Together with the state Department of Environmental Conservation and two of the environmental groups championing the purchase - the Adirondack Council and Adirondack Mountain Club - we came up with an agreement we could all live with. A land deal of that scale has huge implications for the future of any community, so state law rightfully gives the affected towns veto power.ДЄs the supervisor of one of those towns, I can tell you none of us liked the idea of losing more private land, but we saw an opportunity to get something back for the hard-working residents we serve. In 2012, the town boards of Indian Lake, Long Lake, Minerva, Newcomb and North Hudson were asked to approve the stateвЂ™s plan to buy nearly 70,000 acres of private timberlands, stretching across the five towns. Instead, itвЂ™s a sad story of misplaced trust and lost opportunity, ending with the towns and the people who live there getting left out in the cold. The Community Connector Trails agreement would have helped turn the page on decades of Adirondack Region job losses brought on by industry disinvestment and Forest Preserve expansion, and established a model for the type of common-sense, compromise solutions needed for many problems confronting the Adirondack Park.

Venture towns get more residents