 What we do as we get started, in addition to welcoming all of you here, is just acknowledge the folks that will be either making remarks or that are with us today and most of whom essentially represent stakeholders in this project. Really it's a project that is built around collaboration of the public sector and the private sector and quite a range of people that we have here. I'm going to ask each one of them and make some remarks in a few minutes, but just to introduce them. We have the Honorable Mayor, Mike Van Der Steen from Schwoigen, Mike would you, okay, we'll be talking with us a little bit. Mike's been instrumental not only as the Mayor, but as a Rotarian in helping support this project throughout and we're appreciative of it. The city administrator is not with us, is he, is not, all right. The Superintendent of Parks and Forestry, Joe Curlin, Joe, where are you, okay, and Joe will give us a few words as well and it's another one of these guys that's forgotten more about forestry and trees than any of us in Roots will know and in many respects he is probably the instigator of some of this because he was the guy that really mentored me as we got into this a couple of years ago about the nature of the emerald ash borer problem that we're combating here. We also have the City Forester and most of you have already met Tim, Tim, okay, and Tim will be with us this morning and is really the guy in the front lines that's making a lot of this happen. Schwoigen Rotary Club President Scott Lipke and Scott has support at Roots and is instrumental in what we're doing in this whole project as well and then, unfortunately, Scott Morrell with the Early Bird Rotary Club is not with us, but we have Jerry Plain, Jerry, who is in many respects responsible for what Early Birds is doing here because she really drove the Early Birds coordination with this project and also we have the advantage of the fact she's what I call the Zarina of the Making Spirits bike program and of course, when they're done today with volunteering, Jerry's going to take that team up and work on Making Spirits bright setup and she'll talk a little bit about that with us as well. We are fortunate to have Rotary District 6270 representatives with us today and we'll recognize them in a few minutes. They're instrumental in producing some of the significant grant money that is allowing us to expand this program. We have the former governor and the gentleman who is now head of the grant committee, if I got that right, Jeff Reed is in the back there with the yellow jacket on and the present district governor Craig Burnett. Craig, standing next to him, both of these gentlemen have come some distance to join us today and we appreciate that. We have from Alliant Energy representing our corporate donors today and frankly the single largest corporate donor that we've had an instrumental in one of these grants. We have an Alliant Energy representative and also an Early Bird Rotarian with us and that would be Mr. Smith, lost my place here. Nick, I'm sorry, lost my place. I don't have my glasses on. Nick, thank you. Sorry, I lost my place here without my glasses on, that's what I'm trying to do. We have then former mayor and I understand I have to introduce him as such and the honorable Tom Malotta, who at the moment is here more because he's wearing a hat as the Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership Chief Executive Officer and is working with us in this project. So, Tom's with us today to talk a little bit about LNRP and what they're trying to do in this whole program. I'll acknowledge and they're not all with us today, but I have a category of people in the Rotary Club that work countless hours on roots and I'll just mention them by name, if any of them are here, please be recognized Donna Wedlin, YMCA CEO, Mike, Attorney Mike Roth, who has worked with us particularly in the fundraising side of the house. Stuart Schmedu's on the Lakeland University staff and Denise Witzach, who is also working on social media issues with us. Not with us today, I wish it would have liked to have been is the DNR rep from Plymouth. Olivia Whithun and Olivia has again been one of these people that's been supporting us in instrumental in getting state assistance to us, but the DNR does not permit her to be present with this number of people, even with masks or even outside, so she would have been here but for that. So, apart from that, again, welcome all the volunteers and the media that are with us this morning. Let me talk for just a few minutes about roots. I think many of you know a little bit about it. The impetus from this, as I mentioned, really starts with a project with Joe Curlin and the city staff and the two Rotary Clubs here in Sheboygan in the year 2018 when we came together to try to provide some support to the city of Sheboygan to carry out a Rotary International Edict, which was to plant one tree for every Rotarian throughout the world. So the two Clubs came together and said, we'll do this in connection with the city of Sheboygan. We worked with Joe Curlin and the city staff to make that happen and I got tapped in a week moment by our club president at that point to go in and serve on that panel. And what happened in the next six or eight months is Joe got my attention as to the scope of what was really going on in the city of Sheboygan and beyond with the Emerald Ash Board infestation. I knew about it. I guess I didn't realize the enormity of the problem and what it represented. So I guess I was educated for about six or eight months and coming out of that, I suggested to him and then to the Rotary Executive Board for our club, the Sheboygan Rotary Club, that it seemed to me that there was a need to bring the private sector into the problem, into this ecological problem that was devastating the area. And the city was probably not in a position quite frankly with its staff to do that and for political reasons either. But it seemed to me the Rotary Club because of its community outreach and the fact that it is involved in non-profit work and has members that of course are from the business community as well as persons in the public sector as club members, we were ideally positioned to maybe bring some sort of a program together that would raise resources that could then be turned over on a cooperative basis with municipalities not only in Sheboygan but throughout Sheboygan County. And in a weak moment, the Sheboygan Rotary Club board agreed to this proposal of mine. I mentioned that I actually went up and worked a little bit with the folks in Oshkosh and a program they had kicked off in 2010 not to deal with Emerald Ashfor but to deal with greening up the city of Oshkosh by raising private capital that then in conjunction with the city of Oshkosh could be used for that purpose. So I learned a little bit about what they were doing, came back and we began structuring the program. As we structured that program, I discovered again from Joe an organization I knew nothing about called the Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership. And I said they're going to talk to you a little bit later on but I realized Rotary needed to have some technical expertise. If we were going to go forward with a program that was related to conservation and tree planting, we had some people that knew something about it but we didn't know enough and we probably didn't have the kind of connections we needed. So Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership agreed to partner with us in a collaborative effort to do what Roots is doing. So that was really the offset. We set up an MOU in late 2018 and then began the structure, putting the structure together in 2019. Took a while to do that but essentially what Roots is designed to do is three things in terms of an overall strategy. What we're doing today is really one prong of that strategy but I'll just touch on the other two and Tom's going to talk to you a little bit about those other two aspects as well. We wanted to do public outreach and education because by and large I realized and again this was something that Joe made clear to me, the public quite frankly doesn't understand the nature of the ecological problem here. I'm going to talk for a moment a little bit about that. But we needed to educate the public on this topic and do some outreach. So one of the legs of what we have is to work with the Maywood Center which of course is a city entity as well and works on ecological problems. We've worked with Maywood and others to try to reach out to the public. What we're doing today in many respects in employing media in all of these events is to broaden that education and knowledge. We've done some workshops out there for private landowners and what to deal with the E.A.M. or Lashmore problem. And then we have gone on beyond that to a second prong which is we've realized that in many areas, not the city of Sheboygan but through many areas in Sheboygan County particularly the townships, there is little forest management or planning that has been done. The resources aren't there in these townships but the trees are. And what we have done and I think Tom will talk a little bit about that is we have sought some resources to come to the aid of township governments here. So you're not going to see that today but it is another prong of what we're doing. If we're going to try to plant trees, we need to have forest management planning done. And so we're about the business of doing that. The third prong of our strategy here and the one that you're involved in today is to build resources from the private sector that can be used effectively in matching grants with the municipalities throughout the county to do what these county or what these municipal governments frankly don't have the resources to do completely on their own. In effect I guess I'm a retired naval officer and I use the term this is an all hands on deck effort. We have to get the private sector, corporate shabuagan county, donors with capacity, individual donors and others involved in this process to deal with this problem. Emerald ash borer in the state of Wisconsin essentially is going to destroy our great percentage of our tree canopy. About three quarters of a billion that's with a B of our trees in the state here are ash and almost all of them eventually are going to die as a result of this infestation. There is no cost effective way of spraying these trees or treating them. Tim will talk perhaps later about some things that can be done to inject a chemical treatment into trees but it's costly and you can only deal with a limited number of trees. Fundamentally this ash problem is going to kill the trees throughout the state. Wisconsin county in its public holdings alone has about 17 million ash trees. That doesn't include the ash on individual private holdings. So we have a huge number of trees in our canopy here that are simply not going to make it through this. Any of you that have driven to Milwaukee recently while the trees are still fully and it was getting to the point where it's hard to do that right now but if you go down on the I-43 and you get beyond Usper, you get the Cedar Grove and you look to the left and you look to the right you will see large areas that have been defoliated, totally defoliated. What that is is ash borer at work. Those trees are either dead or are dying. That same condition is going to exist here in the Sheboygan area and the communities in Sheboygan county very shortly. Most of the trees, in fact virtually everything out here that you're dealing with today or at least the trees that are being planted are replacing ash that the city either has removed or is removing already because they're infected. And they pose a danger either in terms of personal injury or improper damage. Elkhart yesterday, some of the fire department staff that's working out there was describing a couple of instances where some of the ash trees there and limbs went down and nearly hurt people in Fireman's Park. So it's a real problem and the city needs to have the resources to be able to drop these trees and then of course what we'd like to do is see a lot of them replaced. So this third prong of our strategy is to raise resources that will help with this process. Tim will talk with you a little bit, but the city of Sheboygan has thousands and thousands of ash trees, virtually all of them at this point are diseased, infested and if they haven't come down they're going to have to be the tree, the city is treating some of them. But it's a major, major problem. So what I'm describing here is a tree canopy that is at risk. The advantages to the tree canopy of course are public health, recreation, our ability to attract and maintain our workforce here depends on outdoor public recreation and public health and the beauty of the area and if we lose a high percentage of our tree population, I think economically that's going to have an impact. Trees are also helpful in terms of keeping energy cost down throughout the year. The winter as well as in the summer. So those are among some of the reasons and then if you're a property owner, trees invariably enhance the value of your property. Those are just some of the arguments for why we've got to get at this and why Rotary is reaching out with other stakeholders to do something about it. With that, and I appreciate you listening to that pitch, you can tell I'm impassioned about what we're doing here and the people, the stakeholders I'm working with, I think share much of that same passion. What I'd like to do is at this point recognize the mayor to talk a little bit about the city's role in this. As I said, these projects which I haven't specifically outlined are combined projects of collaboration with the city of Sheboygan and with the stakeholders you're going to hear from today. But I'll let the mayor talk a little bit about that, right? Thank you so much, Tony. I was going to say a few things about the history too, but Tony covered it very, very well. But today as mayor, I just want to give a big thank you to the Rotary Clubs from Sheboygan, both the downtown club and the Early Bird Club. I'm so proud to be a member of one of the Rotary Clubs because of projects like this and the way that they make a difference in our community. The city of Sheboygan had put a forestry management plan together when Ambril Ash Borer became a problem. As we implemented it, we really focused on our street trees and to be quite frank, we really didn't have a real strong plan yet to dress all the trees in our parks. When Rotary came through back in 2018 with planting a tree for every Rotarian, it was a great opportunity to get started with the club in that. Tony told part of the story, but I think it goes a little bit deeper. Well, Harvey used to tell the rest of the story and I hope to do that today. You have to realize that Tony was raised here in Sheboygan. Years ago when we had a Dutch Elm disease, Tony's mother was very involved in the community and really helped to get the city through that Dutch Elm disease. He had a lot of this in his background. When we had that meeting where we planted the trees in Sheboygan and we had a big ceremony at the land park, Tony didn't stop with that. He kept on researching and looking and he said that he found the place in Oshkosh. They had a great program. He massaged that idea a little bit and he brought it to his Rotary clubs and they said, that sounds like a great idea, Tony, keep on going with it and he did. So I want to give this man a lot of credit for seeing a problem and finding a way to solve it and then getting a lot of people to help him do the job. So Tony, big hand to you for everything you've done. And then again, the Rotary clubs have a great association with our region and our districts, 6270 and they really make a difference with the Rotary grants that they turn in from our foundation donations. They give those back to the clubs so they can return them to the community and on both local projects and international projects. So the district's done a great job and LNRP has been a great partner for us as well. I think they've really opened Tony's eyes up to other areas that he can go for grants and things like that and help him to see the possibilities there. He's also done a great job reaching out to the community and so things go out to a lion energy for making a huge contribution to this project and helping to invest again in the community that they live in. So I want to thank everybody for being here today to participate and thank you again to the Rotary clubs for making this all possible. Thank you, Mike. What I have to make a confession here, he's right about my getting involved because of my mother's involvement with the Dutch Elm disease. But what he didn't tell you is when the community put together some private committee folks to work on the Dutch Elm disease, they replanted a whole lot of trees in Sheboygan that were killed by the Dutch Elm disease. Guess what they put in? Ash. To some extent, I'm probably paying for the sins of one of my relatives here for the fact that we didn't have enough biodiversity coming out of it. What I'd like to do at this point is recognize, represent this from both of the Rotary clubs, as I said, this total project here, which represents, in terms of the contributions that the clubs have brought forward, the roots and the private donors and then the city's contribution of labor, as well as equipment and some financial assistance as well. These two projects together are over $80,000 in value of the city and represent about 127 trees going into six parks. That's a lot of trees, and as you can see, these are good-sized plants. So this is making a difference, and these two Rotary club organizations really are working with roots to drive this. So Scott Liffke, I'd like to invite Scott to come up with the Sheboygan Rotary club and talk a little bit about his involvement. All right. Thank you, Tony. Yeah, I think a lot of congratulations has to go to Tony. I think you've turned this into a full-time job for the last two or three years. So he's a great example of what a Rotarian does, and this is just one of the things that Rotary is involved with locally. I'd like to, as I said, I'd like to thank Tony, also all the committee members who went through the list of names, so I won't repeat the names. All the Rotarians that are here, can you stand up and raise your hand? So we have infiltrated you, so we're pretty strong. So we have three clubs. As Tony said, we have the Noon Club we meet at Mondays at Noon. The Plymouth Club meets Noon on Wednesdays, and then the Early Bird is seven on Thursday mornings. So we always encourage new members to join. So if you want to join a group that does a lot of good things and has some fun along the way, we encourage you to reach out to us. We'd love to have new members. A little bit about Rotary internationally. We have 1.2 million members throughout the world spread across the globe. So it's a big organization that do a lot of international, a lot of good causes, including fighting diseases like polio, that's one of our big things. We got that narrowed down to like two countries now that have polio. We've just gotten rid of one in Africa that's polio-free now. So, you know, as they say, we're this close to getting rid of polio. There's safe drinking water programs. There's also protecting women and children, education, and a whole slew of other things that Rotary International does. Locally, other than, you know, things like this, Roots, we do Making Spirit Sprite, which I'm sure Jerry will talk about. She's been a tremendous driving force in getting that going. They've benefits the Shibuya Food Bank. Ark Club, the Noon Club does, we do a flag program. Anybody see those flags that go up around the holidays? Okay, and we do that. We help on the wheels on wheels. We help them with the Salvation Army providing some meals on a monthly basis and also ringing the bell, just to name a few things that you're probably familiar with that Rotarians are involved with. Other club, or I should mention that we have Interact Clubs in the high schools, North and South, and we also have a Rotor Act in at Lakeland University. So they're kind of like our farm clubs. So teaching the young kids to be a good Rotarian in the future. So with that, I think that pretty much covers what I want to say. I think everything else has already been said. Again, I thank you all for showing up and helping us plant some trees. Thank you. Thanks, Scott. And with the early birds, we have Jerry playing with us this morning, and I have specifically said that she is entitled to promote making spirits bright because part of the reason that we're at Area 5 in a big way is, of course, this is an important area for another major program that their Rotary Club has. So Jerry? Thank you very much. Thank you for your attention. I know you're all anxious to get out and do what we really came to do today, so hopefully this is brief. Just like to thank you all for the opportunity, to give me the opportunity, to speak about early bird Rotary in particular, and our involvement with the Roots program, to replace the trees that are lost due to this devastation of the ashore. Our air quality will be positively impacted, of course, through these efforts for years to come. We realize that the trees we plant today, throughout our footprint will benefit all of us from the health standpoint, and certainly the beauty of enjoying them as well. We'd like to give a shout out to District 6270 for approving our grant that allows us to participate in this tree planting today. And certainly thanks to Tony, like everybody has said, whose passion for the project provided the impetus for all of us to be involved today. Early Bird Rotary is a morning club of approximately 40 members dedicated to the Rotary International's motto of service above self. While small in size, we are large in commitment to giving back to the city and the county of Sheboygan. Some projects locally are the maintenance and the planting of the Rotary Intersection on 8th and Indiana in Sheboygan. Some years, many years back, actually, as that big sculpture was put up there, I thought, oh my goodness, this is an entrance to a city. What can we do to beautify this? And so the rest is history. Recently, we helped with some remodeling out at the Maywood property. And we've often, over the course of the years, helped over at the Bridgeway facility helping them with painting and new concrete and whatever else they come up with us for us to do there. This year, we will be finalizing the last of our commitment to the Red Raider program at South High. We made a five-year commitment of $50,000. And we're proud to say that this year we will be paying that off in full thanks to our annual lobster boil that is held in Fulton Park. Our grant will further assist replanting in two other parks, as Tony has alluded to. But this one in particular has a very soft spot in our heart. Due to the cooperation of the city of Sheboygan and its public works department, this year we will be celebrating our ninth year of providing Making Spirits Bright in this very park. This dwelling will become our church display, as many of you are aware, as you frequent our event. Today, as we speak, our volunteers are beginning to set up those displays, believe it or not, October and into mid-November is usually the time for that. Many people here have offered their assistance always to make that a special event. Our main thrust for that is gathering pantry items for the Sheboygan County Food Bank. We've set a huge goal this year, hoping that people are so excited to have something to do that wasn't canceled, that they bear in mind that the reason for this is helping the food bank. So our goal is collecting 150,000 pounds, which is a 50% increase from our goal last year. So spread the word, help us make that happen. We appreciate our relationship with the city of Sheboygan and all of the aforementioned endeavors, and we'll continue to strive for future opportunities to work together for the good all that reside here. Thank you. Thank you. I've asked somebody from the district, Craig Burnett, to come up and say just a few words, because what is happening here is there have been three district grants, and they've granted the maximum amount this year for each of three projects. The two clubs here this morning have been awarded each $3,000, which is allowing a lot more to be done than we would be able to do without that. So it's further fattened if you want the community investment fund that we've had. And what they've also done is provided another $3,000 grant for the Plymouth Club, and we've expanded our effort out at Plymouth as well. So a total of $9,000 has been contributed by 6270 to this project. So, Craig, I hope I haven't stole your thunder there, but we want to thank the district for your involvement. Thanks very much. I want to start by recognizing the Rotary Clubs involved in this, because while Rotary is an international organization, it's one where the boots on the ground are right here and now literally. So very often we work at our local projects and international projects individually as clubs, but also as you're seeing today collaboratively with each other and with other private and public partners, and that is a recipe for success in our world. We are Rotary organized into 35,000 clubs internationally in round numbers, and each of them has projects like this, and I'd like to call out something that we've heard today is that two years ago Rotary challenged each Rotary Club to plant trees one per member worldwide. That's 1.2 million trees was the minimum goal, and it was far exceeded, and it's a beautiful thing to see it continue in venues like this in needs just like we have because of the Emerald Ash Board. Each Rotary Club is organized with a group of others called the District, in our district, 6270, there are 54 Rotary Clubs in southeast Wisconsin, and the district has a responsibility for administrative and support and service to the clubs themselves, including providing grants monies from the Rotary International Foundation, which is one of the strongest foundations in the world, and we are thrilled to be able to provide $9,000 for projects like this Rotary year to know each of those grants of $3,000, that is the absolute maximum, so that is a sign that this is an important project. We granted three times for three clubs, $9,000 total for a very important project, and we're grateful we've done so, and I'd like to close with a thank you because that's really very important to me. All the Rotarians here, all the other partners here, we're in a time of pandemic, we're in a time of economic challenge. We could have sat back and done nothing, but yet Rotarians and our partners keep on going, even in challenging times, and I'd like you all to give yourselves a pat on the back around the applause. Let's go off again very quickly. We have two more individuals I'd like to recognize. I mentioned that we had some corporate sponsorship here, and one corporate sponsor in particular I wanted to recognize, and that's Alliant Energy that is really interested in one of the parks, because it's next to their power generating facility in the south side of Sheboygan. So we have with Alliant here a representative who also happens to be a member of the early bird club, and who we'll be with this in. Nick, can I ask you, Nick Bonner? Good morning everyone, and thank you Tony for the opportunity to be here this. I have beautiful morning, I'm going to say wet fall morning, representing Alliant Energy. My name is Nick Van Gogh, I'm the manager of customer operations here in Sheboygan. My company is honored to be a part, to be a host, excuse me, along with the Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership and the city of Sheboygan of today's Roots Project Kickoff Treat Planting Ceremony. We're also extremely grateful to be able to assist Roots financially through our foundation. Two of Alliant Energy's corporate values are to act for tomorrow and make things better, and by partnering with Roots, I believe we're able to accomplish both. Supporting Roots is important to our company because we need to act now to prolong the life of ash trees and to increase the diversity of trees across the city. Planting events and other actions organized by Roots will help solve the problem created by the Emerald Ash Board. I know we've lost many ash trees in this park, other parks, and at our homes, but the good news is that the activities Roots is involved in can help make sure we have a healthy and sustainable tree population well into the future. One way we can do this is by planting new trees like y'all are doing here today. Alliant Energy appreciates being part of this effort and we're proud to be a part of the partnership that includes all of you volunteers along with representatives from the city, Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership, Sheboygan Early Bird Rotary Club, Sheboygan Rotary Club, and Rotary District of 62-78. Thank you. Okay, we're almost winding this up, but I would be remiss if I didn't recognize our partner, the Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership. And as I mentioned, Tom, a lot of the honorable Tom, a lot of my colleagues and mayors, you can keep that title. Mayor, former mayor of Fort Washington is with us and I've asked that he would talk a little bit about some things you're not going to see today, but are very much part of the whole Roots strategy. And that is some of the things that we're doing with state and federal grant money that's going to make a huge difference, I think, in this context. Tom? Got it. Thanks for leading me last, too. As a recovering politician, I don't get the microphone as often anymore. Tony promised me 35 minutes, so just buckle up and I'll get this out of my system, I promise. Actually, I'm going to build up Nick's comments on the weather. First things first, I have to tell all of you here in Sheboygan, celebrating a little bit the extraordinary excellence of your city leadership that Mayor Mike Van Der Steean could call forth from the heavens today, the rains. I mean, honestly, you can't have better weather for a tree planting. And for those of you who are city of Sheboygan residents, you should bear that in mind when you go to the polls. What is it next April, Mayor Mike, when you're up for re-election? And he didn't plant that in me, actually. We were just talking about that. But in all sincerity, thank you, Tony. Thank all of you for being here today. On behalf of our LNRP team, that's our acronym for Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership, I want to thank everybody for making this project possible by being here. Really an honor to be with all of you. So, very quickly, LNRP, dating back to 2003. So, pre-dating, obviously, my time as executive director has been working with partner groups, really from Dora County down to Ozaki County and inland to Lake Winnebago, to advance community conservation projects. Largely, the focus of those projects is habitat restoration, water quality, and more broadly, community engagement and education. Really, all of those things are hallmarks of this project. And again, such a privilege for us to be partnering with Tony, with Mike, with Donna, all of our Rotarian friends and, again, city and county leadership to help make this happen. For me personally, I was born and raised in Sheboygan, actually, on 27th Street. So, this is really personal for me today. My dad was an outdoorsman. And so, Evergreen Park and Maywood were really my stomping grounds growing up. Hiking, fishing, skiing, exploring, you name it. And losing my dad back at the end of January of this year, really special to be a part of this today and honored him as well. So, Tony has referenced former mayor. I lobbied for mayor emeritus. The venerable folks of Port Washington didn't agree, so I'll go with former mayor. But my six years, I think, in terms of leadership in the city of Port Washington, I experienced this very personally in terms of the capacity issues of local municipalities, townships, county government. The challenge is really in today's day and age. Even outside of the pandemic that Nick referenced, our reality, of course, of providing essential services for our residents within communities means that we're really stretched to do things like this. And hence, really, the essential nature of public-private collaborations, the support of all of you here, the energy that these kind of efforts bring forward. So, really kind of garnering that volunteer energy, bringing resources to bear, and ultimately, as with this, getting trees in the ground hopefully pays forward these efforts for generations to come. It's absolutely essential that we continue to have those kind of efforts because without them, local communities would not be able to move them forward. I just want to make a mention as I close very quickly, a couple of funding opportunities that we, LNRP, are bringing to bear in local communities, not only throughout Sheboyton County, but throughout our entire mission service area. Tony referenced emerald ash borer mitigation planning. We actually have a grant that we secured through the Wisconsin DNR, urban forestry, and so we're advancing some of that EAB mitigation planning and local townships. Obviously, they're really stretched in terms of their ability to not only do tree inventory, but put plans into place so that they can potentially do some of those things that are necessary to replace the ash, as of course, we are losing them. We also secured about 550,000 in total from the U.S. Forestry Service. So 200,000 of that is focused on really tree planting in the Sheboyton River basin, or the Sheboyton River water, excuse me, Lake Michigan basin. So obviously, Sheboyton County is a significant focus for that. I think about 2,000 trees will be going in the ground in addition to today's project and obviously the generosity, the resources coming from the Roots Community Investment Fund. And then the other 350,000 from the U.S. Forestry Service is actually focused on wetland mitigation. A big part of that is tree planting as well. And so they're a little bit more broadly in our service area, but certainly Sheboyton County included will be planting another 7,300 trees. So again, we all know Tony did a great job of highlighting the value for all of us of our trees. That is environmental, that is economic, and that is social. It is triple bottom line. And so from an LNRP standpoint, we're really proud and privileged to help lead forward efforts like this. Partner with all of you. See the difference it makes in communities as extraordinary as the city of Sheboyton. So again, to Tony, to Mike, to Donna, all of you Grotarians who've helped drive this forward, been the energy behind it, helped make it happen. Allowed us to be your partner city in Sheboyton County. Thank you for a really wonderful day. And Mike, thank you for the rain, clean credit, my friend. All right. Thank you. I indicated earlier that I'd like to have Joe Curlin come up and just, I think say a few words. We've got some people that really know what they're talking about here. When you get all of the guys like me that are involved in the planting and the politics out of the way. So, Joe, can you talk a little bit about where the city is and where it's headed in terms of dealing with this problem? Yeah, I'm going to turn that over to Gumball. But I am going to say that one of the most enjoyable parts of my position, I'm a superintendent of Parks and Forestry, where part of DPW is my division gets to work with partnerships. So, I met Tony in 2018. He learned about what's going on at the end of last work and he ran with it. I didn't do a thing. All right. So, Tony, we're here because of you and how you were able to work with your groups to bring them together and LNRP and Align Energy. And I see this in many things. I work with Jerry all the time with Making Spirits Bright. It's the most enjoyable part of my job and I thank everybody for being here today. I'm going to keep this quick but I do want to point one thing out. We've got a five-man crew that works for the city that's out there every day, dealing with what we're doing today. And I'm going to introduce them. Tim Bowles is going to be up in a minute. Tom Perle, Mark Kaiser, Jim Stromsky, Ken Menart in the back there. These guys are out in the lift trucks doing this every day, removing trees, trimming trees, planting trees, stump grinding. They're fighting against 25,000 trees. That's just in the streets. I'm not including the parks. And there's five of them. So, they've been doing a wonderful job. I'd ask that we can give them a hand, please. And I know this has probably been done to death, but you could just look what this partnership is doing. Every place you see is a dirt spot where a tree was. You can imagine that. You see that as you drive through the streets of Oregon and other towns in the county. There used to be a tree there. There used to be tree line streets. Now you're seeing openings. So, we have 3,000, well over 3,000 open planting sites. And you can just see it here. If it wasn't for what's going on today and what started two years ago, I'm not sure that we'd be able to replant after removing. And this would be a pretty open area. Quite changed. But we were able to remove plants one year. And I think that's a great, great partnership. Thank you. Y'all, I don't know, unless you want to say anything, we're going to turn it back over to him. He's really the guy that's going to be the straw boss in terms of our volunteer work today. And I guess it looks like the rain's sort of held up. So, I'll just turn it over to him. And if he wants to make any further comments, I'll let him do that. Again, I want to thank everybody for being part of this today and helping us as volunteers and helping us celebrate this event. I will close off on one thing, and that is we have a video audience today. We're not going away here for the next couple of years. This is a program that was set up to be about a four-year thrust. If you would, to get in and get this issue addressed as quickly as we can. But in order for the Rotary to continue to do this and the Roots organizations, we're going to continue to need private sector support. So, any of you that can help with gaining that support, whether it's corporate shaboying and large foundations or even small donors with some capacity, every dollar that we can put into this in a 501C-free foundation, which the County Rotary Foundation maintains for us, is money that will make available on a matching grant basis to shaboying and to these other municipalities that need the help. So, I'm looking for all the assistance and support that we can get going forward in terms of continuing to raise resources. We're fortunate that LNRP has come up with tremendous federal and state resources, but we need to tap the private sector as well. So, give us a hand on that if you will please. Tim, we'll turn it over to you. Thanks, Tony. I really appreciate everybody being here and helping out. I just want to just give a little brief overview of the city we've had Emerald Ash for here officially since 2016. They brought me in in 2016. I started the treatment of the trees, so we decided to treat like roughly half of the ash trees. We had about 5,000, not counting the woods ones, like any of these ones you see behind you. Those aren't in those figures. It's an every three-year cycle that we're treating these trees. We've had about 97% success rate to keep them alive. So, we treated 2,400. There's 2,400 that we put on removal list at that point. We still have about 400 left to remove with those original 2,400, so it's an ongoing effort. We're kind of trying to do the worst ones first. There's still some that are more alive than others. So, and this is going to continue and our resources are limited, Joe alluded to our tree crew. You know, these guys are stressed and they're given all they have. And we're doing the worst ones first to try to keep safety the top priority with these trees. But it's going to be an ongoing effort planting trees. You know, looking at safety, we want to get the hazardous ones down and then get rid of the stumps and then plant trees is kind of, you know, with stumps it's not the top priority because of safety, but it is very important just to see it and to start it sooner rather than later because these trees take up a long time to get to the size of the ash trees that were cut down. So, I really want to thank everybody for making this possible and the other five parks that we did this. And I'm excited to start planting these trees. I think most of you are as well. So, we'll get started. Let's go through. It's a lot different. So, now with these trees we're adding. To get started we need to, well, we already pre-dug the holes, right? So, we have an auger, dug the holes. We've got some mulch here on the side. So, when we're done, we'll cover with mulch. We've got some water to help us get the air pockets out of the way. So, we've got everything kind of prepped for everybody. But the first step would be to take this tree out of the container. So, I'm going to tip this over. And these slide pretty good out of here. And what you want to look at, you can lay these down. It's not going to hurt them. But the problem, one of the issues with containerized trees is the roots can start circling around the container because they've been growing in there for so long. So, we don't want to just put this in the hole because those roots will continue to be kind of in that container shape. So, the important thing to do is to break these up. I mean, you can use your hands. You can use the blade of a shovel. If you rip a couple of them, it's not the end of the world. The good thing about these containerized trees is they don't have a lot of damage like a bald and burlap tree would have where the bald and burlap trees have been growing and then the roots get cut and balled up. So, these, they have the majority of their root system here. So, it's definitely better than leaving them in a shape that they're going to continue to grow around as if they were still in the container. So, this looks pretty good. There's going to be some that we find today that are going to be worse than this one. So, it might take more work to rough those up. But this one's pretty good at this point. The next thing we want to do is you have to find the root collar. So, just because you see this bulge here doesn't mean that that's the root collar. The root flare needs to be at the surface of the ground, not below it. Even if it's an inch or too high, it's okay. But if it's too low, then the tree will be buried too deep and those roots instead of growing down and out, they'll be growing up and could potentially grow around the trunk and that could lead to what's called a girdling root and that'll basically suffocate the tree like 20 years from now. So, to find this root collar we'll lay this down again and we'll just shave off the top of this this container ball. So, being careful not to hit the trunk with a shovel, you can use your hands if you want. But you need to dig away at this material until you find a substantial root growing out. Now, sometimes I've already seen where they're halfway down so it can be surprising how deep they are. But they are there, we'll find it. And it's okay even if you go a little too far and have to bury it a little bit. Thanks, Kenny. Because you really kind of want to expose. You want to see what's going on. So, here I got two roots. This one's kind of small this one's a little bigger but then right here there's a really large one I don't know if you can all see that. So, right here is that's definitely a structural root. These other two they're pretty big they're they're okay but they're not even on this other side we roll it some more you can see this other really nice sized one. So, that's where we want it to be at the ground level. So, even if this roots a little high when we end up planting it that's okay. These other ones are the important ones. So, what's nice about these containers they're pretty light so we can just set this in the hole and say oh wow that's too deep. And what would be helpful is to dig dig yourself a little path so you can see what the ground level is. We can see that we're too deep we need to add some fill to the hole and the important thing is when you're doing this you really want to get that solid in there so you want to get your feet dirty your shoes dirty and really pack that down because you want a firm base if it's loose the tree's going to end up sinking in the future. So, there ground level good flare I think I think we'll go just a little bit higher Kenny yeah that's a good idea let's pull let's pull this take a path on each side then we can lay this across. Let's just get a little more dirt in there I think we need to go better to be too high or too low? It's better to be too high because there might be a little settling and it's okay if you're an inch or too high but if you're low it's not as forgiving so there I like where that's at the major roots are below this little one is here high that's perfect I like where that's at so let's leave that there we're going to slowly just put a little dirt in around it and then we want to get it so it's straight before we put too much in these these wooden lads that we have we use to mark where the trees are going to go they also work really nice for packing this dirt in around the trees we'll get a little dirt in pack it down with that and then what we'll do is we've got two pails of water on each by each tree I'd say we use about a half a pail and wet this down because you want to get rid of any air pockets that are that are in the bottom of the hole and by doing this it's going to really firm it up where we can get the tree straight and it'll stay straight as we finish it and I'll look at how the trees sitting now this way it looks really straight to me but I'll get I'll go 90 degrees the other way and look at this way now some trees are unique you know they have bends and stuff so you don't want to look at the top of the tree you want to focus on the bottom six feet this tree I'd say have to go a little bit that way just slightly yeah I like that and then I'll go back to this side since we moved it make sure it goes slightly that way okay that looks good so we got it straight now we can continue backbilling it now there's going to be extra dirt by these holes so I would say avoid any big clumps or big rocks or anything try to keep those out because those are going to go away eventually try to use the best dirt you can we'll get it kind of level then we'll use the other half of this water to again get rid of more of those air pockets then we can just keep backbilling if anybody has a question let me know but using the water really helps we don't have to jump up and down on these to try to pack them in I mean you can use your foot and gently try to even things out but that's really all that's going to be needed in this way looking really good the thing we'll do with this extra dirt is we'll end up putting it in one of these containers and we'll pick these up at the end of the day today but I'll just pull it off to the side for now so we'll end up putting this in the bin so we can do that in a little bit the mulch mulch is important too there's ways you can screw this up so the key is you can't really go too wide I'm not worried about the mulch being too wide it's being too deep on the tree so I did this on purpose you see these volcano mounds a lot and that's not what you want that's suffocating the tree on the trunk and causing potential extra wetness in there bacteria and fungi to get in so you can dump it like I did but then you'll want to spread it out to cover the disturbed area and if it has to go a little wider that's fine but you really don't want it piled up on the trunk of the tree you want to pull it away just so there's maybe an inch close there but then you want to shoot for about 3 inches thick of this mulch layer this is going to help retain moisture and keep the temperature more so it doesn't fluctuate as fast when the outside temperature changes so this looks pretty good I'm happy with that we'll use this other pail of water just to start wetting down that mulch layer just so that has a good moist start and this tree will be okay next week we'll come back and we'll water these trees again if we don't get any rain or anything sounds like we're going to get some rain today we don't want to rely on the rain especially when you just plant the tree so we will come back and water next week and make sure they stay moist until they're dormant this season then we won't need to water again until the spring