agenda items so why don't you Michelle write up a short paragraph and I will tell you that I sent a an acknowledgment of this is a unseen indigenous land to the town council members to see if town council couldn't adopt something like that but so let's talk about next agenda items and Michelle has just put one on there so that's indigenous agriculture how do you want to talk how do you want to label it subsistence use I don't think they call it agriculture it's like it's like an access agreement to land for subsistence harvesting all I want to do is get a name so we can get it on the agenda traditional use access indigent for the word indigenous in there and we're going to continue agriculture with Bruce correct and hopefully wrap it up that's my goal I will also come to next agenda with the items that we I think we're done with and where I'm headed is to have a package to bring back to the commission I don't know how many items will be in it but I'd like very I'd like to bring a package to the commission so I will that's an action item for me and then can we get to read it ahead of time the other sections yeah they're regarded as done yeah okay it's not going to be a neat and pretty package no these sections I just want to it's been so long I want to be reminded of what's in them okay okay I for a while was keeping a file and I still have that so agenda items is in we've got three agenda items what else do we need to do that's probably that's about all we have time for that in these meetings that that'll take it off yeah okay back to Bruce unless anybody else section s Alex had a comment previous etc okay we'll we'll deal with that separately that's okay next page are you sorry I think Dave needs to see that comment we just get it with to him and just find out what the town can and should do yeah I gave I suggested here that if we're going to collect fees that the town established a special account to hold fees for use on conservation land and if we need to talk about that I'll move it to the agenda for our next meeting but that goes to you saying it just goes into the general pot and we don't have access to it and there's more to that than so I want to add that to the next agenda is talk about fees and and the general account not now next time sure okay yeah land use management is the next section section you Alex had a question you yeah do we need this here but he just wants to move to say it's not about buffer strips so I'll deal with that and then section V is also conservation and he's asking for a definition in the glossary yep and then section W is about fencing can we remove can I add at that one it says the Commission encourages use of smooth wire fencing so that's also called wildly friendly fencing can we just require it I would love to I was trying to be gentle okay yeah well what well it's wildly friendly fencing or friendly fencing but the operative word is the change I'm suggesting is encourages to require yes I see it thank you and I think it might be useful to include both terms like wildly friendly fencing slash smooth fencing because like in parentheses so it's clear yeah yeah yeah yeah I was what I was moving them toward is far more is a electric fence and you know but all right down to the end there and so is there any more I don't think so I have a comment about the very last one the waiver which I didn't comment on but this worries me because it's a it's a it's a wide open barn door that just says to the future Commission somebody replacing Dave that they can toss everything we've just gone throughout and with good reason which who knows what that is the Commission may waive and modify the terms however they want it let's put it on the agenda for next time but I think we really need to think about this one I know you're trying to be flexible but this is a this gives permission for a lot of mischief maybe I could require a vote by the Commission or yeah I was going to say one Commission member shouldn't be granting it maybe and we put it on the agenda for next time because we're I'll put it in as a discussion item okay heading back to the back to the chair we are pro 59 and and got a courtesy to Michelle primarily we're going to close on time as well as even Aaron sounds like she already worked earlier today on misbehavior more and more misbehavior yeah if anybody can think of ways to prevent that I'm still curious there's a there's an easy way but I won't say it out loud what's the misbehavior I miss I sent your copied on an email Dave about Belchtown road actually I'd love to stay on and talk to you if we adjourn okay so do I have a motion to close and stop recording I move that second so moved all right thanks everyone see you later yeah right bye everyone bye bye Aaron I will be there at Amherst College okay sounds good see you then yeah