Ferrisburgh board opposes Fish & Wildlife purchase - Addison County Independent

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March 24, 2022

By Andy Kirkaldy

FERRISBURGH — Ferrisburgh selectboard members are pushing back on the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department’s proposed purchase of the former Kimball Brook dairy farm on Ashley Road.

The farm lies in the town’s north end and is an operation that newly re-elected Chair Jessica James said is going out of business.

At their March 15 meeting, selectboard members declined to endorse the sale.

James said the selectboard had two issues with the deal, which could still go forward without the town’s backing.

One was that some of the area’s best agricultural land — she described much of it as a rare patch of sandy soil in the Champlain Valley’s predominant clay — would no longer be farmed.

“It’s really prime. It’s sandy loam. It’s really great for growing corn,” James said.

The other, James said, is that the land, already conserved through the Vermont Land Trust and paying lowered property taxes, would be not only taken off the Ferrisburgh tax rolls, but done so with tax dollars.

“Fish & Wildlife will be paying for the property. That’s taxpayers’ money,” James said. “It’s a triple whammy.”

The board wouldn’t mind seeing the part of the property near Lewis Creek go into F&W’s hands, however.

“The area that’s not able to be used for agricultural purposes, around Lewis Creek where it’s marshy, the southern area of the property, makes sense for Fish & Wildlife,” James said.

She added that a portion of what is now the farm could be connected by a bridge over the creek to an existing fishing access the department owns off Long Point Road.

James said F&W representative Tony Mikula told the board the department’s purchase would require the governor to sign off on it, and the governor could give some weight to the selectboard’s decision.

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