Well I wouldn't want to see wall to wall condos there or much of any other type of development. I appreciate the LRCT purchasing or working with owners to restrict development on over 16,000 acres of land in the lakes region including some of the islands on the lake as they are getting fewer and far between as far as public access. I do like the idea of the protection of the land for the wildlife, flora, watershed and view protection. But like some other big "conservation" groups in the country for which I will not name, I think that more thought should have been made for access for all groups that had been approached or that contributed. Not just hikers. As it stands now there is limited recreation compared to how the land was used previously. It's almost a preservation thing. Conservation to me means more useages while preservation is like back country wilderness use where there are huge restrictions on what can and cannot be persued.
As far as taking the lands out of the public taxroles, without getting into a major dispute on this one, I did a thesis in forestry school on the purchase of perpetual development rights of farmland vs outright selling for development and the onslaught of services a town then incurs to provide the new homeowners and the spirialing costs that constantly increase the taxes, ie schools, fire, police, highway etc. In fact this theory was just fought in our town this year when the residents overwhelmingly purchased for 5 mil over 130 acres of farmland rights vs a possible chapter 40b project that could have been sited on it. The argument was pay 5 million for the rights or millions more for probably a new school and added town services, besides the fact that we would lose another of our precious agricultural farms.
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Lin
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