Andrews Community Forest 12/22/25

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ANDREWS COMMUNITY FOREST COMMITTEE 

Committee Meeting minutes for December 22, 2025; 6:16PM to 8:30PM 

Roll call and confirm quorum. 

Committee Members Present: Sam Pratt (Meeting Co-chair), Brad Elliott (Co-chair), Ian Stokes, Wright Preston, Dan Wolfson, Julian Portilla.  

Member absent: Sonya Mastersen, Jimmy Cochran

Public, in person or on zoom: None. 

Minute taker: Wright Preston

Timekeeper: Ian Stokes 

6:17PM.  The ACFC minutes of December 8, 2025, were reviewed, with a couple of spelling corrections made. Motion to approve minutes was made at by Ian, seconded by Dan, approved unanimously.

6:20PM.  The committee then discussed Ian’s draft of the Committee Report for the 2025 Town Report. Motion was made to approve Ian’s ACF Report by Wright, with second by Julian, with unanimous approval.  We thanked Ian for the drafting work.  Sam, Brad and Ian will work to add a couple of ACF photos to accompany the Committee’s Report. 

6:27PM. Sam lead a discussion of the committee’s desire to use the Trail Forks app. for ACF trail information.  Sam has agreed to continue to work with Trail Forks folks, with the involvement of Jimmy.   We want to include the published ACF trails on the Town’s Trails Map. Sam will look to have the existing ACF trails included on E911 mapping as well.   Ian shared a comparison between the Trail Forks app and the Trail Finder app.   He said the Trail Finder app is very well controlled, has pertinent contact information and can note trial issues, in some ways better than the Trail Forks app.   Trail Finder is managed locally by the Upper Valley Trail Association.   A third trail app. is All Trails.   It was generally agreed to proceed with Trail Forks because it is used extensively by the Chittenden County mtn. bike community.    

6:51PM. Buffer Map.  The committee then spent the next two hours discussing the draft Buffer Map.   Wright asked that the western old VAST Trail be included as an active trail.  He also asked if we could differentiate by color the improved “t- shaped” utility roads, from the trails.   Ian showed us three separately developed maps, including the buffer map that he created.  It was agreed that Dan, Ian and Brad would be a working group to develop a newer draft version of the buffer map.  

7:52PM. At this point we shifted over to making real-time revisions by Sam to the draft Management Plan, specifically the Trail Deviation Review Process.   These revisions included adding Julian’s suggested Meredith Naughton list of trail relocation mitigants.   In our current trail deviation draft it includes a 5% maximum buffer encroachment deviation.  The committee is looking at adjusting that to perhaps 25% within a buffer for trail distance encroachment and 5% area fragmentation.   Sam agreed to develop a couple of sample maps to help illustrate these buffer encroachment and fragmentation matters.

8:28PM Next meeting dates: Monday 1/12/26 and 1/26/26 

8:30PM Julian made the motion to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Wright.  The motion passed unanimously.