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Groton commission authorizes vice chair to submit Climate Ready comments, debates how much open space is publicly accessible
Summary
At its June meeting, the Groton Open Space and Resilience Commission authorized the vice chair to collate and file the commission's comments on the state's Climate Ready plan, wrestled with open-space inventory figures (17% publicly accessible vs. 29.5% total open space) and approved minutes with a minor correction.
The Groton Open Space and Resilience Commission on June 11 authorized the commission’s vice chair to submit the group’s comments on the Climate Ready plan and spent substantial time clarifying the town’s open-space inventory and outreach materials.
Chair Larry Dunn opened the meeting, confirmed a quorum and said commissioners had drafted a joint letter and scheduled a meeting with Mark Berry to discuss local work on open space and outreach. After discussing the Climate Ready timeline — commissioners cited comment deadlines around June 11–12 because the report must be finalized by June 30 — a motion passed by consensus authorizing Bray (vice chair) to collate and submit the commission’s comments. The motion was moved from the floor and accepted without recorded objection.
The gathering also devoted extra time to the open-space inventory and the question of what counts as "publicly accessible." Commissioners parsed the inventory layers during a map demonstration and disagreed about presentation. One summary figure in the packet lists 29.5% of Groton as total open space, while a distinct layer labeled "publicly accessible open space" was reported as about 17.4% of town area. Commissioners noted that if colored map layers are combined in different ways the visual impression can change: S3 emphasized that roughly 58% of the open-space parcels in the inventory are marked as the green "accessible" subset, while S2 and others warned that shorthand descriptions ("only 17%") can understate the town’s overall conserved land.
Commissioners also handled routine business. The body approved two sets of minutes, moved by Chisholm Malloy and seconded by the commission secretary, with an amendment correcting the robotics outreach season year to 2026. Staff reported that student project deliverables and one-page summaries are available in a shared Dropbox and that the outreach brochure will be added as a separate downloadable file for commissioners.
On outreach, the commission debated who should be the program owner for a backpack distribution and brochure effort; the library was identified as a logical distributor but commissioners said the program needs a formal owner (library, parks and recreation or another office) to manage replenishment and oversight.
Dunn said he and Giselle would meet with town staff tomorrow and report back at the commission’s July meeting. The commission adjourned without further action.
