HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010-2-1Agricultural Commission Meeting Minutes
February 1, 2010
12pm -Town Building Conference Room
Present: Karen Alence, Cormac Collier, Andrea Marcavitch and Dylan Wallace
Absent: John Bartlett, Ray Owen and Steve Slosek
I. Updates n o
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a. Heather Coffin has stepped down from the commissiowind.Dylan
Wallace has been selected to fill her seat. Dylan is a c�wner
Nantucket Native Landscaping and is on the board of ZstamaQ
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II. New Business
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a. New officers
i. The commission elected Dylan to serve as chair person, Karen
as co -chair person and Andrea as Secretary, all unanimously.
ii. We discussed rotating officers every 3 months to not
burden anyone for long periods. No vote was taken on this idea
but will come back to it at a future meeting.
b. Meeting times
i. The first Monday of every month at noon will be our new
meeting time. We will meet at the Town Building downtown in
the conference room. Meetings will be once a month for now.
ii. Dylan will post the meetings at the Town Building.
c. Meeting Attendance
i. We discussed if there were any rules or policies regarding
attendance to meetings. If there are no rules written from the
town, we discussed adopting some of our own. The ag.
commission doesn't want to be punitive but does need active
members to be a productive commission.
commission's focus and how to move
forward.
b. Agriculture list
i. In an effort to compile a complete list of all
those involved with agriculture on the island
we are trying to gather names, emails and/or
phone numbers of those we know.
ii. Karen will put together a list of horse
owners
iii. Email Dylan names of those who
"farm" on a smaller scale -those that might
not fit into the 61 A list.
ii. Ethics Online Training -State request of all town
employees
1. Go to: mass.gov /ethics to complete the online training.
You will need to print out a copy of the certificate upon
completion and bring a copy to the Town Clerk for
records.
2. Go to the website listed above, under Education and
Training Resources click on Mandatory training
requirements, scroll down to the bottom and click on the
heading - Online Training Program. From there you can
begin the online training that is required for all of us to
do.
3. Online training should be done at your earliest
convenience.
Our next meeting- Monday, March Vt at Noon -Town Building Conference
Room
ii. Karen agreed to call members who haven't been able to
attend meetings.
d. Agenda
i. We reviewed the minutes from our last meeting and discussed
what our focus should be for this year. We discussed 2 main
objectives and a couple ongoing tasks.
1. Objective 1: Right to Farm Act
a. We all agreed to keep this on our list for this year
and to re -read this act for next month's meeting to
discuss further.
2. Objective 2: Community Gardens
a. We discussed if we should pursue advocating for
more community gardens and help seek out
possible locations such as NHA's property in town
locally known as "the horse pasture ".
b. Dylan will contact Sustainable Nantucket to
discuss if they are still working to create a
community garden and how we could work
together or if this is something the commission
should pursue.
c. Dylan will also obtain list of backyard gardeners
compiled by Sustainable Nantucket.
3. On -going Tasks
a. Survey
i. Work on a survey to get feedback from
those involved with agriculture to learn what
the needs are in the community and how the
commission can advocate for them. It may
be a great starting point to decide the