Fredonia’s Board of Trustees tabled a resolution to cut timber on the village reservoir property. Meanwhile, the mayor wants to know why two previous contracts to log the timber were never executed properly.

Trustee Jon Espersen stated shortly after the start of last week’s board meeting that he wanted to table the latest measure. “It’s not because I’m not in favor of forestry management, but I think there are a lot of questions we still need to have answered,” he said. “I’ve been in contact with environmental sciences and geology professors (at SUNY Fredonia) and they would like to speak with us — we’re having a meeting with them next week, anyway.”

Espersen said the professors want to go over maps of landslide and erosion-prone areas on the reservoir property. He also wants to wait for a study that will show the actual volume of the reservoir.

“I’ve also called the Western New York Department of Environmental Conservation forestry manager, I’m waiting for a callback from him,” Espersen said. “I want to get his opinion of best practices for forestry management…he’s familiar with the reservoir, he’s been up here before.”

Mayor Michael Ferguson said he was “playing phone tag” with Forecon, the company which would cut the trees, over two reservoir logging contracts that previous Village Hall administrations signed with it.

“Apparently, and I haven’t seen the second contract, there are two signed contracts in this building, from two separate mayors,” Ferguson said. “We know for a fact one of those contracts was paid and the work was never executed — and I need to find out, before we go any further with this, as to whether the second contract was paid as well.”

Trustees then unanimously tabled the latest logging measure. That did not keep them from hearing criticism about the proposal from four members of the public.

One of them was Jonathan Townsend, a neighboring landowner to the reservoir who operates a nursery with his wife. He said, “I have over two decades of experience in land management and conservation, biological surveys, and invasive species control, and I’m extremely concerned to learn this has come up as an option again for the reservoir property.”

He called the reservoir forest “an ecological gem in the region. As a biologist, I can talk your ear off about how special that forest is… I don’t want to see the forest harmed and I don’t want to see Fredonia put their water resources at jeopardy with a kind of poorly thought-out timber harvest.”

Townsend suggested enrolling the forest in a carbon sequestration program as a way to gain revenue from it without logging. He also stated that if the village wants revenue from timber harvests, it should create a municipal forest elsewhere.

Townsend got to, in effect, “double dip” on his speaking time because Trustee Michelle Twichell later read a lengthy statement from him during her own report.

“I received a number of phone calls and emails expressing concern about logging the reservoir forest,” she stated.

Ferguson later repeated his exasperation that the two previous logging contracts apparently saw no follow-up.

“My duty as mayor is to find out why, where, when and how, what happened to these contracts and what happened to the money associated with these contracts,” he said.