Public Educational Forum
on the Plan to
Advance the Management of Morses Pond

Thursday, June 16, 2005

7:30 PM, Great Hall, Wellesley Town Hall

This was a fairly well attended meeting with lots of questions raised about pond management. The presentation provided by Dr Wagner of ENSR is very informative and is probably more useful than detailed meeting minutes, thus please take a look at the presentation:

PDF: http://www.morsespond.org/fomp/meetings/2005_0616_public_forum_morses_pond_management_wagner.pdf

PowerPoint: http://www.morsespond.org/fomp/meetings/2005_0616_public_forum_morses_pond_management_wagner.ppt

One challenge clearly facing the Friends of Morses Pond is that people in Wellesley do not understand the value of Morses Pond to the town. For example, someone simply said, that he couldn’t see the town funding dredging when the town just voted down an override that resulted in canceling the Spanish program, branch libraries, and reduced dump hours. This presents a challenge to the Friends of Morses Pond who believe the money spent on ensuring Morses Pond is a useful resource for the town for decades to come is both economical and benefits all members of the community either directly via use of the Pond (e.g. drinking water, recreation, wildlife, etc.) or indirectly via increased property value town-wide by helping to make Wellesley a more attractive place to live.

To help advance the management of Morses Pond, it seems that we need to increase education about the existence of the pond and its benefits to all members of the town.

John Ciolfi

6/16/2005.