White Mountains Land Trust
Meeting of March 6, 2006

We had only 3 board members in attendance (Norris Dodd, Ginny Handorf, and Keith Justice). Gretchen Forbeck was also present.

We discussed the threat to Woodland Park at length. We hope to meet with the Town Council on this matter soon. The Board will be consulted about a date when we know what days and times might work.

Here is information for the Board. Not all of this was presented at the meeting.

Tejido Project and Related Matters—We will take this up at the next regular meeting.

Pine Lake Meadow—The Town staff is aware of the biological and aesthetic values of the marsh and will take appropriate steps to preserve those values if possible.

Snake Ranch—The ranch has sold to descendants of the original owners. They do not plan to develop.

LTA Videos—They are copy protected, so I was unable to duplicate them. We will plan to keep them at some accessible site for check out.

Allen Property—Keith and Sue met will the Allens and Jan Sell, appraiser, on February 20. What follows is a heavily edited version of notes Sue made after the meeting.

  1. The appraisal process is nearly complete;

  2. We reviewed the draft easement together and Sue has since made changes to the draft. Keith will distribute that draft to the board by email. Both the Allen's and the WMLT will then initiate their own respective legal review. WMLT will wait on this until we get the input back from the Allen's on their initial legal review, because there will probably be some changes in the language.  We have given the names of attorneys that may have experience in reviewing easements to the Allen's. 

  3. The Allen's will be getting a survey completed for the "line" that marks the "building envelope."  That survey should include the production of a large maps and aerial photo, copies of which can be provided to the Trust for future use.

  Needs:  Some basic activities on the horizon for the Board and for the Allen "team": 

  1.  We need to get a preliminary title report completed, which will verify the Allen's clean title as well as show if there are any other easements, rights, or liens on the property that may render the project unfeasible.  One of the items we NEED to find out is who owns the mineral rights on the Allen's property (a title report should show that).  Getchen and Sue have initiated that with First American Title. We will probably need to have geologist report stating that there is no known commercial mineral potential to the property.

  2.  Legal review of the easement.   After legal review by the Allens, the Trust should be prepared to take this easement to our attorney for review.  Sue recommends that a few folks from the Trust (Sue, Keith, and one or two others) be involved in this, not just Sue and Keith.  Others need to understand this process, and we should expect to sit down with David Brown to go over everything.

 3.  An Easement Baseline Documentation Report needs to be completed, and again, Sue and Keith would like this to be a joint effort by a few Board members.  This is basically a report that outlines the condition of the Allen property at the time the easement is placed, and includes photos of all the buildings, overall property photos, aerial maps, a written description of the property's conservation values, etc.  This is for the Trust to be able to enforce the easement, particularly for future landowners.  It should not be a burdensome process, and we would expect that we can get started on it sometime in May.

 Bottom line is that we anticipate that finalizing the easement language will be the biggest hurdle in completing this project, and we would figure on hopefully completing everything and recording the easement by mid-summer.  It'd be great to have enough time to plan some sort of "appreciation" party at the Allen property and invite potential Trust members????  

 Report prepared by Keith Justice