Balancing


The Southeastern Trust for Parks and Land is a land trust* by definition and function.

However it is not an accident that Parks comes before Land in our name. Our original and ongoing mission is to create and care for permanent public use parks. In order to make the parks permanent the most effective means is conserving the land via a deed restriction or easement. Because STPAL owns all of our properties the deed restriction is appropriate for us. Each of our properties is permanently protected from development. The only exception is one property happens to have an area with lots that are ready for residential development. These lots have paved streets, curbs, street lights, fire hydrants, and all the utilities in place for each lot. They aren’t eligible for conservation and due to zoning issues will eventually have to be developed.  This was initially bad news for STPAL as we’d hoped to use the lots as part of the park and not have them be developed. However the recent upswing in their value has become potentially very beneficial for us. Eventually we will sell the lots and use those funds to do some really exciting park related improvements on our properties.

The preceding paragraph is a look into our balancing act. We care for and enhance conservation land. We provide public access to the land in the form of parks. And we manage our financial resources to fund our mission. The balancing is important. There are some people in the conservation community that believe that any human activity on conservation land is wrong. There are people that believe having the land conserved harms its benefit as park land. For example, we can’t build soccer and baseball fields on conservation land. There are also people that fail to recognize the benefit of public parks and bemoan the loss of developable land. And there issues with small minded governments, NIMBYS (not in my backyard), poachers, dumpers, partiers, and ATV riders. And yet we continue marching forward.

Over the next few weeks I will post more detailed information on these various aspects of our work. I was going to do it now, but I have two dogs staring at me. It is time to hit a trail.

 

Happy Trails

Bill Jones