Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Agriculture Apr topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Commission probes APR records for Stay Mountain Farm; Department of Agricultural Resources to be consulted
Summary
The commission reviewed whether Stay Mountain Farm meets the requirements for an Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR), noting a lack of documented commercial-sales records; the Department of Agricultural Resources planner has requested records and the board agreed to pursue a follow-up meeting.
The Town of Charlton commission discussed the status of a potential Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR) connected to Stay Mountain Farm and whether the farm meets the contract requirement to be farmed commercially.
Speaker 3 summarized a decades-old agreement that required the town to protect agricultural acreage or fund a land-protection trust; the transcript shows the commission has an arrangement with an operator (referred to in discussion as Neil) who has run a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program for roughly 10 years. The commission lacks documentary proof of commercial farming and sales: "There are no reports. We don't know how many sold. We don't know profit," Speaker 3 said.
Michelle Padula — identified in the transcript as the assigned planner from the Department of Agricultural Resources — asked the commission for sales and market records to verify compliance. "APR is a program where you're supposed to be farming in, in an, commercial agriculture," a speaker said when explaining the APR standard. Without written records, the Department may conclude an APR cannot be supported; the transcript notes a fallback option of the town paying into a land-protection fund if the APR is not possible.
Board members discussed the history: an older agreement between the town and prior administrations, periodic CSA activity, and intermittent farmers-market activity. The commission agreed to seek a meeting with the Department of Agricultural Resources planner (Michelle Padula) and to raise the topic with the select board for broader discussion.
No formal vote or commitment to a payment-in-lieu figure was recorded; the commission asked staff to gather records and follow up with the Department of Agricultural Resources and the select board.
