Groton Open Space Association

Councilor Wright Proposes Several Open Space Resolutions

GROTON–Town Council Member Elissa Wright has proposed several resolutions to protect and enhance open space in the Town of Groton.

The Council’s Committee of the Whole is expected to consider the resolutions at its next meeting March 8, 2005. Citizens will have a chance to speak in support of the measures in the citizens’ petition segment of the next council meeting March 1.

Ms. Wright’s three resolutions would:

1. clarify on the land records that five town properties were acquired for open space, recreation and conservation purposes with funds raised by an $8 million bond issue in 1988. Ms. Wright notes that at present the land records do not show this in the cases of: the 35-acre Merritt Farm on Fort Hill along the south side of Routes 1 and 215 (not the Merritt property GOSA seeks to acquire); two Mystic Community Center parcels comprising nearly 40 acres on the easterly and westerly sides of River Road north of I-95; the 5.76 Kiely Property north of the Groton Senior Center; the 75.67 acre Boyer-Napert Property (now the Mortimer Wright Preserve) on the northerly side of Route 215; and Burrows Field, now known as Poquonnock Plains Park. Ms. Wright says that without such specific information in the records, “future generations will lose track of the fact that said properties are restricted and dedicated in their use for open space, conservation, and recreation purposes.”

2. allocate a portion of revenues collected in Fiscal Year 2005 under the increased Real Estate Conveyance Tax to the town’s new open space land acquisition fund. Ms. Wright said it appears that the amount that could be put into the open space fund this year under her proposal could total some $120,000.

3. dedicate to open space an undeveloped, approximately 7-acre tract of town land abutting the historic Jabez Smith House on Route 117. The Jabez Smith House and the abutting lands are “the sole remaining undeveloped areas now in public ownership and control within the bounds of the original land grant to Nehemiah Smith in 1652, which predates by three years the first permanent settlement on Groton Bank in 1655…,” her resolution says. The town’s Conservation Commission has recommended that the land be preserved as open space.