Request from Land Trust to Lake Claire Neighbors:
The Land Trust, in keeping with its mission, is arranging to have a majority of its space put into a conservation easement, which will prevent any significant development of this space and preserve it as green space for recreational, educational, and community use. We are attaching for your information a draft of the easement agreement and a map of the area involved. On the map, the conservation easement portion is outlined in black, and those parts of the Land Trust not included in the easement are marked with cross-hatching. We will have a final version of the document within the next couple weeks, say by the first of February.
The “grantees” in this document, consisting of adjoining property owners, are those who will have the right to periodically inspect the property to prevent any violation of the easement. We would like to request that Lake Claire Neighbors participate as an additional grantee in this document, in order to strengthen its force and to add an additional level of monitoring. It is customary for such conservation easements to have an outside civic or environmental organization participate in this capacity. We would appreciate it if you could bring this to the attention of your executive committee.
We understand that you will wish to review the document carefully, but it’s important to note that as a grantee, Lake Claire Neighbors would have no financial obligations, and “no obligations whatsoever for the use, management, maintenance, or supervision of the property” (p. 6). Its role would be that of a neutral party that can help assure that the provisions of of the easement are being observed.