November 18, 2009 | 8pm Crawford Mansion
Present: Bishop Nowotonik, Danny Pinnella, Eleanor Herman, Kay Schafer, Alison Thresher, Mike Borrelli, Theresa Stevens, Laura Klein
The October minutes were reviewed and approved. Bishop says the Town is committed to continuing to work on the Gateway Area…he wants his staff to do most of the work, not an outside contractor. The wood chipper will be rented again and more work will be done to clear out that area.
Bishop also said that he has tried to find more information on the executors of the Crawford Estate but came up empty handed when he learned that one of the lawyers who drafted the will, Mr. Tenney, is now deceased. He asked the Friends of Crawford Park to continue to scrap together everything they know about the family.
Town of Rye Report
(Sorry for my marks)
Bishop gave us a copy of the Town of Rye Budget for Crawford park and they plan on spending $338, 364 on the park next year. About 1/2 of that money was for staff and seasonal workers and the other 1/2 was for general expenses of the park. This was not a drastic change from last year.
Also note that some of the expenses for this year were classified wrong so they are under maintenance not tree repair or sprinkler repair…Bishop is aware of this.
Good news is that idea of getting a traffic engineer to study the park has been brought back to life and Bishop will be able to repropose this to the board.
The main issue Laura had with this budget is that there were $0 for improvements to the park again this year. The larger projects, like parking and renovating the playground area, etc. are part of the Town’s Capital Improvements Plan – which is a huge wishlist of larger projects that the Town would have to borrow money from ??? to complete – here that list of projects and how Bishop wants to spread it out over the next 5 years.
Financial Report
CD Total: $5064.22
Checking:$6473.08
TOTAL: $11, 537.30
Membership and Fundraising
We decided to wait until the spring to release our next newsletter because we have will have much more to report on.
The 5th Annual Run for Crawford Park was basically rained out…we had about 60 participants, down from 170 last year. So it wasn’t the best fundraising event we’ve had but we didn’t lose money. Here’s the report from Sue Yockelson:
$1409 in race app.
$3950 in sponsorships
($3009.75 in expenses)
Total net: $2355.25
Horticultural Report
Laura reported that all the trees that were part of the power authority grant were now planted in the park and she summarized all the planting FCP did for the year:
In 2009 FCP has helped plant 39 new trees in the park, we planted over 580 flowers and supplied $180 of wildflower seeds to the park.
Eleanor supplied a list of all the trees that were donated over the years, starting back in 1992. We are researching outdoor tags which will be hung on the trees to identify those that were donated.
New Business
Laura suggested that the Friends next big improvement project in the park for 2010 would be to create and implement a plan for a new foundation bed for the front of the mansion. Bishop said that the town “might be willing” to do some sort of partnership with this but they would have to see a plan.
Bishop suggested looking into landscaping software and chart the entire park to inventory the trees and shrubs, etc.
Dec. 3rd at Crawford Mansion The town of Rye is celebrating the 350th anniversary.
Bishop wants to plant two willows behind the Korean war Mon. – Theresa suggested another tree (Sequoia) which might be more appropriate.
The Friends will not meet next month, December.

