Mountain View County council recently threw its support behind the recently formed Legacy Land Trust Society. At council's recent meeting councillors agreed that the county would support the society in its general aims.
A steering committee worked for about a year to study the viability of a land trust and established the Legacy Land Trust Society at the end of 2013. During a presentation to Mountain View County council on March 25, Jim Smith, a member of the society, summed up work that has already been done to establish a trust.
“The county has for quite a number of years now been looking at the possibility of whether a land trust might be beneficial to our community,” Smith said. “There's some fairly compelling information to suggest that it would be a good thing for our county.”
Smith told council that the genesis of the land trust society was that many people in the county have wanted to preserve land but didn't have the tools to do so. The land trust enables people to preserve farmland or other pieces of property for the future.
“We have said from the outset of this process that we think it's important for the county to be active or engaged in connection with the land trust society but concurrently that it ought not to be driving it,” Smith said, asking councillors if they wanted to have a member on the board.
Smith said an executive director for the land trust would be beneficial, and asked if the county could provide office space and $30,000 to $40,000 per year for the next two years.
Bruce Beattie, reeve of the county, said he supported the group's work and hoped it could continue making progress toward setting aside land for preservation.
“It's a collective group of volunteers that have been a pretty impressive group. It's a great start and (hopefully we) can build on it,” Beattie said.
In an interview, Beattie said while the county supports the concept, officials think it's important that it remain community directed.
“We've been offered an opportunity to have an ex-officio member on the board so that we can keep that contact going but that will be the extent of our involvement. Just very strong support for having a land trust in our county,” he said.
Kim Good, another member of the trust's board, said the group received society status in November 2013 and has submitted an application to Canada Revenue Agency for charitable status.
“We're just waiting to hear back, so with those two things happening we became sort of a formal organization. So we went from being an advisory group thinking about land trusts into actually becoming a legacy land trust,” said Good.
The society is now in the process of making some funding requests and then working on the society's first land project, she said.
“We don't have one in mind right now,” she said, noting that that discussion could take place at the board's next meeting.
Good said the trust wants to be responsive to the community's wishes, and so it could take on several different aims, such as protecting farmland, wildlife habitat, environmentally-sensitive land or important pieces of heritage land, among others.
“We've kept our overall mandate quite broad,” she said.
The trust is hoping to launch a website soon.
The Legacy Land Trust Society board of directors is Kim Good, George Green, Al Kemmere, Sarah Leach, Rob MacKenzie, Wayne Notley, Jim Smith, Laurie Syer and Maureen Worobetz.
Anyone wanting more information on the trust, or anyone considering trust status for their land can contact Good at 403-807-3237 or by email at [email protected] or Jim Smith at [email protected].
"There's some fairly compelling information to suggest that (a land trust) would be a good thing for our county."Jim SmithmemberLegacy Land Trust Society
