GILL — A new ad hoc committee made up of local farmers and town officials is being formed to join the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources’ new Farmland Partnership Program, which aims to help document and preserve farmland.
According to Selectboard meeting materials, Gill was selected by the Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG) to be one of the pilot towns in the program for its percentage of unprotected farmland and active Agricultural Commission. The goal of the pilot program is to create “Farmland Protection Plans” that will feature narratives, maps and “prioritization exercises,” with the hope of taking these plans back to MDAR so the state can provide templates for making protection plans statewide.
Earlier this year, MDAR awarded the $268,400 grant to FRCOG, as well as the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission (BRPC) and Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC), through its Farmland Partnership Program, designed to help towns and regions join the effort of implementing the state’s Farmland Action Plan. The state plan outlines strategies and steps to “ensure that farmland and farming are available and viable for current and future generations in Massachusetts,” according to its website.
In Gill, the ad hoc committee will have representatives from the Agricultural Commission, Conservation Commission, Planning Board, Selectboard and three farmers. The goal would be to have a minimum of five meetings, with one to be a public feedback gathering session. These meetings would begin in the fall, with four to be held between fall 2026 and spring 2027, and a wrap-up meeting in summer 2027.
Tamsin Flanders, the senior land use and natural resources planner at FRCOG, explained that these plans are not intended to force protection onto farmland, but rather to gather information about the farmland in Gill to help the town “feel more empowered to encourage protection” if landowners are interested. The plan would also seek to identify ways to support farmland viability and access so farms can continue production.
“We’d do a lot of mapping, we’d do some inventorying of existing farms and their characteristics,” Flanders said, explaining the logistics. “We do a little bit of analysis, and if the town is interested, we could look at what priorities might be considered if the town were to have a right-of-first-refusal process come their way.”
The right of first refusal means that a Selectboard has the first opportunity to act on the sale or conversion of land enrolled in Chapter 61 tax relief programs.
The plan that the ad hoc committee would help oversee would include an introduction, regional and local context for Gill, along with a farmland inventory and analysis, environmental analysis, a farmland protection prioritization exercise and local farmland protection findings. This would be combined with maps of land inventory that could include both inactive and active farmland, environmental maps outlining soil conditions or flood zones, and potential farmland areas.
Town Administrator Ray Purington said that in his view, the committee should be appointed as an ad hoc that can have posted meetings with minutes available for the public to reference.
“It’s some important conversations about land use,” Purington said. “Gill is very much still a farming community.”
Selectboard member Charles Garbiel II inquired about the “ultimate goal” of the process. Brian Donahue, chair of the Conservation Commission, explained that the state has money to dedicate to farmland protection, and this could put the town in a good position to benefit from state dollars.
Agricultural Commission Chair Tom Chalmers also said having information about farmland and where farms are is useful, even outside of the protection element. Conversely, Agricultural Commission member Dan Flagg shared his hesitancy on this plan as being political in nature, and shared an idea of having some kind of revenue-generating mechanism to support bringing farms to Gill.
Selectboard Chair John Ward noted he feels this plan gives Gill a level of control in this process that does have a tie-in to the state.
“If we can work on driving the conversation toward our ends, we’re better off for both of us,” he said.
The plan is to have an ad hoc committee with names established and a charge for the group written out for the Selectboard to authorize so meetings can begin.
