MINUTES
TORBAY ENVIRONMENT & TRAILS COMMITTEE MEETING
Wednesday, October 29, 2003, 7:30pm, Kinsmen Centre
Present: Shirley Thorne Madeleine Florent
Mike Byrne Marian Crowley
Harvey Best Michele DuRand
Bob Codner
The agenda was approved with the addition of the Hillside Festival.
The minutes of the last meeting were approved. Mike confirmed that, with regards to Jones' Pond development, Council had approved a 50-metre buffer zone around the pond as well as a still-to-be-determined buffer zone on the river running into the pond.
Since the start of this school year, 450 students have received wetland education through our project coordinator involving either visits to the Gully or classroom time or both. We had great coverage on the cable channel. The main focus of the project lately has been on plans for the fund-raising auction to be held at Bridie Molloys on November 23 from 7-10pm. One of the highlights will be the two packages donated by Tuckamore Lodge. Visa/Mastercard purchases will be possible through Bridie Molloys. We are also exploring other possible donors including Irving.
Harvey reported on progress with the project. Two students were hired this past summer to further develop the spatial data base and to add the groundproofing data. Although the work is not complete, we could produce a brochure in the new year if we wanted to.Harvey will be meeting with Dr. Simms tomorrow to get a more detailed progress report.
One factor which we will need to take into account is the proposed bypass road for which Torbay is reported to be next in line for financing.
Mike, his spouse and Krista attended the meeting. Krista is preparing the minutes. Bob Schmiedendorf is working on a new common sign for all wetlands. Squirrels have been a problem with nesting boxes and EHJV is looking at ways of addressing this.
Lundrigan's Marsh and Pippy Park are ready to sign stewardship agreements and Goose Bay and Labrador City may also come on board in the future. Tim Hollis did a presentation on the
attitudes of people towards stewarship and Cathy Blanchard reported on the evaluation work she carried out this past summer. Cathy's report will be available from EHJV. We are very interested in what information it contains about Torbay.
The next SAM meeting will take place in the spring either in Whitbourne or Grand Falls. Newfoundland and Labrador will be hosting the National Stewardship Conference in 2006 in Corner Brook.
Since the Gully Project will be putting out a newsletter in early November, it was decided that we would not publish a TETC newsletter this fall but rather wait until the spring. In the meantime, we will try to get some space in the town's newsletter slated for late November to advertise our meetings, our new web site and the results of the auction.
Shirley will prepare a covering letter for the Mayor's signature which will be sent to all residents of Forest Landing with the new brochure.
It was agreed that we would plan a hike on November 9, weather permitting, starting at the playground in Forest Landing and proceeding along the new trail to the back country and down the ridge running parallel and north of IML. This way, we could do some groundproofing for the trail mapping project. Madeleine will email the news to all TETC members.
Madeleine gave a report on the Gully Project to Council on October 27.
We missed the last Heritage Committee meeting but will be invited to the next one.
We plan to have a booth at the next Hillside Festival and will reserve the same tent. It is likely that one grill will be enough. We could possible try to get the use of chafing dishes from the church. Based on this year's festival, 40lbs of fish should be enough and we should definitely offer larger portions for sale. We have kept all the receipts from the festival and will verify what we used in hard bread and dough so we don't buy too much next year. The generator was useful but we will need a less noisy one. Letters of thanks have been sent to everyone who donated time or money for the festival.
The next meeting will take place at the Kinsmen Centre on Wednesday, November 26 at 7:30pm immediately following the unveiling ceremony for the new flag which is scheduled for 7pm.