An Open Letter to Area Boy Scouts and Their Leaders
I have lived adjacent to the Simpson Farm in Loveland, Ohio for more than thirty-years. I have spent hundreds of hours on the forty-acre site over the years; many include walks with my children as they were growing up. We took walks to the seasonal waterfalls in the spring and in the winter we skated on the frozen streams. We took walks during warm spring snows at midnight to sit under the ancient trees to hear the snow fall.
Never once did we feel a need to cut anything down to better enjoy our visits.
The property is diverse in habitat, including streams, open meadows and hillsides, and seasonally flooded bottomland forest. And, of course for a parcel of land its size, with this diversity of habitat comes an unusually broad range of species of birds, fish, aquatic and terrestrial mammals and plants. Five streams, including Kelhoffers Run meander through the property, cutting deep ravines into the hillsides eventually entering the Little Miami Scenic River less than a thousand feet south.
I had always dreamed of the property being preserved in its natural state, so ten years ago after the City of Loveland bought the land for recreational use; I and others in the community wrote a covenant to be placed on the deed of the Simpson Farm. The covenant, recorded at the Hamilton County Recorder's office, designates the Simpson Farm a Conservation District and runs with the title of the land - in perpetuity.
While the Initiative Petitions were being circulated however, City Hall declared an “emergency” and sold the property to the Drees company for condos. The legal bills fighting off City Hall are still not paid in full. When voters did get to the ballot box, they voted by a 60-40 percent margin to attach the covenant to the deed.
Now, some of the same people who wanted the condos built and interfered with the election process, and others who were in positions to help save the Farm, but stood back and did nothing are wanting local Boy Scouts to get involved in blazing a trail through the Farm. This is clearly something that is not allowed per the covenant which “strictly” prohibits “the cutting of trees and underbrush” for this purpose.
The deed restriction goes on to say, “Each and every other activity or construction which might endanger the natural or scenic state of the property is forbidden.”
A plan is underfoot at Loveland City Hall to solicit the manpower of scout troops or scouts desiring Eagle Scout projects to cut a trail through the pristine forest. It seems lately like every controversial proposal that comes from Loveland City Hall uses scouting's good name and goodwill, and is used without permission and approval. Recently, it was said that Loveland needs a shooting range because it will be good for Loveland's scout troops.
As a former Cub, Explorer Scout, scout leader and founder of a scout troop, I resent that scouting is being used in this manner.
I, and others in the community I am sure, are ready to go back to court to preserve and protect this property and defend the clear and succinct language of the deed restriction, if necessary. I am asking all the local scouting programs to not get involved in a matter that may end up in court.
The deed restriction says it is a “conservation covenant between this generation and all future generations” and I will not go to my grave knowing that the promise did not even last through the first generation. In other words, I will fight until my dying breath to leave the property intact for our children.
I am sure without any doubt that the values I learned while in scouting as a child instilled in me the love and respect for our natural environment, as well as learning how to take concrete and methodical steps in protecting it. To describe my two years of effort to save the Simpson Farm as my adult scouting project, I think not
too far a stretch as I look back and remember that it was through scouting I went on my first camping trip and hiked in the wilderness, or took my first airplane ride to see the natural world from above. I am also positive that without scout leaders in my life as a youngster, I would never have learned the scouting lessons of leadership, good citizenship, and service. These values I think served me well when I wrote the covenant to protect the Simpson Farm.
There are many ways local scouts can be involved in the Simpson Farm besides the cutting of trees and underbrush. There is much trash in the streams brought downstream during heavy rains that could be removed, the wildlife and plants could be inventoried, and signs could be designed that would educate anyone entering the Farm of its importance, etc., etc., etc.
Those who have picked this fight know better. They have read the language of the deed restrictions, and they understand that to blaze a trail is illegal and controversial. They are guided with a faulty moral compass by asking boy scouts to help them destroy something others have worked so hard to protect. Add to that – they are renewing a fight this community had good reason to expect was long over and settled.
David Miller
Click to read the full deed covenant.jpg
Recent Comments