SOUTHWICK — While Town Meeting voted down a proposed bylaw to regulate activities on town-owned property, Select Board member Diane Gale is exploring options with the Police Department and the Conservation Commission to enforce the regulations in the North Pond Conservation Area.
“I’ll be working with the Police Department on pulling what we can from the [proposed bylaw] to see what we can use from it with the rules we have now for better enforcement on the property,” Gale said.
The bylaw voted down by Town Meeting was months in development using recommendations by a task force created by the Select Board after a brawl last summer that started in the property’s parking lot that spilled out onto South Longyard Road.
The bylaw would have regulated activities on town-owned properties and established enforcement guidelines for the Police Department, which is what Gale was hoping to achieve.
As it stands now, there are only a few activities in town that if violated lead to a written citation; open fires after the open burning season closes on May 1, littering, having an open container of alcohol on public property, and allowing a dog in public without a leash.
All those activities, including a state law prohibiting recreational vehicles like dirt bikes and ATVs on public property, are prohibited in the conservation area and violators are subject to being ticketed.
When those are violated, a citation can be written, which usually just involves a fine of less than $100
However, the conservation restriction regulates activities on the property that include other prohibitions like no removal or destruction of vegetation, no grilling, no picnicking, no camping, no glass containers, no rope swings, or creating a new trail.
It was those activities that the bylaw would have addressed and allowed citations to be written.
But now the police have only one option to enforce the rules at the property: issuing a notice of trespassing and that doesn’t include a fine as a possible deterrence.
Police Chief Rhett Bannish said officers patrolling the property would be less inclined to issue a notice to a person not following the prohibitions if they were cooperative.
With only a limited solution to enforcing the regulations on the property, Gale said that new signage will be comprehensive and explicit to anyone who enters the property.
“Even if takes two signs to list all the prohibited activities,” Gale said.
That issue was a topic of discussion the Conservation Commission’s last meeting.
Commission Chair Norm Cheever, using a spreadsheet, listed the more than 20 signs that need to be installed throughout the property with various messages like no camping, grilling, littering, and area under surveillance.
There is one activity that is not prohibited on the property is swimming, which Conservation Commission Coordinator Sabrina Pooler said has been the topic of discussion since the town acquired the property in June 2019 with the help of the Franklin Land Trust and the state’s Department of Fish and Game.
She said that while swimming is allowed, too often it’s the people who use the property to swim that bring along the other issues like littering, picnicking, grilling out, and eroding the property along the shoreline.
“Swimming is a passive [recreation] activity, which is allowed,” she said.
Another serious problem at the property has been the prohibited use of recreational vehicles.
Gale said she’s working with the Conservation Commission to close off every potential entrance to the property, which was discussed during the commission’s last meeting.
During the commission meeting, Cheever showed two photos he took on a weekend in early May that showed two openings, wide enough to allow dirt bikes and ATVs through.
There were also fresh tracks from recreational vehicles in the photos.
A possible solution discussed at the meeting was installing bollards at those potential openings. Pooler also suggested a multiturn entrance in a “Z” pattern that would allow people in and out, but not recreational vehicles.
Those decisions will be “hashed out” at a meeting of all involved in protecting the property next week, Gale said.
