{"id":1682,"date":"2011-10-30T10:21:51","date_gmt":"2011-10-30T14:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=1682"},"modified":"2011-10-30T10:21:51","modified_gmt":"2011-10-30T14:21:51","slug":"letter-setting-the-record-straight-on-land-conservancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=1682","title":{"rendered":"Letter: setting the record straight on land conservancy"},"content":{"rendered":"

To The Editor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Unfortunately, misinformation has been circulating via flyers and advertisements paid for by a contributor to the Falcoff Campaign, which is not only false but purposely misleading.\u00a0 In order to set the record straight, The Land Conservancy for Southern Chester County wants you to know the TRUTH:<\/p>\n

*<\/strong>The Land Trust is alive and well and located in Kennett Square, Pa.<\/p>\n

*We legally changed our name to The Land Conservancy for Southern Chester County (TLC) in 2010 to finally create a firewall to protect us from the ongoing politics in Kennett Township and to increase our geographic scope to ensure our financial sustainability.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong>We have NEVER been a Municipal Land Trust.\u00a0 In 1995 The Land Trust was formed by a group of Township residents as a NON-PROFIT, tax -exempt organization recognized by the IRS.\u00a0 The goal was mutual cooperation and conservation efforts in Kennett and the surrounding area.\u00a0 It was specifically created as a public charity to allow the Land Trust to work with individual landowners in a private forum.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong>Since July of 2008, TLC has not received one penny of Township Taxpayer dollars, in fact we raise all of our funds from, memberships, foundation, state and county grants and individual donors.<\/p>\n

*Any funds ever received by The Land Trust since 1995 from Kennett Township have all been invested in land conservation efforts.\u00a0 Since 2006 we have tried unsuccessfully to get a complete and accurate accounting of township money spent on open space. Instead, we have received only conflicting and incomplete reports from the Township.\u00a0 In turn, their claim of 10 million dollars of funds spent on open space is almost double what it should be according to our records. \u00a0We would like to see the documents that support their 10 million dollar claim. \u00a0Their numbers simply do not compute.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong>In 2007 <\/strong>because we confronted the supervisors on this lack of transparency and what we perceived as unethical behavior, they evicted us out of the Township Building, illegally froze our bank accounts for two weeks, denied us access to our computer and hard files.\u00a0 Consequently, we were forced to hire an attorney to defend our rights.<\/p>\n

*All of the land that we have ever preserved has been accomplished through a team effort:\u00a0 Land Trust, Township, State, County and Private Donations.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong>TLC\u2019s four nature preserves, one of which they are calling a \u201cprivate enclave for Board Members\u201d are ALL open to the PUBLIC.\u00a0 In fact the trails at Stateline Woods Preserve are mowed weekly by our Board Chair and maintained by dedicated volunteers in our community.\u00a0 All of the preserves are used for a variety of educational programs and events open to the public.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong>The Land Trust endeavored to preserve the Stateline Woods Preserve beginning in 2004 (3 years before our current Board Chair joined as a member) ALL other Board Members with surrounding properties joined the Board or moved to the area AFTER the land had been preserved and had NO influence in decision making.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong>While the paid advertisement wants you to believe we are trying to benefit private individuals our primary objective is to preserve land by linking parcels to create conservation corridors for public use.\u00a0 In FACT, in order to secure state and county grant funding one of the criteria is proximity to already conserved lands.\u00a0 For access and location to public preserves, see our website www.tlcforscc.org<\/a><\/p>\n

*<\/strong>In FACT, Supervisors, both past and present are either adjacent to or surrounded by conserved lands in Kennett Township.\u00a0 In FACT, the first conservation easement in Kennett Township surrounded a then current Supervisor\u2019s house!<\/p>\n

*For the record, we strive to have Board Members who have conserved their own lands, live in proximity to our preserves, and live in surrounding areas where open space is threatened.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong> In 2009 despite repeated rejections and onerous preservation criteria by the Kennett Township Supervisors, TLC stopped submitting land conservation projects in Kennett Twp. and since has successfully partnered with other township open space groups, conservation organizations, governmental entities, and private individuals and foundations to conserve land, create trail linkages, and offer exceptional environmental programming.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong>TLC would like nothing better than to have a working relationship with the Township\u2019s Land Advisory Council to fulfill its mission using taxpayer open space funds by working with land owners, land trusts, and historic commissions to preserve more land and resources in Kennett Township.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong>TLC is a Nationally Accredited Organization (only 138 out of 1,700 Land Trusts have been accredited to date). TLC underwent a rigorous two-year process scrutinizing our policies and procedures in order to achieve this National seal of approval<\/p>\n

*<\/strong>There are many more false accusations we could address but our time is better spent actually making a positive difference in our community.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong>We have an \u201cOpen Door Policy,\u201d if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to stop by our offices located at 102 East Street Road Kennett Square, Pa. 19348 or call 610-347-0347 or visit our website www.tlcforscc.org<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kate duPont<\/strong><\/p>\n

Board Chair<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gwen Lacy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Executive Director <\/strong><\/p>\n

The Land Conservancy for Southern Chester County<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To The Editor: Unfortunately, misinformation has been circulating via flyers and advertisements paid for by a contributor to the Falcoff Campaign, which is not only false but purposely misleading.\u00a0 In order to set the record straight, The Land Conservancy for Southern Chester County wants you to know the TRUTH:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[55,285,276],"class_list":["post-1682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","tag-kennett","tag-land-trust","tag-open-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}