Groton Open Space Association

Reaction At Planning Commission Mixed On Davis Visit to DEP

 

GROTON — Planning Commission members expressed mixed reactions at their meeting July 14, 2009, to Planning Manager Matthew Davis’s account of his trip to Hartford to complain about the Department of Environmental Protection’s 2003 grant award to GOSA and the current rules of use for The Merritt Family Forest.

Mr. Davis told Commission that the award illustrated “a problem with the [grant] program and the way it’s being administered.”

Mr. Davis said he and Planning Director Michael J. Murphy “have reservations about the lack of coordination” between local planners and the Department of Environmental Protection prior to the award of DEP grants.

Some commissioners repeated earlier criticisms of GOSA’s decision not to allow horses, dogs and bikes on the property. Others expressed doubt that the commission ought to be involved in the matter. At the end of the meeting, the issue was referred to the Conservation Commission for an opinion. The Conservation Commission is scheduled to meet next on Aug. 3, the first Monday of the month.

As background: In April 2003, GOSA won a $650,000 grant toward the $1 million price of a 75-acre tract on Fort Hill. The land, acquired by GOSA in 2008 after a lengthy legal fight with a developer, is now a publicly accessible open space called The Merritt Family Forest. GOSA, owner and manager of the property, has granted an easement to the state that guarantees public access to the land, which is to remain in its natural state in perpetuity.

Mr. Davis had contended in a June 9 memo to the Planning Commission that GOSA’s rules of use for the Forest conflicted with a Planning Commission-approved plan for a multi-use trail through the property. He wrote, “It would appear reasonable for the DEP to require that the current owners [GOSA] allow use of the trail system in accordance with…recreational trail objectives.”

Mr. Davis told the commission July 14 that he had recently visited the DEP land acquisition staff in Hartford. He said he was told that GOSA is in compliance with the terms of the grant if GOSA provides public access and maintains the property. However, he said he pressed his case that allegedly incorrect scoring of GOSA’s application by the DEP and lack of coordination with local planners raised issues that needed discussion at policy-making levels of the DEP.

The planning manager appeared to be arguing that the Planning Commission should write a letter to the DEP or urge the Town Council to advocate veto power for local authorities over DEP open space grant awards. At present, DEP scoring of grant requests assigns only slight weight to approval by local planners, or lack of it. Such a change would pose major challenges to land trusts and other non-profits around the state as they try to preserve shrinking open space.

GOSA’s grant application made reference to the potential for horseback riding on the property. GOSA has explained that this reference was written in 2002, when GOSA was speculating creatively about possible uses of land that it didn’t even have a contract to buy. When it actually obtained the land and took responsibility for public safety and maintenance, the realities of allowing horseback riding on this particular property appeared too daunting, dangerous and environmentally damaging.

Mr. Davis compared GOSA’s decision not to allow horseback riding to the failure of a publicly incentivized employer to produce as many jobs or build as many buildings as it had promised.

GOSA has been under intense public relations and lobbying pressure from an abutting family, Deborah Finco-Kent and her husband, Brian Kent. Ms. Finco-Kent owns a stable, which she describes as an equine rescue operation, on the abutting property. Mr. Kent, a landscape designer, wrote the town’s master trails plan.

In his June 9 memo, Mr. Davis said he had become involved because Mr. Kent had written a letter of complaint about GOSA to a Planning Commission member, Peter Roper, who “indicated he shared these concerns.” The OPDS also received a packet of information and a telephone call from the Connecticut Horse Council expressing concern. Ms. Finco-Kent had alerted the Horse Council to the situation.

Mr. Davis’s June 9 memo criticizing GOSA had been copied to Mr. Kent; the Connecticut Horse Council; the state land acquisition unit and the Groton town manager. GOSA was not copied. Nor was GOSA notified that its management policy was to be discussed at the June 23 Planning Commission meeting. The matter also surfaced in the Town Council without notice to GOSA, which learned via community television of interest by one councilor in the matter.

In the Planning Commission’s discussion of Mr. Davis’s trip to Hartford, Commissioner Michael Kane said, “We [the commission] have been supportive of buying open space.” He added that the scoring of GOSA’s application was subject to possible upward adjustment as well as the downward adjustment that Mr. Davis suggested.

Mr. Kane suggested that consideration of the whole matter should be put off for a year to let “everyone cool off.”

Commissioner Ray Munn said he didn’t think the Planning Commission has standing to act on the matter. Mr. Roper said a multi-use trail was needed on the land. Commission Hank Steinford said the GOSA rules of use were “questionable” because a state grant had been used to cover 65% of the acquisition costs.

In the earlier, public communications segment of the meeting, Mr. Kent said there wasn’t any conflict of interest between his residence and his trails plan. He said that the trails plan showing a multi-use trail through the Merritt property was released in late 2003, prior to his purchase of the abutting property.

Bruce McDermott, a Mystic resident, defended GOSA regulations as protective of the land. (See the text of his opinion article in The Day.)

Noank resident Doug Smith said the OPDS was wasting time and money trying to force GOSA to build a multi-use trail. “You have no real jurisdiction,” he said. “I am a retired lawyer. I wouldn’t touch this with a ten-foot pole.” Mr. Smith, husband of Joan Smith, president pro tem of GOSA, said he was appearing as a taxpayer.

Jim Furlong, a GOSA director, pointed out that state law offers narrowed liability for property owners who allow the public free access, but the law still offers ample opportunity to lawyers for damage suits.