Conservation Commission briefed on Open Space & Recreation Plan

LENOX — Lenox Town Planner Mary Albertson, representing the town’s Open Space and Recreation Plan (OSRP) committee, was on hand at the Conservation Commission meeting last Thursday evening to update the Commission on the plan and to answer any questions.

The OSRP committee recently put out a draft of its plan, which will be sent to the state for review.

The seven-person committee, consisting of representatives from the Conservation Commission, the Planning Board, Board of Selectmen, Kennedy Park, the Community Center, plus two at-large members, first formed last October to come up with a vision for managing the town’s open spaces. The plan was put together with the help of students from the Conway School of Landscape Design.

As Ms. Albertson explained, the idea was basically to have representatives from the various boards comes together to share ideas on how to best manage town properties like Kennedy Park, the Lenox Town Beach, and Post Farm.

One of the suggestions that came out of the plan was to put together a committee that would look at all of the town resources.

As Ms. Albertson said to the Conservation Commission, the OSRP committee wants to ensure “if we do go forward with something like a Parks Commission or a Land Management Committee that it’s an advisory committee, and it’s seen as a way to bring all of our town boards and committees together.”

She suggested that instead of putting together a formal committee, have the Conservation Commission and other committees dealing with land management get together to share ideas.

“There’s no sense or really need to create another committee to do what’s already in Mass. general law to be done by the Conservation Commission,” she said. “The way I envision this is that, over the last few years, we all struggle with how we best manage our resources, and maybe there’s an opportunity for all of us that work with that to meet and to talk and to share ideas.”

Posted by Dana Drugmand on August 22, 2013. Filed under Community News,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry