Carbon tabs open space board members – Times News Online

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Carbon tabs open space board members

Carbon County has taken its first steps in creating a board that will help oversee a $10 million bond that aims to protect the county’s land assets.

On Thursday, the board of commissioners adopted a resolution establishing the Open Space Advisory Board, as well as appointing six board members and two alternates.

The new advisory board will advise the board of commissioners on how to best utilize the funds to protect open space and agricultural land.

The new board members, who were appointed by the county Agricultural Land Preservation Board, include Fred Kemmerer Jr., David Krause and Danadee Miller-Boyle as three-year board members; Katherine Cunfer and Sarah Holland as two-year board members; Ian Farrel as a one-year board member; and Brent Green and Gerry Madden as alternate members.

Dennis DeMara, a lifelong resident of Carbon County who has been instrumental in the conservation and preservation of various natural resources, commended the commissioners on moving forward with the advisory board.

“To me, working for the Wildlands Conservancy, and having worked for the county as the first park director for 24 years, I never thought something like this was possible,” DeMara said. “It’s been a two-year journey to get to this point.”

This past November, Carbon County voters overwhelmingly voted to support the 20-year, $10 million bond for land preservation purposes.

“It won by almost 83%,” DeMara said. “The highest ever in the state of Pennsylvania. So there’s a real impetus and a desire to spend this $10 million on preserving farmland and open space. This is the beginning of that.”

He added that the county has already committed $1 million for this year and received $1.4 million from the state.

This money will be used to help the agricultural land board with the 15 applications it is looking at for preservation.

The other $9 million will happen at a later time, once the program is set up and an application process is written.

The goal of this, DeMara said, is also to form a partnership between the county and municipalities so zoning and planning is in place when preservation applications are received.

“It’s going to incentivize them to preserve some critical lands and then decide how their community grows,” DeMara said. “It’s all good.”

The referendum question came about nearly three years ago when the Carbon County Agricultural Land Preservation Board began looking at funding sources because of the need to help farmers who wanted to join the preservation list.

The referendum passed 21,014 yes votes to 4,394 no votes.