SPRINGFIELD — When the late engineer and entrepreneur James Hartness — an early aviator, astronomer and Vermont’s governor from 1921 to 1923 — bequeathed 85 acres of local land to this town, the deed expressed his hopes for the wooded property to host recreation.
This Election Day, residents will decide exactly what that entails.
Voters here are set to consider a citizen-petitioned Nov. 5 article to rescind a new municipal ordinance that bans shooting guns — and, as a result, most hunting — in the 90-year-old Hartness Park.
Hartness, head of the local Jones & Lamson Machine Co. at the turn of the 20th century, donated the forested area upon his death in 1934. The gift capped a lifetime reputation of caring for employees and, as he wrote in his 1910 Flat Turret Lathe Manual, their “environment in general.”
Nearly a century later, the selectboard created an advisory Trails and Rural Economy Committee in 2017 to help it promote such assets as the park. The committee, seeing the area’s three miles of trails used more for hiking and biking, has added new gates and signs. This past year, it also suggested a ban on hunting, citing a state law that allows landowners to create no-gunfire “safety zones” within 500 feet of occupied buildings.
“This (park) being surrounded by residential neighborhoods on four out of five sides is more appropriate as an area for people who don’t want to have firearms discharged,” committee Chair James Fog said at a recent selectboard meeting.
A sign offers information about Springfield’s 85-acre Hartness Park recreation area. Photo by Kevin O’Connor/VTDigger
Local leaders discovered they didn’t have the authority to ban hunting. But they can restrict the use of firearms, as Vermont does in its state parks, which prohibit gunfire “within 500 feet of any occupied building or structure,” according to its rules.
In response, the selectboard voted in August to amend the town’s firearms ordinance to add the line, “No person shall discharge or fire, or cause to be discharged or fired, any revolver, pistol, rifle, shotgun, air rifle, BB gun or other similar firearm or weapon within or into the lands designated as Hartness Park.”
That sparked a group of residents to submit a petition signed by a required 5% of the electorate (or some 320 voters) calling for a ballot question on repealing the rule.
Kurt Merriman, 79, told local leaders he had hunted in the park for 50 years.
“Never had an incident,” Merriman said at a recent selectboard meeting.
Fellow resident Don Shattuck expressed concern that the ban could lead to more limits on other municipal land.
“Is this a one-and-done deal or is this a foot in the door to ban hunting?” Shattuck asked the selectboard. “And how does trapping get involved with this?”
Local leaders stressed the firearms ordinance was only for Hartness Park and didn’t prohibit the use of bows and arrows there. The Trails and Rural Economy Committee, for its part, said the nearby Meeting Waters Municipal Forest would remain open to all types of hunting.
The selectboard has scheduled an information meeting on the article for Monday, Oct. 28, at 6 p.m. at the town offices at 96 Main St.
Voters will then cast ballots on Nov. 5 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Riverside Middle School at 13 Fairground Road.
Although the issue has elicited multiple rounds of social media commentary, in-person discussion so far has been civil, local leaders said.
“This is the democratic process,” selectboard Chair Kristi Morris said at one recent meeting.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Springfield to vote on rescinding firearms ban in its historic forested recreation area.