Woodlands Partnership Holding Public Sessions for 10-year Plan
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Mohawk Trail Woodlands Partnership will hold two public listening sessions in the coming weeks to gather feedback from the public on its 10-year plan.
The two sessions will be held via Zoom at 4 p.m. on Aug. 24 and 7 p.m. on Sept. 14. The sessions will give residents of the member towns an opportunity to ask about the plan, provide comments and ask members of the partnership questions.
"We are there, and the whole point is to continue to gather information about how the plan might be improved in its revision," said board Chair Henry Art at the partnership's Executive Committee meeting on Monday.
The partnership has spent much of the year working on a draft for the 10-year plan.
"Please invite your, you know, neighbors or people who you think would be interested locally," said Lisa Hayden, administrative agent for the partnership. "... We have two or three more left for member towns, and then we need to redouble on non member towns as well."
Art and other partnership board members have been meeting with select boards and officials from the member towns to share the draft plan. Hayden said these meetings have been helpful for both the member towns and the partnership.
"It's been largely positive. People are appreciate that we're doing doing this effort," Hayden said. "We brought up the grants a lot, which I think are very appreciated, the municipal grants that many of the towns have benefited from."
Art said there are still several communities that can join the partnership. He noted that those towns, if they would like to consider joining, can do so officially next year.
"There is a compelling list of accomplishments that we have made and grants that have gone to the member kind of towns and organizations that should get them to reconsider whether they really would like to join," he said.
Those interested in attending can contact Sophie Argetsinger for a Zoom link at sargetsinger@newenglandforestry.org. More information is available here.
In other business, the board met with Jonathan Gould, the district director for state Sen. Adam Hinds, to discuss recurring funding for the partnership. The partnership drafted a letter to Hinds' office in February, looking for $200,000 in funding from the Legislature for organizational operations.
Despite not getting the funds for the partnership in the current legislative session, Gould encouraged the group to keep looking, saying there is still unallocated money from which they could seek funding.
"There are a number of other pots of money that are needed to be spent at the discretion of the legislature" he said. "The remaining $2.5 billion in federal ARPA money; that is yet to come. The sense is that that should be spent on projects that have a significant impact without needing to be renewed every year."
Board member Kate Conlin asked if it is usual for legislation, such as the enabling legislation for the partnership, to exclude a funding source for a budget. Such decision-making, Gould said, is not unheard of, using the state reimbursement of regional school transportation costs as an example.
"I don't know if there's a little wiggle room, but the Legislature has never funded it at 100 percent ... that's an example of the the funding not meeting the expectations of the the school districts and taxpayers," he said.
Whit Sanford, a former member of the board, said the partnership needs to keep engaging state and federal officials to get a recurring funding source.
"it's never a given, whether you're a nonprofit or a legislative entity, that you will be funded by anybody," she said. "So you have to work The husk, you have to think about what your priorities are. And you have to communicate with your funders or potential funders to get the money."
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