by Steve Bollock
On Tuesday, Jan 27th the Siskiyou Land Trust Acquisition Committee and a group of land trust enthusiasts joined John Schuyler and Tom Hesseldenz for a hike around the newest SLT land holding, the 5 acre Kingston Road property.
This beautiful piece of wetland property, once slated for condominium development, will now be retained as open space and is a critical part of the proposed City Park to Downtown Trail & Greenway.
SLT is a member of the Greenway Consortium, working on this project along with Mt. Shasta Trail Association (Joe Wirth, John Schuyler, Berry Price, Tom Hesseldenz), Mt. Shasta Rotary (Merle Anderson, Tom Hesseldenz, Glenn Harvey, Kathy Morter), Mountain Wheelers (Belinda Higuera), Mountain Runners (Sean Doyle) and the Parks and Rec. District (Mike Rodriguez).
Four consortium members contributed funds to purchase the Kingston Road property: Trails Association, Rotary, Mountain Wheelers and Mountain Runners. Siskiyou Land Trust’s role is to hold title to the property. In addition, Mt. Shasta Trails Association has contributed to SLT’s stewardship fund to ensure that long-term annual costs are provided for. To date, they have donated $1,500 with another $1,500 matching gift on its way. The immediate funding goal for this property is $8,000 to cover bare bones insurance, road maintenance fees, applicable property taxes that cannot be waived with a welfare exemption, bookkeeping, accounting, and administrative fees.
John and Tom gave participants a lot of great information about the history and current status of the land and proposed trail, the issues surrounding the project and the likely possible scenarios in the future negotiation with the other adjacent land owners.
One of the very best ways to get a felt sense of what SLT does is to participate in the occasional field trips to various holdings for which we are stewards. The excursions are consistently educational and inspirational as we walk the land and hear the stories from the owners and people for whom the land trust serves.
To hear about upcoming field trips, be sure to subscribe to our free email list – the form is in the sidebar just to the right of this article. And if you use Facebook, be sure to “friend” SLT on Facebook – just click the link at the bottom of the page. Join us for an SLT field trip. You will not regret it!
