SOUTHAMPTON — Residents voted in favor of the town acquiring a nearly 85-acre property at a special Town Meeting on Thursday night.
Around 200 out of 220 voters present approved an appropriation of $785,000 to purchase a parcel of land located at 111 Glendale Road, currently owned by Frank and Lucille Wayne, for “passive recreation,” according to Town Administrator Ed Gibson.
“It was a golden opportunity for the town to preserve some important land identified in the town’s (2013) Master Plan,” Gibson said the next day. “People worked awfully hard to make this happen. It required two-thirds majority and votes were very strongly in favor of.”
The first two articles dealt with the funding of the land acquisition and both were approved. A sum of $292,000 from the Community Preservation Fund and $93,000 from the Open Space/Recreation Account will supplement a $400,000 loan by the town to purchase the land.
The town has applied for a Local Acquisitions for Natural Diversity grant from the state’s Division of Conservation Services that would reimburse at least $375,000 to replenish CPC funds, according to Gibson. The town expects to know whether it will receive the grant in mid-December.
If it does not receive the grant, Article 2 authorizes the borrowing of future Community Preservation surcharges to acquire the property, Gibson said.
Cindy Palmer, a member of the Planning Board and the Open Space Review Committee, said residents were overwhelmingly in favor of the town preserving the land for recreation and conservation purposes.
“A vast majority of people were appreciative of knowing about the vote,” Palmer said on Friday. Along with a group of concerned residents, Palmer and others passed out postcards and handouts at meetings and around town to make sure people knew about a public hearing on July 17 and about the vote this week.
“We urged them to attend the Town Meeting and last night’s turnout was pretty spectacular,” she said.
The large parcel of land includes a lot of forest, streams, brooks, criss-crossing trails on a slightly hilly terrain, and Palmer said she saw a “beautiful” doe and “lovely” fawn there just a few weeks ago.
Also on the Open Space Review Committee, Diana Federman said there was a lot of hard work to get to this point.
The committee formed earlier this year, and Federman said “it formed as a way to be proactive about land conservation in town, and we are really thrilled, we just feel encouraged by the level of support for land preservation in town. Maybe it’s the first step toward a renaissance in protecting land in Southampton.”
She also credited the Conservation Commission and the Kestrel Land Trust as “instrumental” in the effort to acquire the land.
The parcel of land on Glendale Road is protected under a state law known as Chapter 61, which gave landowners a major tax break on the undeveloped property. In return, the town received the right of first refusal to purchase the property when land is being sold for conversion to residential, commercial, or industrial use. When a developer entered into a purchase and sale agreement to buy the property, the town triggered the right-of-first-refusal clause.
There were a total of four articles on the list of agenda items, although the last article calling for a five-year dispatch equipment contract for the Police Department did not go up for vote. Robert Floyd served as moderator for the meeting.
Residents unanimously voted in favor of Article 3, the last one put to a vote, which called for a $16,935.45 payment to Easthampton Media, according to Gibson. Per a contract between the town and the media group for audio visual services, this is the final fiscal year 2018 payment due to Easthampton Media, Gibson said.
Town officials decided to table the vote for a five-year lease for dispatch radio equipment for EMS, highway and fire departments. Officials decided there was still information needed, Gibson said, and they wanted to do their due diligence before asking voters to make a decision.