##VIDEO ID:BP97IUEHe-U## good afternoon it is um Friday 51 this is a meeting of the Conservation Commission subcommittee on land use and we have present Commissioners Bruce deedman and Michelle lob and amist employees Aaron Jac and Dave Zac and today we have an agenda which is on the web where we're going to see if we've got any comments on our draft use uh policy concerning dogs which was provided to the commission the last time it met then we're going to have a discussion about hunting on conservation land and then we'll identify topics that might be ready for commission review and uh we'll look at our list of future topics so um without any further Ado I'll ask Aon if she has yet received any comments on the dog policy I have not that makes light work of that subject so we can check off that one and um I will mention to Dave that we did have a walk on the Wentworth Farm property and I wrote up a summary of our visit and in that are number of suggestions which um has gone around to Bru and Aaron and and Michelle it's not on the agenda to talk about but we'd like to put it on agenda for for a future subcommittee meeting and there's a couple of suggestions which really have nothing to do with Wentworth um which have broader broader appeal um and I'll just mention one is the formation of a Trails committee and without getting into a discussion about that eron can brief you but I will I'll um since it's been around to everybody I'll send you a draft of our summary so keep in mind that it's titled Wentworth farm and then at the bottom there's some suggestions that came up as we kind of stood around and talked so it's it's mistitled a little bit and I haven't taken the time to separate out the suggestions I think I saw that Alex you did send it to me right I'm I'm I'm I I'll find it I'm looking at all your recent emails yeah I think I think I saw it yeah well just a heads up we'll not talk about it today but uh would like to put it on the agenda maybe for next meeting to talk about an item or two okay still trying hard to get make sure we get everything done in this calendar year so we'll pass by item one with no comments on the dog policy from the commission yet and start our discussion about hunting on conservation land so Aaron was kind enough to produce a map uh buffering uh roads Trails by 500 feet and I think that's 500 feet on either side of the road and Trail or a total of a thousand but I'm not sure you she'll clarify that when we get there and then I asked her to put on to identify the boundaries of the various um conservation lands where the town website says hunting is allowed she did that and she told us that it's available on the website for us and I sent you all a copy so we'll wind up looking at that and I would like to focus our discussion on firearm use on Hunting uh um we're going to talk about the safety issues that might be involved and I'd like to um focus our discussion on on that and there's lots of other things we could talk about with regard to hunting but focus on the safety issues that's kind of where we're at so Aon if you would do us a favor and bring up that map um unless somebody wants to have any comments and Aon please tell me if the public is on anybody got any comments to start off with I would just be interested in having Aaron walk us through sort of the what we're looking at with it um just I guess I wasn't completely clear about the color schematic and the um um yeah i' need that too yeah there's a lot going on there I would appreciate that too yeah it's it's really like a work in progress so it's not meant to be like a a final map but I can definitely walk you through it um and I don't see anybody on from the public okay yeah I spent quite a bit of time looking at the legend which is why I asked her to put the red lines on for the boundaries of the of the um uh hammer lands that allow hunting so I can obviously clean this up and make it a little bit more presentation ready if we ever want to do that but um so the the yellow circles which you can kind of see they're the bottom layer those are the 500 ft from structures so um in this case like houses barns garages um in some cases it might grab an occasional shed uh but it's it's basically the mapped structures that we have so 500 feet from from sheds or from structures rather and then the pink or guess cre uh cream color there is the 500 ft from paved roads so that's overlay on top of the 500 ft from structures and then the purple is 500 ft from Trails um and yeah so those I I kind of had to do multiple because there's multiple different layers for Trails um and then you can see underneath are the conservation areas so I thought like where you can see the green poking through that that's where you have areas that are not being covered up by those buffers so presumably not within 500 ft of a house Road or Trail and then the red are identifying the um and there's there just to clarify this there's conflicting pages on the town website um one page has a list of properties another page has a list of properties um so they're they're not exactly consistent but um this this incorporates in red the identified properties from both of the Town web pages that say hunting is permitted on these sites hold on just a minute Bruce so the in the very middle this long thing is the rail trail it starts in the lower right goes and makes a loop and then yeah okay yep yeah exactly okay yeah it's hard without roads and landmarks it's it it took me a long time to understand that tan which occupies so much of this uh map is actually a buffer right so thanks keep going Ain yeah so I mean the the whole purpose was for us to get sort of a visual of the properties that were um outside of those 500 foot buffers um and uh uh be able to identify like which properties are outside of those buffers and so that kind of the green gave us that depiction but then Alex asked to put the the properties in red where where um hunting is allowed so this just gives you a sense of of that okay so I also sent out um Massachusetts rules that apply yeah go ahead Michelle I just I have two questions um first is is the 500 foot buffer on Trails a legal thing or just a general safety guideline okay so based on that some hunting allowed areas are actually not ideal um if we consider a 500 foot buffer and then I'm I'm just noting that the other thing I'm noting is that um we have a couple hunting areas allowed where there's only a very small portion of sort of appropriately area yeah we'll get there so I just had one other map related thing so in the upper third on the right there's a huge green area no no down further upper third no to the right now yeah there that it's not a conservation area but it looks as though it reads as though hunting is allowed in that space it's not conservation land yeah we're the green only yeah only the right so if you know if presumably if those private land owners hadn't didn't have their land posted it might be okay that's private private property there yeah we're only we're only talking today about land under the jurisdiction of the Conservation Commission understood so um and going back to Michelle the 500 foot is I think comes from uh the Massachusetts law which says that you can't fire a firearm within 500 feet I think it's of an occupied residence or an occupied building It also says you can't fire a firearm or or an arrow across a paved road and it also says uh that you can't fire a firearm or an arrow with 150 ft of a road so we took the 500 F feet um prohibition from an occupied dwelling so a shed a barn they're not occupied and this buffer uh includes unoccupied structures so the it's hard there's no way to sort them out so the buffer um I I'm not sure it makes much difference on the conservation land because we don't have very many unoccupied structures on conservation land but that's where the 500 fet came from I believe Aon con straight me out if I'm wrong um and again it part of it was um me not knowing necessarily all the ins and outs of what was allowed um other than the 500t from setback from a structure so that's why that distance was used um but I mean I can adjust any of these buffers accordingly um I think it's really just to give us a visual of where the con conservation areas fall but again we can adjust buffers if if the commission would like in accordance with state law or however you see fit so let's just look at pic up in the upper left for example we've all been there Dave took us there to talk about Community Gardens there are trails in the woods and the buffers in CL close all of those conservation lands according to the measurements that we've got so there is a problem um potentially of people discharging Firearms or arrows in there within a certain distance of a trail so I also sent out the hunting schedule you know the seasons because Hunters aren't in the woods all the time I thought you might be interested I think it's sort of irrelevant but I sent it out anyway um and I'd like to just from a safety standpoint think about projectiles uh in the terms of shotguns and black um and muzzle loaders and Shotguns for deer hunting are slugs and um large BBS um I just use BB because everybody knows what a BB is but they're they're shot um smaller shot size six and seven are used for Birds but for deer it's slugs and call them BBS a slug carries um not nearly as far as a black powder rifle and a black powder rifle has no rifling in it so it doesn't go um as far as a regular rifle but that's not allowed in Massachusetts so um the law does not prohibit somebody from firing a gun across a trail only a paved road so you can fire a gun across a path across a gravel road a Woods Road so on and as my thought is um that as we build more and more Trails we have 80 Mi of trails I'm told that's a lot of trails and and people use them um we've never had an accident and we don't want to have an accident uh with regard to arrows most people who are deer hunting are going to be in a tree and they're going to be aiming down uh and their projection is 30 yards um and to me that's not as much of a concern as a projectile um that's shot horizontally across the face of the Earth and somebody not knowing what is in the background and when I teach hunter safety one of the Cardinal rules is to know that you have a safe background when you bring that firearm to your shoulder in the woods you can't you can't always know what's out in front of you so we have a potential safety issue with um shotgun slugs and black powder rifle projectiles which is like a 50 caliber Slug and um and Trail use nobody's been hurt nobody's been shot uh and we certainly don't want that in the paper so so one of the reasons we're having this discussion is to talk about whether or not all the lots that are on the website should allow hunting in the future as we continue to build Trails so that's why I ask for this map and um just interested in your thoughts as we go forward well I'm still confused about the map so but bear with me here if I look at the poic one it says that hunting is allowed inside the red and yet the it feels unallowed because the overlap of the trail um prohibition is complete within the poic section so given that why wouldn't we just say it's not allowed there well we may but I I want to make a correction on what you said because the the buffer doesn't mean it's not allowed it um it suggests that we uh might have a safety issue okay so the buffering is not a legal prohibition no it's purposes of this discussion only so but is the structure one it's gone away now but the structure buffer is that a legal prohibition if it's a if it's an occupied building yes okay but we the buffer doesn't differentiate between occupied and unoccupied okay there be like a barn and then that Barn get a buffer which does happen in conservation areas right I don't know I don't know if a power poles in a um in a power line I know I'm talking about along the street but you know big Power I don't know if there I don't know what a structure is in terms of errands well like she said it's the first draft um the other thing I knowe Just for future references under the paved Road buffer it says 500 ft but then I think Alex mentioned it was 150 feet so I I'm a little confused about that but so that's that's in the right I sent you a write up on Massachusetts rules yeah and I may I may get it backwards on what's the 500 I know it's uh 5 I think it's 500 feet for an occupied dwelling without permission or if you live there okay well I'm I'm totally H that this gets worked on some more and we stick with the policy and and I yield to Dave yep Dave um thanks no I think this is a great discussion can you hear me yeah yeah um good discussion I have no I was going to say no horse in this race I will say maybe no deer in this hunt um I I have strong feelings one way or the other um I guess you know Alex you said a few things that kind of resonated with me you know I think this is all about safety and and it's a good time 2024 25 to re-evaluate where we are with regard to hunting um I think you know it's important to kind of put it in context um historically we have not as far as I know in the last 20 years we've not had any hunting accidents that's a good thing um we want to keep keep those residents and those visitors safe on the Trails um I think it's important that Aaron did point out that our website is out of dat and inconsistent but we kind of knew that so again a good reason to have this um I also um wanted to point out Alex you mentioned building more Trails I I think the key for me would be to focus on the existing Trails um I am not I am not that interested in building more trails at this point we we we've got roughly 80 miles of trails and it's it's a challenge just to keep them all open and passible so uh and and I don't think we'll be purchasing much more conservation land uh overall I think most of our acquisition is probably close to done so I think I think it's great to be focusing on what we have um and yeah what's what's our goal I mean obviously I think it's Community safety and and how do we PE keep people safe when they're utilizing the conservation land um and and you know I just put a question to myself what do other communities do I mean there's a philosophical or a policy question do we allow hunting at all I mean that could be a that could be a policy of the commission to say we don't allow hunting um I'm not advocating for that I'm just saying some organizations have gone that way um I don't know if any municipalities have I'd have to we'd have to search a little bit on that but so those are my questions kind of around around around the topic and thoughts yeah I think ammer can be hold on Bruce just for a second I just want to Echo Dave Amis can be proud that it is number two in the state of Massachusetts for the amount of conservation land that it has absolutely Dave probably knows who's number one maybe it's Lincoln I don't know yeah it might be Lincoln conquered Sudbury I'm not sure one of those may be in that yeah we used to be the leader in APR land but Hadley passed us some years ago well we can still be proud that we're number two in the in the Commonwealth for conservation land and a lot of that absolutely Dave Zac's credit and his predecessor so um and with regard to what some towns have done I grew up in conquered Massachusetts and I used to go duck shooting on the sbur river with my father and um my relatives created what's now the beginning of uh great M National Wildlife Refuge right on the conquered River and um I can't I couldn't go duck shooting on the river now it's you can't it's the town won't allow it so um um I don't know if they allow pheasant hunting and that kind of stuff I didn't do that homework but things are changing and people's views have changed so this is a good time to bring up this topic and I I think this map from a safety standpoint gives us a picture to talk about regardless of its foibles um nobody's saying it's exact and but still it it's a visual that uh none of us could describe in words and un and and communicate very clearly so I really appreciate Aaron creating the map and U I don't know if it needs to be cleaned up much for purpos of our discussion or even the commission because we're just talking about those conservation lands where the website says hunting is now allowed and um I think there's nine of them I may be wrong in that number but I have a list uh one two three four five six 7 eight yep nine well and um Dave I'll be right with you for those that are in pelum Bob and Peggy Gage and Houston shury shutesbury Houston Gage yeah in shutesbury in shutesbury yes so I wrote down pelum I don't know where I got pelum from that is a very strange outlier very strange but yeah long history to that parcel but yes by some fluke of Nature and law and whatever policy yes we we we own and control that Houston gagee parcel in shutesbury through a uh a self-help Grant very strange but we do yes glad we do Bruce did you have a question about it Alex or or was just to say we have that one parcel yeah well I I was curious it's an outlier and now I'm glad that to point out that I got the town wrong I'll fix that there when I looked at the maps it it the maps are not very well labeled for example uh on the maps that I distributed there is not the name of the uh parcel very clearly provided and um you have to kind of know you're where around to know where you are in Amorous Bruce so I have two points I think one is I would I would be in favor of giving shuberry their land back but that may not be possible secondly um I think this is in many ways like the dog discussion in the sense that if you come at it from the 80 miles of trails and all the people who use the trails then there is this question of the interaction between the people with dogs and the people who don't have dogs there's the interaction with the hunters with the people who have dogs and the people who don't have dogs so there's this interactive part of across the trail Network that is a big part of our responsibility to kind of make that interactiveness work and a piece of that goes to the educative side of doing a much better job of having a cleaned up website and having maps that are clear and getting educational information out and Etc so that feels to me an end point of the both this subcommittee and the commission as a whole as to how to once we've figured out how do these things go together we have to teach people about how they go together so this is it gets Michelle go ahead you can finish Alex I'll follow up it gets it gets complicated which is one of the reasons I sent out the schedule for hunting seasons because somebody could go turkey hunting on those on those lands with a shotgun using number um anywhere I think it's number four to number number four number five number six shot which doesn't carry very far and probably not cause any safety hazard um certainly archery doesn't provide the safety hazard the that that a muzzle loader does and somebody could go uh pheasant hunting quail hunting [Music] um uh I don't know if we have Partridge Partridge Woodcock so on so forth with dogs on our land where it says hunting is open and probably not create a safety hazard so not all hunting creates the same safety hazard um and um I don't think a strong safety argument could be made for bird hunting for example uh so um that's why I wanted to focus on firearms and and the projectiles I guess maybe I was trying to make a a slightly sideways argument or or comment that if somebody is walking on a trail and they hear a gun go off they don't know any of the caliber they don't know which season it is they don't know anything and therefore it's our you project out to those concerns we had a guy come to our meeting and express his concerned about four months ago so that's the challenge I see here Michelle yeah I mean just real quick to Bruce's comment I've been on trails and it's been like open field with patches of wood and I was with my kids and heard gunshot and I couldn't see anybody and I didn't know what was happening so it was scary and we left um just because we didn't know the circumstances of it um but anyway that's just anecdotal um my impression of looking at well there's another thing is that if if we do want to consider alternatives so that we're not just saying no hunting and ammer what we're not seeing in the picture is like private lands that do allow hunting of which there are some significant acreages and at least I know in in North amorist so this isn't sort of a blanket Outlaw and hunting um availability in ammer and I know that's not our purview today but um there is alternative lands currently um for people to go and then I think wherever we go with this I just want to evaluate the sites that have only portions of suitable suitability and probably knock those off the list because I think if we de that hunting is allowed on certain properties that it should be pretty clear um what the properties are and their boundaries so it's just to keep it simple and not you know only half of this property from A to B is allowable because I just think that it has to be one the property is open or it's not open but if it's only partially suitable I think it's just kind of unfair to assume that everybody is going to know that on the ground so I see three at least three sites that meet that three or four I don't know how big they are really but three three four or five sites that would still be suitable for hunting under this analysis yeah Erin could you go to the bottom of the map and maybe blow that up for us Bruce I was just going to add that like the agriculture section the context does matter and that's what m Michelle was saying about well there's a lot of other places some other places that on private land hunting is we can't ignore that in the context of trying to figure out what we do on the ones we control the same applies to the Agriculture and also state land just wanted to note that right I sent I sent out a summary of what's on the Amis website um hunting is only permitted in the following town of Amis conservation areas all other town of amoris conservation areas are closed to hunting so the town is talking about only the land it owns it's not talking about private land that's in support of what Michelle was saying there is not a Prohibition in the town of ammer against hunting and the town of amest only exercises it Authority on the land that it owns Dave yeah I like where this is going I I wanted to if we could keep going with with Michelle's train of thought to kind of maybe say well there are these areas where we just don't think it is safe to hunt I was going to say um yeah you know these need to be simple clear consistent to Bruce's point there needs to be a rationale why are we why are we not allowed o it in these areas and perhaps allowing it in this Conservation Area or part of this Conservation Area um and you know I I start to think about enforceability and more about um communicating how do we communicate this if we say Atkin Flats hypothetically is open to hunting how do we how do we message that out both along Trails there um along boundaries and on our website and anywhere else social media you know we could use soci media as U different seasons come along to remind the public hey we only allow hunting here I do think it's really good I think as Bruce and um Michelle talked about the context there are a lot of other places to hunt in amers not as many as there were five years ago 10 years ago 20 years ago 30 years ago because of subdivisions and and people posting their land and whatnot but there are still private pieces of land owned by Kohls and and Aaron also pointed out uh you can hunt all of the land in the mount hoyo range State Park um I would also point out that we allow hunting on our Watershed lands some of which our water supply protection lands are in ammer belur toown shutesbury pelum so yeah so um those are my thoughts um and we could allow to Alex is point a few minutes ago we could allow certain types of hunting and not others we could say bird hunting is allowed at Atkins Flats but not hunting with X and I you know I'm not an expert on firearm Alex as you are but you know you you pointed out the how far these projectiles uh uh can go and and that is a that's a that's an important consideration but we could say bird hunting is fine but deer hunting is not or whatever you know or or a particular kind of firearm so I think it's all good Michelle I've never seen that bird hunting but no deer hunting but I was thinking the same thing based on Alex's explanation um it seems to be like kind of trying to be reasonable and uh has good rationale has anyone I just worry is it too confusing is it you know making is it splitting hairs too much um to do that or have you guys seen municipalities or private lands that have allowed one but not the other type of hunting I'm willing to take up um a task of Consulting three or four other towns maybe Dave can help help me um um and I may look to the eastern part of the state um um I grew up in conquer my family comes from Lincoln my folks used to live in Lincoln I know those people so I could talk to other towns too but I could I'm not going to call 20 towns I could so I could call a smattering and maybe Dave because of his knowledge of Who's Who who's active in the conservation land activity in the state could help me out you Aaron I was just going to say Dave I know DCR holds a handful of um CRS I I is for those oh did you have something to say oh go ahead somebody is just waiting for me just to answer a quick question go ahead um I was just gonna ask if there because it's the state held CR if there's an obligation that we allow hunting on those properties I think one of them's down by the bike path and one of them's beside Sweet Alice I don't think so my quick answer is I don't think so Aaron but we probably should look at those I've never I've never I don't know ascribe to the fact that if the state owns a CR it comes with the implicit requirement that you allow hunting but I know the state folks sometimes have a different opinion that but we should look at that it's a good question yeah I know in Sturbridge there there was a property held the CR was held by mass fish and wildlife and it being open to hunting was a requirement um I think that's a stronger case because it's held by Mass wildlife than say DCR right um I agree with Michelle and Dave whatever solution we come up with should be like a taco switch U very easy to enforce um either the lights on or it's off and not even consider splitting a conservation parcel where we're putting signage up at the edge of a buffer that would be a nightmare to do it would be a nightmare to administer and um um so I I support finding some um easy to administer solution even if it means allowing hunting with certain implements or types of hunting and not others for example uh deer hunting with archery we might consider allowing that versus deer hunting with shotgun or firearms firearms and shotguns creating the safety hazard more than archery there may be other people who say no I don't want to split that hair U that's too hard to uh administer or whatever their reason is so we're not done with this conversation I don't think and um I would with your permission like to continue it to our next meeting but not three or four meetings I would like to come to some some point where we can go to the commission with something um even if just to get some feedback from them um so we can keep rolling along and and U I'm mindful of our deadline at the end of December and that's not that far away we now have 15 minutes we have some other items on the agenda um I'm happy to talk about this some more um but I would like to take at least five minutes at the end for the other agenda items particularly what what's ready to go to the commission anyways Dave yeah yeah I like again I like where you're where you're taking this Alex um I think again simple enforceable let's not split the hairs it it just is going to create more challenges for field staff for us to answer questions rationale why you know if you walk I don't know from the poic let's say hypothetically I don't know I don't maybe I shouldn't take poic uh Atkins Flats again you know the first part is not open to hunting but when you reach this point it is it gets you know it it gets challenging so you know and and again I think it's interesting to think about those ideas but I think we have to think about the Practical nature of them and the enforcement of them and the Outreach in education back to the point that Bruce made earlier is how do we educate the public about about this um and I do think Michelle made an interesting comment about being out there with her children and I think we've all had this experience is you might be out on a trail hear a gunshot and there's no solution to this you it may have been on private landed Jason too um I took my family up on the mount hoor range for Thanksgiving couple years five or seven years ago with some young children and said oh no problem no problem you know there's a trail right here shouldn't be a problem you know we w not 10 ft from the car and somebody um uh uh discharged the firearm literally it was so close we all jumped to the ground that's how close it was but again it was a trail so I don't think there was any prohibition on hunting near that trail it was you know probably my bad to take somebody out and you know during what was November was that deer season uh Alex that would have been probably deer season around Thanksgiving yep yeah so so anyway so we've all had that experience so and we did have the gentleman who came to the uh the meeting the other thing we we need to think about is Hunters can walk across conservation land to get to private land with their firearm yep and so that can sometimes raise ah are you hunting right here I'm on a conservation land so that's part of the education process that that that provision right there is on our website what's that Bruce I didn't hear Bruce oh I was saying there was something we read that said they could walk on a trail to get to the place where they were hunting that that's on the town website yeah so hey so the other interesting law I discovered about hunting is that you're not supposed to be able to cross railroad tracks with a firearm so if you're accessing a property from a trail and you have to cross over the railroad tracks you're not then that property essentially shouldn't be I mean that's what the state law says I I'd look at that it may say that the firearm has to be unloaded which is what's required to cross a road yeah I think it's a it might actually even be a federal law but I'll yeah it it was uh a question that was asked from that gentleman who had come to the concom meeting and there was conversation going on about we don't have any Railroad tracks on our conservation land well uh liketh actually had one Crossing it we didn't go that way on our walk but there's a railroad yeah I mean over by Brickyard isn't there one yeah we're losing our 15 minutes we're down to 10 now can I just say one more thing about hunting I'm sorry um one is I I want to just throw out there uh being mindful about uh controlling deer populations I don't know how big of a deal this is for Alex is shaking his head I mean people are putting up deer exclusions in some places because of the problems with herbivory um to Alex can you comment on the range of like a compound bow I think you know whenever people say bow and arrow people are thinking romantically about like pullbacks but compound bows can be used too and and they have much greater range um is that comparable to shot the Massachusetts actually has rules on how many pounds of pull needs to be on a on a bow and it's 40 uh I believe it's 40 pounds that's that's a pretty good pull and a 40 lb pull can go I don't even know what the range is but probably 100 yards um but what I what I most bow Hunters are in a tree and so their angle of their shot is down towards the ground and it might in their deer stands they they measure off distances um out to their range from that stand so if a deer comes along they can see approximately oh yeah okay that's 40 yards or 30 yards or 25 yards whatever so that they can adjust their sight but they're not shooting a 100 yards they're not shooting 70 yards um in most cases there are bow Hunters that don't go to a tree I don't I don't I don't sit in trees they don't like the height um that just made me think that well it's good that they're not completely connected but uh we wouldn't want people building tree stands on conservation lands anyway um there are there are tree stands which are um you carry them on their on your back okay portable ones and and people can carry them in on the day that they're going to hunt that's usually not what somebody does they go in and they'll put a temporary stand in a tree and um do that during daylight hours and then come back to it during the hunting season and then take it down when they're done so um yeah there will be stands and trees um for bow Hunters your scent your scent is off the ground in a tree with most prevailing winds so you can have deer walk right underneath you they don't know you're there hello deer get pretty smart and they do look up into trees but but you know tree stands as a whole I'll just say if you want a tggo switch kind of a situation assume there's going to be tree stands in in what for if if somebody's going to haunt on conservation land with a bow the odds are better than 90% that he's going to have a tree stand okay that's interesting because I'm not sure it's consistent with you know our use policy right now so just something to consider okay so um we've covered a lot of ground um and with your permission I'd like to continue this next time in in the interim uh please give it some more thought on splitting hairs and what you're comfortable with but also what's the best way to to present this to the commission assuming that we can come up with a recommendation so that we don't have to go through the explanation and the discussion that we did uh I'm happy to write up something at this point I don't know what to write um but I I'm I'm trying to think of a concise way to communicate to the commission so that you Michelle as chair could um chair the chair that discussion when it when we hand them the item to consider so far we haven't spent any time talking about the issue and um um it would be great if we could continue that pattern but at some point there's going to be a discussion by the commission on this issue I just can't see them I think that the map and just saying pay attention to the red outlines and then where the green shows through we can just say it like that and then everything else to some kind of buffer associate with it and I that I don't think we need to make it prettier with you know a simple explanation but before we adjourn I did ask Aon to put um some time on our agenda for Wednesday to um discuss land use uh subcommittee update so if we want to bring the dog one to everybody I mean I know we haven't I don't know what our due date was but it might have already passed so if this is right for the discussion um I think we gave people three weeks or something or we asked for three weeks I'm not sure but anyway I'm just saying that we have a very light agenda and if we want to try and tie something off it would be good to do it on Wednesday here I was just gonna say so you know we've we've given them the draft of the dog policy there hasn't been any comments back so I'm just not sure what really like if we want to open up a discussion with the whole board about the policy or if we're just saying this is your chance to comment um but my thought would be we've we've done a significant amount of work on some other sections like I think forestry was done or close to done like if we could get that to the commission and say Here's a comment period for that one and then any other sections we could kind of keep them going in Chron you know in in some sort of like systematic way so that at each meeting we're presenting something for comment um and then then we could coate it all and do one hearing public hearing where we discuss the overall document at the end um would be kind of the way I would suggest going about it because we will have to have a hearing at the end I believe to codify it Bruce I think there's a reasonable chance that even though we're giving them time to comment on each section and they they mostly don't which is understandable when you get to the hearing and we know that everybody then will have to vote at that point we will get more conf because they will read it with more the realization I have to actually vote on this now okay so I I'm with Aon I'm ready to um look back at the forestry thing and um get that ready to submit to the commission do we have what's the deadline for putting something in the folder uh or putting it on the agenda Erin I've already got it on the agenda which I'm about to post um I just put it there kind of as a placeholder figuring we'd figure it out um but I think as long as maybe like early next week we get it up there I think it's it's a very light meeting this this week um or this coming week very late okay so how about if we do this hand them the forestry for their comment give them a deadline and bring up dogs and say we haven't got any comments but we'd like to have a brief discussion um and put a time limit on it can we also add the dog section to the folder so people have it fresh in their face and it's kind of impossible to go back in time to get anything so maybe they'll do two at once that would be great but so Forest did we say forestry and dogs in the folder yeah and then so the next time we meet we'll um so that takes care of of you know what are we ready to present that's an an agenda item and um 2 minutes um and then dogs and allocate some time to hear about dogs and then our next meeting at the next meeting of this of this group oh no the next meeting of this group which um I don't have a calendar in front of me but it's two weeks from today two weeks 10 weeks from last Tuesday so that's the 17th uh I'll assume that you're correct so any objection on the 17 and it's noon to one right we're going back to the yes yeah Alex can I just say you said think about a rationale for the hunting discussion and you know I think I think we've covered a lot here today I think you know I think if you could be thinking about the rationale first and foremost is user safety we are charged with making sure people are safe out on these public lands and I think we start with that there are more and more people using we learned during covid uh and that that bubble has continued to to show that there are more and more people seeking outdoor experiences families children Runners hikers bikers so I think I think we lead with that and we're we we have new information we have new mapping um and and that's what spurred this review of very old those those uh areas all that information on the website is very old and really goes back to you know Pete West over in previous commissions so I I think we lead with that I think it's a very strong rationale to say you know we are we are looking at areas that we think are safe and here's the rationale why we why we think that is true because of the size because of the few Trails etc etc all the things I don't want to go over that we went over today but I think that's where we start it's a common sense approach to safety on conservation lands thanks okay good any closing comments Erin do we have anybody on the public with us no we do not okay then I can give back a minute thank you thank you very much everybody today was great have a nice weekend allone by bye everyone bye bye