This has been an active year for the Conservancy but a less active year from an "advocacy" standpoint. As a result, while overall activity has been significant, public visibility to our activities were below average. Consequently, our business results (our donation revenues) were down.

We accomplished a number of things throughout the year:

Yerkes
The Conservancy has continued to monitor reports from the University of Chicago and the Yerkes "Study Group" regarding the Yerkes property. It has generally been a quiet period. The "Study Group" was due to report on their year of work in July 2007. The group verbally reported on efforts to gauge interest in forming a syndicate of institutions to support student education at the facility. Quite a number of institutions were contacted including Adler Planetarium, University of Illinois, Northwestern, Loyola, Marquette, and University of Wisconsin, as well as a number of others. Many expressed Interest in supporting the effort. At the same time, rumors spread that the University of Chicago was pursuing the sale of the lakeshore property independently despite their pledge not to do so. No formal report was issued in July as had been planned. The GLC continues to be active in supporting the preservation of the Yerkes Institution and to protecting the environmental corridors on the property to the extent possible.

Jackson Creek
Jim Celano and the GLC were influential in efforts to raise awareness in the community on both the risks to Delavan Lake of overdevelopment to the north of the "Inlet" and in efforts to increase awareness of the potential costs to the communities if the development of the size proposed (4,768 homes, three schools, a village center commercial area and several parks) were to become a reality. They, along with other community and political leaders were able to encourage a joint discussion regarding the benefits and costs of the development avoiding conflict between the municipalities. The result was a delay in the project for further planning. This is good news for the area. The time and effort it takes to influence these situations is significant and credit should go to all those involved in the effort. Future proposals for the area should be more sensitive to the lake and more reasonable in terms of density. Hats off to Jim for his behind-the-scenes efforts.

Hummel Property
The GLC was active in resisting the annexation of the 710 acre, Linn Township Hummel property by the City of Lake Geneva. Once that occurred in December of 2005 and potentially allowed "high density" city neighborhood development, the GLC has been working with the developer to encourage conservation development concepts including as much open space preservation as possible. Considerable success has been achieved in reducing the density of the plan and in terms of warning of possible water flow risks to the lake should wetland runoff in the area be blocked or polluted. The result is that the developer has reduced the density of development and proposed cooperation with other landholders in environmental efforts. Current proposals call for 50% green space and environmental studies to assess water flow issues. The Mirabeau Spa project is the only higher density development on the property. While concern has been expressed regarding the possibility of "access" to the lake, they have assured us that, given the nature of the Spa, lake access is not of interest to them.

Now the Conservancy walks a very delicate balancing act. The fear is that if the current plan, which has been improved considerably at the encouragement of the GLC, is rejected, the property will be sold to smaller developers and a much poorer outcome will result than what has already been negotiated. On the other hand, many would expect us to continue fighting the development. We believe we need to do what is right for the best of the longer term. We are pleased with what we have accomplished so far, but do not want people to believe that we are caving in to the developer. Note that there is still a long way to go before the approval of the project.

Land Protection
The GLC had a number of achievements in the land protection area over the last year. With the addition of Sugar Creek, Woodstone Prairie and Hildebrand Woods to our conservation easement holdings, we now have 880 acres of protected land. It is our goal to increase our land under protection to over 1,000 acres by the end of 2008. The second area of achievement is that we have all but 4 of our holdings updated to new LTA standards and those 4 are scheduled to be completed by the end of the year. This puts us well ahead of many land trusts in the nation.

LTA Accreditation
During the year, the Conservancy was selected by the Land Trust Alliance (LTA) into a pilot program to become fully accredited by that organization. Only a handful of land trusts were selected for this program and it is the only one in the state of Wisconsin to complete the first round of the pilot program. It took a tremendous amount of work preparing and submitting the documentation required, as well as responding to questions posed by the agency. The effort was a great experience and will help us ensure we are the best land trust we can be.

Organization
We added one new member to our already strong team this year. Terry Quinn joined us this year to help on a part time basis with our fund raising efforts. She will be focusing on Membership development and obtaining grants and foundations.

Fundraising
Our weakest area this year has been in the fund raising effort. We are considerably off our targets, as you will see in the financial report. This is in part my responsibility for not providing enough leadership in this area but, quite honestly, it also due to conflicts with our Mai Tai party and the fact that it has been a "quieter" year for the Conservancy in terms of our advocacy efforts.

Improvement Areas
In closing, I would like to comment on a couple of improvement areas for the GLC. We need to find a better way to stay in touch with lakes area summer residents - beyond our parties. They need to know what is going on in order to support us but are difficult to reach. This annual meeting perhaps can be improved to achieve this goal.

A second area for improvement is our Board and committee structure. By broadening our Board and strengthening our committee structure, I believe we can be more effective in responding to development issues and achieving our long terms land protection goals on behalf of the community.

Thank you!

Charles L. Colman
Chairman, Geneva Lake Conservancy