 All right, good evening everyone. Hi there. We're gonna get started. We always typically start these Davis Future Forum events just a few minutes after seven, give folks that are still arriving time to get in here and I'm sure we'll be joined by a few others as the evening progresses. Thank you first of all so much for being here this evening. The Davis Futures Forum is a collaboration of experts from both the community of Davis but also UC Davis and we've had folks from all around the country come to visit Davis to share their expertise and their wisdom on a whole wide range of topics. This is probably, Alan would know, probably the 10th or so, 10th or 12th Davis Futures Forum event. So we're really happy to have you all with us this evening. Wanna thank, firstly, the city of Davis is also a sponsor of this event. Davis Media Access has been a very strong supporter and then also Davis Enterprise as well too. So this, as usual, this event is being recorded and so it'll be available to be viewed. Cool Davis, of course I meant to mention also. Cool Davis is a major supporter and sponsor of an organization. But it will be available for viewing later. So if you find that you wanna share this with your friends, you will have that opportunity to do so. So we're really happy to have Jeremy here with us this evening. We actually, before I get to the introduction of Jeremy, just wanna give a little bit of an overview of some of the things that are happening here in Davis. We're also gonna have a panel of local experts and who are very involved in our tree community and natural resources community here in Davis and Yolo County. So I think the thing that we, and you see it up here as far as the agenda or the title of the presentation this evening, Davis in 2060, what is that gonna be like, right? And it's, in some ways, kind of scary. Trees are Tucson and we have some, there's a number of us in that audience we're talking earlier. We have a variety of friends who live in Tucson and they were like, hey, wait, Tucson's a great city. But I think that what is trying to convey is that changes are upon us and it's happening now and it's, we are going to be living in a future in this community that is gonna, I think it's safe to say, be radically different than what it is today. And we've already started to see the issues in terms of adaptation that's happening in terms of the types of trees in our community, the tree canopy. We're already seeing a situation where many, much of our mature tree canopy is having issues. The Modesto Ash is a perfect example of that, reaching their naturally sort of end of life cycle when we are seeing major areas of the city that had Modesto Ash planted that are being taken out and we really need to figure out what we're doing and what we're going to be doing and the types of trees that are going to be acceptable to live in the community in the years to come. So it's interesting that the Tree Commission, of course, in the city's urban forestry program are very involved in that, certainly as well as one of our major local community partners, Tree Davis. And it's interesting, the city right now is just getting ready, just about ready to start updating its climate action and adaptation plan. And the real emphasis, we have had a long time climate action and adaptation plan, but the reality is this new update that the city council has just authorized with about a half a million dollars in initial funding to go towards that update is really gonna be focused on adaptation and the efforts around adaptation in the future and how we adapt to a changing climate. And one other quick item which I would say is that which is really great news of how are we gonna tackle this problem or tackle this issue? The city has just recently was awarded a half a million dollar grant from the state of California to develop a new urban forestry master plan. And along with that, there's gonna be a planting of about a thousand new trees in addition, but also one of the components is an updated actual database, GIS database of every existing tree in the city limits. And so that is gonna be extremely helpful in terms of that inventory as we move forward in the years to come as we start to adjust these issues of climate change. So let's see, I would just a couple other quick things. We're gonna, I'll introduce Jeremy in a second, but after our main speaker, we're gonna have a time for Q and A of him. And then we're gonna have the panel that I mentioned previously, including Aaron Donnelly Marano, who's the executive director of Tree Davis. She's with us this evening. David Robertson, also of Tree Davis, but in many other roles in the community, and also Greg McPherson. So those three individuals are gonna be our local, but also in some cases nationally renowned expert panel. And we will be joining us just after we do our Q and A with Jeremy, and then we will proceed to the panel and have the opportunity for them to make their comments and remarks and questions. And then we will also have time for Q and A for them as well. And as per usual, we will wrap up just at about 8.30 p.m. Because Jeremy, we have to get Jeremy back to the airport. He is headed back down south. So with that, actually I'd love to introduce now our speaker this evening, Jeremy Clemmick. He's an associate principal at SWA in Los Angeles with 20 years of experience as a landscape architect throughout Southern California. At SWA, Mr. Clemmick led the city of Thousand Oaks urban forestry master plan project, which updated the city's design standards for street trees, roadway medians, and planting pallets towards today's climate conditions and sustainability standards. And immediately following the success of that award-winning plan, the city of Thousand Oaks contracted SWA to implement the recommendations on five pilot projects as proof of concept for the principles of the forestry master plan, and drought tolerance and community approved design pallets. Similarly, they've also done work for Cal State University Long Beach on their 320 acre campus. They are updating campus landscapes towards a more water efficient and drought tolerant palette in order to adhere to the campus' renewed standards of sustainability, both from environmental and financial points of view. His construction experience, attention to detail and scheduling expertise helps to ensure that complex public projects are brought to fruition. So we are really thankful to have Jeremy with us this evening. And with that, I will turn it over to our featured speaker. Thanks very much. Thank you. Well, that saves a part of who am I, right? All right, we're good. So really when we're talking about people, we're talking about trees as well. And we're talking about relationships. And my relationship that actually brought me to the city of Davis was fostered from when I gave a talk with Greg McPherson at the 2017 ASLA on urban forestry. And through that relationship, as you can see, it's not really a chain of events. Everyone gets influenced from everywhere else, right? So Greg influences me. I've then met Allen through Greg, Judy, and now we're all here in Davis and we're here to talk about trees, right? But really it's a web of people that brings this all together. So what you're gonna hear about tonight is three topics basically. There's urgency, there's solutions, and then there's implementation. So first, let's get to the urgency. Begins with understanding what an urban forest is. An urban forest is really all plant life. It's trees, it's ground covers, it's the shrubs, it's your street trees, your park trees, your residential trees, your native trees. A real good definition of urban forestry is actually green infrastructure. We think about our asphalt streets, we think about gray infrastructure, but rarely do people talk about green infrastructure. And everything that brings that together really helps our urban environment. So funny enough, my first introduction to the urban forest was when I was a kid in elementary school and the tree people, which is a society down in Los Angeles that was founded by an 18-year-old kid in 1973. They came to our school and they handed out little tiny trees and test tubes. And I took one of these home, we put it in a milk carton, and we named her Ashley. And she got planted behind my dad's garage. And as you can see now, she's now a 70-foot tall plus ash tree, which my dad swears is sucking up the pool dry and is gonna tear the foundations out of the garage. So there's a difference between planting a small tree and getting excited about it, and I'll get to it later, the right tree and the right place, right? And tree people has actually grown up since there as well. They've now got a 45-acre facility atop the Cold War Canyon. They give talks all over the nation. And I actually had a pleasure of hearing Andy Lipkis, the founder of Tree People Talk at an ASLA award just this last year. And usually they talk about planting trees, get out there and plant more trees, and this is what we wanna do and saving, manage the trees we currently have. And while his 20-minute keynote speech did a little bit of that, what struck me most about it was what he brought up was the skyrocketing heat island effect is the number one thing that has actually focused our issues right now in the urban forest. It's literally becoming a matter of life and death. So I also listened to a talk recently by a gentleman that Greg has worked with a long time, Dr. David Nowak. He is a USDA Forest Service member and he is part of the founder of iTree, which is a recognized toolset that enables cities and city managers to take value of their urban stock. And he brought up the 10 number one reasons why people try and promote trees in the urban environment. And it was pretty interesting to hear him go through it all and he said, number 10 is oxygen, oxygen production, you hear about that a lot. And I heard Ted talk with someone who was talking about oxygen production and he says, everybody in the audience, breathe, breathe with me, right? This is oxygen, breathe it in. Trees produce it. Yeah, well, true, trees produce oxygen and supposedly the healthy urban forest will give you about two thirds of the oxygen produced in the United States for people when you measure it. However, only 21% of the atmosphere is oxygen and 90% of the world's oxygen gets produced by the oceans. So even if all the trees and all the plant life were to die, we wouldn't suffocate, we wouldn't suffer. So oxygen production as tree production or tree promotion, it's kind of a fallacy. Jobs, job creation, you hear about it often. Forest management, management of the biomass. When the trees get cut down, they get mulched, they get chipped, what do they get produced into? Food, nut production. I hear almonds get grown around here, just maybe a couple. So there's a lot of jobs that come from trees but that's not necessarily the most important reason to promote trees in the urban environment. Noise reduction. Well, noise masking is really more what that does and the idea is that it's a perception of when you see something, you're gonna hear it and it's louder. If there's a tree there and you don't hear it, then it's kind of softer but the trees don't really have anything to do with noise reduction, it's more of a masking. Wildlife habitat, right? So the birds, the squirrels and the bees, right? Everyone loves them and I'm not here to give you the talk about the birds and the bees tonight. If you haven't had that talk, go somewhere else, okay? Yet, true, wildlife production's gonna happen but that will be an offshoot of focusing on what I believe we're gonna get to which is the number one reason to promote trees is about the people. Ultraviolet radiation absorption. Yes, trees absorb, tree leaves will absorb about 95% of UV radiation. It's one of the reasons why we like to plant them in schools. We have a big problem in southern California with sunscreen and cancer and UV radiation affects your skin. However, the tree may absorb 95% of that UV radiation but every single bit of blue sky you see through the leaves is still hitting your body as UV radiation. So really, you maybe get a 50% reduction if you're really trying to block UV radiation then you need a shade canopy, you need real shade. A tree's not gonna do that for you. Greenhouse gas reduction. Now we're starting to get into things that as David Novak said, were actually measurable. You know, you can go out and as you see a tree grow you will see it sequester carbon. Trees get bigger, more carbon sequestered but where this is kind of a fallacy in trying to promote trees is that you have to think about it as a cycle. The tree doesn't hold on to that carbon forever. As soon as the tree dies, it gets mulched or it gets burned or down in California or down in Southern Cal a lot of times people just chip them up and mulch up their lawns. We have now made all that carbon go back into the environment. A better way to store carbon would be to really recycle the trees into things like wood handles on chairs or podiums. This carbon that's in this podium here is sequestered for a lot longer than it was as if it was a street tree. So next three, water quality improvement. Very important, right? Stormwater infiltration. Trees catch the rainwater. They slow it down from going into the gutters. For every tree that's out there it slows the rainwater going down and percolation. Very true. However, we're talking about trees in the urban environment, right? Improvious surfaces are where we have a problem in the urban environment. Buildings, asphalt, parking lots, plazas, all of these impervious surfaces really stop stormwater infiltration. Research shows that for every 1% of an impervious surface that's broken up equates to about 10 to 12% of tree canopy. So if what you're really wanting to do is stormwater infiltration, break up the impervious surfaces. Air quality improvement. This is the number three, right? So air quality improvement's very important. Again, breathe. All the pollution that's coming from the cars, that's coming from the roads, we breathe it, or the trees breathe it. So the more trees we have, the more they will take in the air pollution and will help our own personal breathing. So air quality improvement is definitely an important one. Number two, socio-economics and aesthetics. It is very much so been proven that pleasant landscaping can contribute about 20% to any property value. Business investments, people will stay and shop in an area a lot longer with tree canopy cover. Scenic vegetation, people like to go out to the forest, like to go out to the trees, they like to experience that. There's actually, I've heard recently, a movement for forest bathing, where people will go out into the forest and it's an old Japanese, well I say old 1980s, it was promoted, and the Japanese philosophy of going out and enhancing your own health and vitality by breathing in the forest. So there's been some research, it's been done that if people are stressed out, even just showing them pictures of trees on the computer will calm them down. So that's number two. Now, number one, the mitigation of heat island effect. Again, this was a talk by the USDA Forest Service lead contributor to Itree. So now we've got Andy Lipkis, the founder of Tree People, worried about heat island effect. We've got the Itree People worried about heat island effect. We've got Alan calling me on the phone saying, hey, we're gonna be in the temperature range of Tucson out here within the next 100 years. That's 10 degrees increase that's happening. Why is, how do we mitigate this? What do we do? Well if you don't know what heat island effect is, this is a very quick, easy example. Heat island effect is the fact that an unshaded asphalt street is 40 to 60 degrees hotter than a shaded asphalt street. Even synthetic turf, I've been, I've deal with a lot of synthetic turf and people saying, let's put that in. It's 150 degrees in the heat. You can't walk on synthetic turf in the heat. I mean, the point of tonight's talk is that the snoring desert of Tucson will be in Davis soon unless we all act. What does heat island effect cause? Why does it matter to you? Sure, I can get in a car. I can go through air conditioning. I don't have to worry about it, right? So it's hot. Well, studies show that extreme heat causes more deaths in the United States than all other natural causes. Let that sink in. In 2014, the Center for Disease Control declared that extreme heat events cause more deaths than all other natural causes. We can think back to 2006 all within our own lifetime. There were over 600 deaths in California in 2006 over 10 days. 16,000 emergency room visits were logged. 1,100 hospitalizations, the marginal damages just of that heat wave, $5.4 billion. Again, it's about people. The bottom line of this is heat waves. Heat island effect causes death. Now, I'm not trying to scare anyone, but I am. You look at, it's not just out there. It's here. You look at the most recent climate reports. The Sacramento Valley Regional Report was one of 13 summary reports within California's fourth climate change assessment. Now, the slide's a little farther away and you can see the graphs and you can always download this and look at the graphs later, or I even recommend you download the actual report and flip through it. It's not overly long. You can even just flip through the one page summary if you like. I'll tell you what the conclusions were. Warming air and warming temperatures, more extreme heat waves, drier landscapes, less snow, more intense droughts. The average number of extreme heat days in Sacramento where temperatures are over 104 degrees Fahrenheit will increase from four days a year to 40 by the year 2100. Can we combat that? Well, there's kind of a problem. One of the reasons why this is happening is because of vanishing tree cover, because of vanishing trees. Cycle of an urban tree is about seven to 15 years. On average, the canopy of your large, mature trees that are there when new construction happens, when trees are torn out. Sure, let's force the developers, replace them at three to one, replace them at two to one. It's not gonna replace the canopy of that tree within our lifetime, probably not even within our children's lifetime. The large, mature trees really need to be protected. It even takes three to five years for a baby tree, a small tree that a developer plants to establish. And then who's gonna take care of it? We wanna make sure people are taking care of those trees. In this 2014 article, Beyond Planting, the urban forestry primer, they estimate that the US forest cover is disappearing by 19,000 acres a year, four million trees. 25% of US land by the USDA is classified as urban forest. Those numbers, they make a difference. So this article also mentions that there are only 127 of 329 US cities with populations over 50,000 that have tree canopy goals or have coverage goals or are even focusing on this as an issue. The main point again here is the natural forest, it doesn't need us to survive. It can do fine on its own. I mean, we can affect the natural forest, true. However, the urban forest cannot survive without people. I was thinking the other day, I was like, well, there's an old philosopher, his name, I had to look this up. His name was George Berkeley. And he asked the question of if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound, right? Well, the answer is really, well, who is there to hear it, right? Well, when the trees die in the forest, who cares? The answer is who is gonna care, right? The foundation of this whole theory is that your perception creates your reality. How you perceive the urban forest, all of you here and what we do with that is really gonna create the reality for the next 40 years with this urban forestry master plan. Finally, solutions, right? We're there. So how many people actually know what an urban forestry master plan is in the audience? There's a few. How many know that the city of Davis actually has a community forest master plan right now? See, a few more. How many of you know what year it was put into effect? 2002. So it's not old, you know, by the means of our lifetimes, but it's definitely getting outdated. And what is an urban forestry master plan? This little clip here is from the one that we did for the city of Thousand Oaks where we tried to hit it home of what does a treeless city look like, right? Why do you need an urban forestry master plan? Well, it's a vision that's shared by the city. It's a vision that's shared by the people. It is a tailored roadmap, which is based upon analysis to achieve goals and objectives. And you guys have the opportunity now to move forward and do that. So what are the parts of an urban forestry master plan? So when we took the city of Thousand Oaks master plan, it was done in 1989, and it was a 180 page plus booklet that was all done in hand typewriter and very unmanageable, very cumbersome. You could hand it to somebody and they'd be just looking at it and like, thanks, no problem, this isn't gonna get read by anybody, right? So moving into the digital age, moving into the next deal, we actually looked at it and broke it up into four different parts. We broke it up into the forestry master plan itself, then we broke it up into implementations, and then we broke it up into how we did our outreach, and we also broke it up into a planting and maintenance manual. You know, at least those four items should be part of any good forestry master plan. So moving forward, we broke the city up into geographical districts. It was one big city, we broke it up into five districts. We had people, and this is through working with public works. This is through working with public outreach. This is through working with the people and figuring out what it was that they really wanted. So each district voted on what trees they liked. They voted on what ground covers they liked, and we came up with geographical areas with their own distinct identities, their own branding. You know, are you gonna live in the area that has a bunch of flowers and trees, or would you rather live in the area that has colorful gardens, or would you rather live where we have the Oroio landscape? So it's about, a little bit of it is trying to get people excited about what it is that you're doing. So Urban Forestry Master Plan, I just mentioned, it's there to set goals. Now, the goals of City of Thousand Oaks, the goals of the City of LA, the goals of San Diego, Vegas, you know, any other city is gonna be different than the goals of Davis. Hence, tailored road map for the city. Now this research here was done by Greg, I'm sure he recognizes these slides. These are one of my favorites with the little turtle that barely does anything, a little small tree that does a little bit of rain cover or a little bit of carbon sequestration compared to the big bear or the big lion that will do these things. Now there's lots of research out there about those 10 topics that we just talked about. However, what is the most important to Davis? And that's what needs to be figured out. I'm not here to tell you. I would be here to help you figure that out. And that's what the Urban Forestry Master Plan is supposed to be about. So one of the things you'll hear a lot about is setting tree canopy coverage goals, right? The City of Davis I have recently learned within the last little while while I've been researching has a tree canopy coverage goal of 40%. Now if you look at Los Angeles, the reason why or anyone wants to set an urban canopy coverage goal, it's really more of a benchmark. It's not to sit there and say, this is good, this is bad, it's to say what do we have? And then come up with when do you want to achieve that goal? Now Los Angeles has 21% measured in 2006. They declared that we would have 28% by 2040. Vegas, which you see down there in the corner, 8.6% when it was measured in 2012. They're shooting for 20% by 2350. That's probably a mistype, 2035. I would hope they're not looking for 350 years. I guarantee you it's 2035. So, Washington, see every once in a while I want to bring in levity, that wasn't my plan, I promise. So Washington, DC, 35% in 2009, 40% by 2029. Davis currently, I wasn't able to find it. Greg probably knows. However, your goal is gonna be towards 40%. And that's important. So that's something we want to think about, but by when, right? That's what you gotta figure out. Now, a lot of cities don't have municipal codes, things that track trees. Davis does, Davis cares. You know, you have chapter 37 of your municipal code, which, and I'll quote verbatim, specifically, trees increase property values, provide visual continuity, provide shade and cooling, decrease wind velocities, provide erosion control, conserve energy, reduce stormwater runoff, act as filters for airborne pollutants, reduce noise, provide privacy, provide habitat and food value, and release oxygen. Sounds kind of like those last 10 things that I mentioned, right? But you also have a parking lot shading plan, which a lot of cities don't have, you know? The thing is, you have it, and it's in your guidelines. It specifically says that 50% of a paved parking surface must be shaded by tree canopy within 15 years. You require your design review applicants for all new and reconstructed parking lots to include a shade calculation table, including percentage shading for each tree. Does that happen? Does it get followed? It's there. It's the law, right? It's a great law. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's probably really difficult, and people probably have to think about it. I'm a landscape architect. I prepare these plans, you know, and trying to figure out what the canopy coverage of any specific tree over 15 years is gonna be, and do a graph and a table. You know, I'd be pretty mad at a developer if I went through the time and effort to make that plan and they didn't follow it. Much less, does it even really get submitted? I don't know. Possibly, probably. But I'll get to it in a little bit as to why that might be a question for your urban forestry plan. Your city of Davis tree commission exists. It was established in 1963. It establishes rules and regulations relating to planting, caring, maintenance of trees in the public streets, and provides guidance to the urban forestry manager. Rob's in the audience, he's right over there. You know, you have people that care. You have people that are working on things. You have public work street design standards. You have street tree planting requirements. You have parking lot shade guidelines, green street guidelines, downtown neighborhood guidelines, landscape specifications and standards. You have a city master street tree list. You have landmark trees, trees of significance lists. You require construction permits and tree removal permits. I mean, you, in the city of Davis, you care. Don't get me wrong. I'm not here to say that I don't think you care. What I'm here to do is to say this needs to be implemented. You need to figure out a way to get the information out there. I dug. I mean, that's what it looks like on the website. You know, is that engaging in any way, shape or form? All right. So there are other people, there are other places that do get it. There are developers that get it. I've worked with Disney. I've worked with Walmart. I've worked with the Beverly Hilton. They get mature canopy trees. You know, there I am out there tagging a specimen Pondoland palm that was out in front of the Beverly Hilton and it got dug out, shipped out, moved for a year and a half to a specimen tree nursery along with 80 other specimen trees from that site which I checked three times a year and went and made sure they were doing well and we planned all the new drawings around them and they all came back. You know, it wasn't just a blow and go, but, and I'll give the owner's son credit, he cared. You know, we sat there and we talked about it and we said, you've got a resource here. Don't just tear it all up. Don't just get rid of it. So again, we're talking about large corporations that realize to get a big mature canopy tree takes a long time. So municipalities. We've also got, you know, the city of El Paso. That's our construction, tree demolition, relocation and protection plan. This is in one of the hottest downtown centers in El Paso. They had large shade canopy trees. We explained to them the importance of it. We developed a plan that tagged and catalogued each and every one of these trees and they did tree protection around them. You know, these plans exist. You require them, but to get people to do it and to care about it is the most important thing. So let's move on just a little bit as we start talking about tree selection. Remember we talked about Ashley earlier? You know, the right tree in the right place planted behind my dad's garage. Probably not the right tree in the right place. There are bad trees that are out there. And you need to look out for trees that are gonna be under overhead utilities that are in the way of vehicular traffic, underground utilities, underground footings, signage, building frontage. You know, not every tree is right for every situation, but there are right trees for every situation. And that's what can get figured out. Now, I'd also be a little bit remiss if I didn't talk about the really bad trees. These ones that are right at the middle of the urban wildland interface. My cousin works for the LA Parks Rangers. My wife works there as well. My sister works for the Forest Service. Wildfire at the urban wildland interface is a big deal. The ladder effect, creaching through, tree fuel modification, all of that makes a difference. He actually sent me that photo yesterday in the bottom right-hand corner of a fire in the middle of Griffith Park that was happening last week. You can see the flames aren't below the tree. It's all up in the top part of that pine. So there are really bad trees. However, there are really good trees too. I recently attended the grand opening at our most recent project in downtown LA, La Plaza Village, and we planted a really large specimen sycamore there. 100 people plus, everyone's in their suits, everyone's excited to do the butterfly release. You know where they all stood. You know where the premium spot was to stand for that opening? Right in the shade of that sycamore tree. So, city of Davis gets it. This is right here. Here's the Davis needle. I actually had Greg drive me by it today because I wanted to take a picture of it. I took a little selfie, I was all excited. But this is really implemented and you just won the American Public Works Association Project of the Year. I don't know if you know that, you just won it. It was just announced last month. This project here, the Public Works Association Project of the Year. Congratulations, you know, you get it. It's permeable, it's a complete street. It's comfortable, safe for bikes, pedestrian cars. But I mean, you guys know this, you've seen it. It works really, really well. So one of my favorite phrases to use about landscape architects and what we do is that we work in the fourth dimension. We work in time. And we have the time to save everything. We have the time to fix everything. The question is, how are we going to do it? How are we going to implement everything? So, you guys just got half a million dollars, right? Awesome, excited, congratulations. I know Dale Summerlin's not here, but I heard that she was the one that pushed that forward. And Cal Fire doesn't give out these grants willy-nilly. It's not going to come again right away, you know? So you were part of the requisites of your grant was 1,000 street trees to be planted. And it's supposed to start taking place in October of 2019. I talked to Aaron. They planted the first 40 this last weekend. First 40 this last weekend were just planted from Tree Davis. So you can actually go on to Tree Davis and log in, fill out a form, and they will give you a tree. There's still 960 at least left, right? So with that money, it's also for an urban forestry master plan, but there's a timeline. The urban forestry master plan needs to be completed by the year 2021. So you've got about two years, right? We've been talking about everything that goes into these plans, everything that happens. You've got, in the city of Davis, two years to figure it out. The RFP is gonna go out probably by the end of this year at some point. Some firms gonna get selected to come in and help you figure it out. But part of the point of this talk is I wanna let you guys know the questions you need to ask. You know, I want you to know a little bit about what an urban forestry master plan is and go and research it on your own if this intrigues you even more. But get involved. You've only got two years and it's gonna last you for the next 40. Okay? So other cities have gotten it. You know, like city of San Diego received the grant from Cal Fire to inventory their trees and they created an urban forestry master plan. Same was the case in city of Thousand Oaks. They wanted to recreate the urban forestry master plan. They didn't receive a grant. You know, we talked about the Cal Fire Grant. We said, this would be great if you guys could get this. It's in there. If you look at their plan, it's one of the first things it says look into the Cal Fire Grant. My main point is use it wisely. So how do you use it wisely, right? First thing is to start with the tree assessment which is assessing what your tree canopy cover is, assessing what your trees are, assessing your street tree inventory and moving forward. This process is already taking place. It's happening. Greg actually, we had dinner earlier this evening and he confirmed that it's very near done if not done already. The actual inventory of the street trees here. So you guys, you've taken that first step. You've established your baseline, right? So there's also an assessment besides just saying what's there? What's doing well? You know, what trees are actually thriving, right? Greg is working on some studies with the Southwest Pacific Research Station or on his own in the Forest Service and it's about climate ready trees. Trees that are ready for our climate now as opposed to trees that were ready for the climate 30, 40, 50 years ago. Modesto ash or so may be one of them. What are the trees that are gonna do the best and planted and last the longest in the near future for the next 40 years, for the next 100 years? So this research needs to be included in the Forestry Master Plan. That is very much an important part of implementation. Make sure that you're getting climate ready trees and trees that are gonna do well in there. I mean, I can't think of another city that has a resource like that man right there. You know, one out of every three articles I read quotes Greg McPherson about the urban forest. And I'm not just blowing smoke because I like the guy, it's true. You know, there is a resource here that you guys have that you can use. And you know, if you see them in the streets, hey, how can I help, right? Let's make this happen. So next, you wanna set goals. You wanna stick to your goals. You wanna set goals that are gonna last 40 years but can also be implemented over zero, over two, over three, over five. City of Thousand Oaks's goals, in the first two years they wanted to do a complete tree inventory. Within the first five, they wanted to make sure they took care of all critical tree maintenance. Within the next five, they wanted community forest resiliency and tree infill. These are the things we're talking about, right? And then beyond that, it's sustaining the urban forest. So if there's not a goals page in the urban forest, your master plan, someone failed. Like that really needs to be there. Now, let's talk about something really important. How do you keep the government involved? How do we get parks and rec to be able to have the funding that they need? How do you get public works to be able to take care of things? They're not volunteers. You know, otherwise they would be out there volunteering and doing stuff. They get paid. They need to have funding for this to happen. And unless people lobby for that funding, unless people actually say this is important, then you will not get that funding as it comes through. Now, also important is what's the coordination between it? Some cities have most of their trees taken care of by parks and recs. Others have public works. For instance, the city of LA, Department of Public Works maintains the trees. They plant or replace about 1,000 trees a year, but they remove 2,000 every year. So the Urban Forestry Division of Public Works guides the planting of nearly 4,000 additional trees for subdivisions and developments. And then there's also a lot of nonprofit groups like Tree People or the Conservation Corps that go out and plant trees as well. But it's a multimodal thing in the city of LA. You know, LEDWP manages pruning. Bureau of Street Services, their street service division manages the parkways. Department of Parks and Recs were the ones that actually developed the Urban Forest Program. And they manage nearly 700,000 street trees. We actually just created a brand new post within the last month for our first ever city forest officer. And the city's goal is to reach 90,000 additional trees or 90,000 trees by 2021. It's a healthy goal. Urban Forestry programs in San Diego, they're overseen by the Community Forester and the Community Forest Advisory Board, but it's implemented by six different departments. Department of Parks and Rec, transportation, stormwater and public works are the three that have the most comprehensive roles. City of Thousand Oaks, their public works provides landscape maintenance at all city facilities, medians and parkways. They're the ones that pretty much do all of it. Their maintenance budget, because I actually had access to these figures, works out to be about 12,500 per acre of landscape per year. And these were through the years of 2013 to 2016. So, $12,500 per acre of landscape. Again, it's worth noting that all three of these cities require multi-level intergovernment coordination. Now in Davis, on July 1st, the City of Public Works Department broke up into two different departments. I don't know how many of you are aware of that, but that just happened this year. You know, I have Engineering and Transportation, which includes the review of permits. So, they're gonna be the ones reviewing for the shade permits, construction permits, and you've got utilities and operations, which will take care of infrastructure maintenance. So, it's a new separation of scope. This needs to be addressed in your Forestry Master Plan. Dale Somersill, we brought her up earlier. She manages for the city's diverse parks and rec program, 30 community parks, 485 acres of landscape areas, 55 miles of green belts, 570 acres of open space, and 24 athletic fields, and 65 playgrounds. That's a lot. There's her picture. She's right there, right? That was the best picture I could find to you, Rob. But, he's your urban, what's that? Yeah, he's your urban forest manager, and he actually maintains, according to this number that I got, over 30,000 city street trees. It's a lot for one person to do. A lot for two people to do. A lot for a bunch of government to do. But, unless they get the funds, unless you guys voice and make sure that they get their funding, they're not gonna be able to do everything that the Urban Forestry Master Plan asks of them. So, make sure that that gets addressed. However, they're not alone. You're all not alone. There are lots of national programs and statewide programs out there. Just to name a few, we've talked about CAL FIRE already. There's the National Urban Forestry Council. They've created the 10-year Urban Forest Action Plan. There's the National Association of State Foresters. They were established in 1920. They manage and protect state and preserved forests. There's the California Relief Program. They offer city grants and funding for Urban Forestry and Public Awareness. There's the Sustainable Urban Forest Coalition. They consider themselves the only network of nonprofits, businesses, associations, and foundations working together to advance effective forest policy. There's the Alliance for Community Trees by the Arbor Day Foundation. They consider their premier network of community-based organizations dedicated to improving the livability of towns through planting and caring for trees. The Arbor Day also puts out the Neighbor Woods Program. And every year in October, thousands of volunteers take action, make their communities greener, and plant trees. I'm sure you've heard of the Sierra Club. They're out there advocating for everything and everyone. However, I know personally, my mom is a hiker in the Sierra Club. She is a hike leader and she takes people through the Santa Monica Mountains and hikes them around and explains what everything looks like and why there's something out there. I was speaking with Erin about this earlier. If people don't understand what's out there, they don't know what they're gonna try and save. They don't know what they're supposed to care for. So get out there and volunteer. Get out there and help people understand what you have, right? There's Bee City, USA. No, I said I wasn't gonna talk about the birds and the bees, but they will specifically give you a plaque and they protect pollinators. So City of Thousand Oaks work towards becoming a Bee City, USA, and it's not difficult to get out there, but it's one way to promote your city, one way to say something about it, which brings us up to Tree City, USA. This is a program that City of Davis has been maintaining for over 41 years, if you didn't know that already. It requires four main things. One, maintain a tree border department. Two, have a community tree ordinance. Three, spend at least $2 per capita on urban forestry. And four, celebrate Arbor Day. It's not that hard, right? However, how many people really know that the City of Davis is Tree City, USA? Promote that. It's a few, right? There's a couple, but there's ways to get people excited. The City of Thousand Oaks was Tree City for 21 years. Their population is 129,000. City of LA, 29 years is Tree City. 4,041,000. City of Davis, 41 years, population, 66,500. You are surpassed only by Sacramento and Burbank, who have been Tree City, USA, for 42 years. Now, it only opened up 42 years ago. So, you're not that far away, okay? Just so you know. But of the 482 municipalities in California, there are only 147 that are recognized as Tree City, USA. So, promote it. Any of these organizations, reach out to them, talk to them. They will help you promote what it is that you want to accomplish. There are also local programs, right? There's not just nation, there's not just statewide. You can join, you can volunteer, you can promote. Volunteerism is gonna be a big part of making this happen. We've already talked a lot about Tree Davis, and it's great to have Erin here. It's your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to enhance and expand Davis's urban forest by teaching the people of Davis to plant and care for trees. That sound familiar? All right, that's great. So, that's directly from your website. Now, they say that the dedicated volunteers have been planting, monitoring and caring for trees in the Davis area since 1992. And over these last 26 years, Tree Davis has mobilized 3,000 volunteers and planted over 9,000 trees in Davis. You heard another 1,000 is coming. So, it'll be over the next 27 years, they'll have planted 10,000 trees. This is great. They organized the downtown Davis Tree Walk. I'd love to hang out this week and take that. There was the great Davis Tree Search. People went out and looked at what your large specimen trees were. They got wood plaques put on them. There's the Sacramento Tree Foundation is out here as well. They've been helping and promoting urban forestry. You know, there are fun programs that go through Davis, which I heard were put on last year by the Tree Commission, Tree Davis, the California Center for Urban Horticulture, and the UC Davis Arboretum of Public Gardens. And they tagged your trees. I saw pictures of the tags that went on them. I don't know how many people have you actually saw them out there. But there were oversized hang tags that said this tree saves you this much money or this tree sequesters this much carbon. Or it's a way to get people invested and from what everybody said on it, it's people stopped and looked and people cared. People were like walking by and said, what is this? They'll look at it. There's lots of ways to get people interested in the urban forest. You can get your girl scouts out there. Get them out there and plant some trees. Little girls planting trees, people love it. But I'll be honest, there's a lot of bikers in Davis. You're the bike city capital, 45% of your college population bikes. Where I was driving with Alan earlier and he points out, he's like, look, there's a parent there with his little kid. They're biking right in the middle of the street. You can't get that anywhere. And part of the reason why that is is because you know the bikers are there and they're around. Well, right over there, there's the Davis Bike Club. I'm sure there's more than just them. There's 10 cycle reas. I guarantee you that people would prefer to bike on a shaded street than on a street that has no trees. Get them involved. Get the bikers involved. But one of my favorites that I came across is that one in the bottom right hand corner. And I was in Minneapolis and it's called Brewing a Better Forest. These guys go out to their local craft pubs and they tell people, if you adopt a tree, I will buy you a beer. You know how many people adopt trees? They adopted over 1,000 trees last year that way. They partner with their local craft breweries. They go there, they say, adopt a tree, sign this paper, say you'll adopt a tree and I will buy you a beer. I'd have a beer right now. That sounds great. And they even follow up though, that's the important thing, is they will send you a text message saying, it's hot, go water your adopted tree. So that's why I thought it was real nice. So get innovative about it, you know, be fun. It doesn't have to be all dogmatic and in people's face. So on a personal level, you can also get involved. It doesn't have to be a program, it doesn't have to be volunteerism or donations or anything like that. This tree here, this is the picture actually out in front of my parents' house. And it lands me under when I was thinking about these programs, Florida has one that says one tree per one person. And if every tree in Florida planted, or every person in Florida planted one tree, they would have 40% tree canopy the next day. Yeah. So one tree, one person, the liquid amber there in front was planted the year I was born in front of my parents' house. And it's an interesting thing in that as I've grown up now thinking more about urban forestry and not just about Ashley in the backyard there, the large sycamore and the liquid amber, you can see as it not only gives seasonal change in Southern California, it actually does what we were talking about earlier and helps provide shade and helps reduce the heating and cooling bills of my parents' house as it goes through. So it helps. And finally to kind of just bring it all home, the three main things I would like you to take away from tonight are the heat island effect mitigation has become the number one priority in the urban environment. A successful urban forestry master plan serves as a roadmap to achieve tree canopy goals. And lastly, and probably most importantly, is that implementation will not happen without participation. And just as a fun slide, that's actually my daughter there in the city of Thousand Oaks median, where we just finished planting the brachychitin trees there as a new street tree species in East Thousand Oaks. So I take her out to the job sites. I take her to the nurseries I go to. She is probably tagged more trees than most eight year olds. But I'll bring her there and she gets excited. I've fostered that love into the next generation and that's kind of what we all need to do. So lastly, I wanna flip the script on what the Lorax says. We're not speaking for the trees. Really, speak for the people. Manage your trees. That's all I got. Yeah, hi. I was really pleased. It was a great talk. Thank you. Hope to start with. I think when you started to get into what the local communities, the local neighborhoods can do, I think that's a real important part of it. Elizabeth and I live in a senior manufactured home community. We've got like 50 different species of trees. Everybody likes them, but they don't quite understand their health and their trials and tribulations of the trees. So in the last year, we just published a guide with all the trees and facts about them and how to take care of them and the whole bit that you're talking about. And everybody's not out there planting trees, but everybody's more aware of what they are. And once they know what the species are and what the common name are, it's like, oh yeah, that's my friend, the so-and-so tree, right? And so we're finding that as a little community, everybody gets more knowledge and that leads to exactly what you're saying. So in these master plans, it's good for the overall city, but it's also good to consider smaller pieces where the neighborhoods can get together. Completely agree. On that side at all. I have, you didn't mention this as a need at all, but I'm wondering, like maybe the cities have adequate software programs and so on for all of the record keeping that needs to go on with regard to the trees that are existing or the tree locations, the potential tree locations that there could be and so on. But I'm wondering if it could enhance the relationship that you're talking about, people's sort of interest, to have something that might be a little more accessible technology-wise, like I'm wondering if you've seen in your work examples where people have used code for America for creating interfaces, digital and media interfaces for people to have a relationship with each city's trees. Yeah, you bring up a really good point and it was something that I barely touched on when I was talking about tree canopy goals, but there is a program out there and it's free use and its name is iTree and you can go to iTree.com. That's where these slides were all taken from. That's their logo there. It was put together by the Urban Forestry Department. Greg worked on it, Dr. Novak worked on it and it's based upon real-time data and real-time information that gets compiled. But the fun part about it is you can click on anywhere in the world, any city, any place, and I just selected those areas of Davis and the bottom left-hand one will tell you how much carbon is being sequestered in each area. The upper right-hand one basically gives you what the tree canopy coverage is and it gives you a graph from highest to lowest. But one of the more interesting ones I found and you can plug and play and give it different metrics all the way back and forth, but that one on the bottom right actually tells you if you want to, let's say, have more tree canopy coverage and increase it percentage-wise, where should you plant? If you want to increase stormwater, where should you plant? It'll even go down to tell you what type of tree they would recommend to replant to do what. So the best one out there right now that I'm aware of is iTree for this kind of thing. Yeah, and it's... It doesn't have a relationship. People can't, citizens can't give information or to the program about the tree. I'd have to talk to Greg a little bit about to find out how that works, but they do bring in, yeah, it is a really cool program to play with. If you don't mind, one other question. You might know the city of Davis is working on a districting process already. So you mentioned that one of the early steps in the Fair Thousand Oaks plan was to create districts. And I was just wondering, I know it's a completely different purpose, but I'm curious on what basis you carved the city out into different districts. So this was worked with, they kind of already identified themselves a little bit by geographic districts, where you either lived in Newbury Park or Thousand Oaks East or West or Dos Fientos. It was really easy to break these all apart, but it was worked with how public works maintains them as well and how the actual neighborhood and people identified themselves. And we brought up a little bit earlier, it was a great way to actually assess landscape maintenance fees for districts. And it didn't have anything to do with like soil profiles or microcores. No, it was more public perception. Just wondering if you have any particular recommendations for downtown Davis, if you had a chance to look around. There are a lot of blocks down there that have small to mid-sized trees, a lot of crepe meadows and stuff like that. Would you go with much bigger stuff and any particular species? I'm not gonna get into particular species, but then more specifically because there is the right tree, the right place, and I think it requires research and not just me telling you what I think would be it. But specific recommendations did notice there are a lot of medians out there that have no understory planting. And this is something I talked with Greg about as well. And that's something that you really wanna make sure it gets addressed in your urban forestry plan. It's not just about the big trees and when the big trees die, it's also about putting in the understory, putting in the smaller trees. And as the big trees goes away, it's kind of a stage thing. The way a natural forest works, you can't just concentrate on, we want a bunch of big trees and then when all those big trees go away, what's gonna happen? There's gotta be succession. And that's something to really think about. That would be my first recommendation, medians and succession. How's it working out between solar and shade trees? That is such a loaded question. It depends on what you're gonna go for because they both do similar things and they both help reduce energy consumption as it moves along. Personally, I would rather see shade trees than solar panels everywhere. But I also have family out in Mojave and they've got the big solar farms that are out there. That I'm not too fond of. But if you wanna put solar panels on your house and you wanna do it, what's that? Yeah, and whoever that person is, if there's a reason why and that's why you have a tree commission and people that are out there, I believe they're probably fair. You would really need to explain the purpose as to why that's happening. And then again, it's a right tree, a right place. I mean, I know people that live by the airport that complain about the airport noise. Oh, then why did you buy a house with the airport? You know, you're gonna put a solar panel on your house and you have a huge tree in front of it and you know it's not gonna work very well. I know people wanna talk to the panel too, but. I've got one. So for very good reasons, we put a lot of emphasis on the idea of native vegetation. It fits with our values about preserving wildlife. But I know in places like Sacramento, they're looking at Australian trees and they're looking at what's the next generation of trees that will grow better here as our world, unfortunately, is heating up without getting into a species by species thing. Do we need to look at more trade-offs like that? So I get asked this question a lot from people in Los Angeles. We have a Mediterranean climate down there and what I try and steer away from is the idea of native tree planting. I like to think of native or adaptive and I think that's a little bit more important than just saying, this is a true-blooded native. This is the tree that grew here 50 years ago. That may not be the right tree to grow right now, especially in the city. It's the tree that's gonna adapt the best and I think that's where Greg's research is gonna come in really handy with the climate-ready trees, that he's got a tree plot right out at UC Davis right now where they're testing trees and some don't look that great, I'll be honest, Greg. Some of them look fantastic though and that's the important thing. It's trying to figure out which trees are gonna do the best, native or adaptive. I think that's the way to go. Great, thank you so much for answering all those questions. Now we'll just switch over to our panel. It doesn't matter which order you wanna go there. I'm gonna let them do self-introductions. David, Aaron, and Greg, however they wanna proceed and then we'll have some time for Q and A with our panel as well. I guess I'll go first. I'm Greg McPherson and let's see, I'm a retired USDA Forest Service, Urban Forest Researcher and I'm on the board of Tree Davis now and yeah, working on the Urban Forest also led to Great Tree Search as kind of a local effort to raise awareness about our great trees. So I wanna thank all of you for being here. Thank you very much, appreciate your participation and Lucas and Dan especially for coming and Jeremy, great job, really, really nice. So appreciate it. Let's see, I have just a couple things. One I guess would be, I do really appreciate the openness and willingness of Rob and Aaron and people to experiment with some of these trees that appear to be promising but we really haven't planted them here before and I think the easy way out is to use the tried and true trees that are readily available but that's really, it's an easy way to go but it's not the right way to go in the long term as we look into the future. So I think it's hard to try new things and to plant trees that you're not familiar with. It's a bit of a leap and so I appreciate them being brave and courageous and willing to take this journey and to help us evaluate what works and what doesn't work and we have learned what doesn't work already so there are some trees that we're putting a big red stop sign around because we don't really wanna plant them here so but there are others that have a lot of potential the Desert Willow, the Indian Rosewood, the Shoe String Acacia and so on. So thank you. And then secondly, there are a couple of challenges that we face in Davis that I think are worth and I think Jeremy's hit on some of them but one of them is I think our thoroughfares have been neglected a little bit and I remember coming to Davis whatever 25 years ago driving down Anderson and the big pagoda trees and the shade that was all the way from cobbled down to Russell and now most of those trees are gone. We've lost the shade and you could repeat that along F Street where we had mature pear trees and those are all kind of broken apart and so I think along Covel and along Russell and the Medians we have dying ash trees and in the understory in the ground plain it's just kind of dead weeds and grass. So I don't think we're putting our best foot forward in terms of how our city looks on the main arterials that people drive and so to me that's an important area or improvement and then I guess, what personal challenge I'm dealing with are some of our older neighborhoods now and working with the old East Davis and old North Davis where we have a lot of really big old trees that are at the end of their life cycle and we're kind of faced with this issue of wanting to maintain the special character that those neighborhoods have which really relies to the largest in on the canopy that those trees have provided and that kind of that Midwestern deciduous canopy look but yet having overhead wires and which constrains the size of the tree that you can replant and developing kind of a sequence or a plan for moving this forest from the past generation, early 1900s to the future and I know Lucas talked about the Modesto Ash on Miller and A Street similar issue really. So that's a problem in a lot of places in Davis that we really need to think through and plan for and then I guess the last thing is that we can have the most wonderful plan but if we don't have the funds to implement the plan it's just gonna collect dust. So I think we need to really think creatively and figure out how can we get the funding to improve the program we have to plant and steward our street and park trees and then to provide the funds to do some of these special projects that are like a removal and a replacement project where we get where we plan it and we implement it and there are cities that have found different ways of doing this and I hope part of the master plan will address what are some but for example, the city of Burlingham, Burlingham, there is a gas tax or motor fuel tax and a portion of that goes specifically to fund their urban forestry program in the city of Cincinnati there's a state authorized special assessment that funds the program in the city of Cincinnati. So I think there are different ways of finding funding and we need to be creative and try to figure that out as well because it's one thing having a great plan but it's another having the funds to maintain the program we have, improve that program and then also do some of these special things. So I'll look at it. I'm Erin Donley Marino. I'm the executive director at Tree Davis and though Tree Davis has been around for 26 years now, I've only been with the organization for about two years and I really wanna give credit to the city of Davis for doing a lot to support their urban forest. In those two years, we've held planting and tree care events just about every single weekend starting in October and going all the way into April and the beginning of May and I also have to give credit to the citizens of the city of Davis. We have a lot of people here who care very, very deeply about this town, about each other and about stewarding our urban forest and that shows. We have tens of people, sometimes, I think we had about 35 people this past weekend come out to plant trees with us which was the beginning of our community canopy program and in my short two years with Tree Davis so far, there's sort of been an evolution in our relationship with the city where when I first came on, we were very happy to sort of receive contracts from the city where they say, please go to this park and plant this many trees, thank you very much and that was great but I feel like we're at a really exciting point right now where we're moving from just having a contractual relationship to having more of a partnership relationship where we're beginning to think a little bit more strategically about what do we want this urban forest to look like in the future, how do we work together to make that happen and so it's a really exciting time. It's also a time when Tree Davis is growing a lot to try to meet these challenges. Greg mentioned that we are sort of the spearhead in our region of starting to give a demand signal to the local nurseries for climate adapted tree species. Some of these trees are actually quite difficult to obtain. We've had to contact nurseries near and far some all the way up in Oregon in order to source the species we have and there's a financial layer to that as well where we have to think about the trees for which there aren't very much demand right now are often quite a bit more expensive and though they may have more benefit to our city in the future, we have to pay for them with today's dollars and so getting really creative and making sure that all of the nurseries in our region know that we want these trees and that they end up speaking to each other. We'll call one nursery and that nursery will call another nursery and they're trying to source the trees for us and that gets the nurseries talking about this. That gets the demand signal much, much stronger. So we're hopeful that even though we're sort of the tip of the spear right now getting this moving that hopefully it will become much more amplified in the future. And I have to give credit to Yael Franco who's in the back over there. She's our program manager for our community canopy program and she's the engine that's making all of this happen. She's been working really, really hard and yeah, it's a time of great opportunity. It's a time of growth and trying to meet a lot of challenges along the way but we're really excited. We are a small group here and probably everyone here is pro tree and I don't mean this to sound negative but they're really not out there. They may be not anti tree but trees don't feature very high up in their consciousness. They do it allons and Allen spreads that. But I think one of the biggest challenges that we face is selling trees for what they do. It is elevating the consciousness. We're entering the season where it's, my tree drops leaves. I have to rake the leaves every week. The negativity and then there's the, it costs money to water the tree. Not actually calculating that it costs next to nothing but still it is, it's not a hard sell in this room. It's not a hard sell after listening to that terrific presentation but we have to move that out into the public. I, after being involved with trees for a few decades I do not know how to do that. I still don't know how to do that. We do that as Tree Davis, as Aaron said, pretty much every weekend and anyone that stops me to ask what time it is I start talking about trees but we need to explain green infrastructure and the value of trees and if everyone could sit down and even watch 10 minutes of that presentation they probably would get it but it is something is, I think it is one of the biggest tasks we have. Wait, well thank you all three and that was David Robinson for those that may not know. So are there any questions? All right, I see at least a couple of hands. Yeah, well addressing the last speaker and the first and the whole concept of the plan Jeremy might have some insight here too. Are there models, are there reliable models that one could use in a master plan? They say we have a goal of reducing street temperatures, the island effect, we want to cut it back by x amount. Could you use these GIS models that are maybe combined with a more physiologically based aspects through them to sort of predict, where's the best, if you want to reduce the island, the heat island effect in Davis, where would you get the most bang for your buck? And then just one last part then to tie it up with your thing is maybe an effective way as I found it in my field in ecology was if you use these models to tell people this is what would happen if you didn't have trees. All of a sudden this temperature, you think it's hot now? If you didn't have these trees, this is what it would be. And so to try to convince them of something, trees are in the environment and we all take them for granted, except for those of us who think about them. But if you show people what life would be like without them, they could also get motivated. On many of the streets, at least in old central Davis, the oak trees go through, they go through their mastings when they drop like thousands of acorns. And in my neighborhood, I've been known to fill my pockets up and then I take them home and I try to start them, but they don't always do that. I'm not an expert, but I love them. But mostly they end up in the compost bins or down the gutter. And that just seems so sad to me. And the other thing I was thinking is, I think most of us can remember when recycling was like a big new idea. And the only thing that got it to take hold in whatever community you would look at was the children in school. And they would come home and they would, mommy, don't throw that away. We have to recycle that. And they took it and they instigated it. So I'm wondering what's going on in the schools. I mean, I could go out and get pockets of acorns and take them to the schools and the kids could plant them and then we could go out on the levee or something. I don't know. I just, and the other thing I was thinking is, we have so many artists, painters, sculptors, and we have a lot of poets and we could have competitions. We could have like the duck day thing. Maybe this is already going on because I keep my head in my own garden pretty much most of the time, but it's just, it's so wonderful to be here tonight. It just means so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you. So just a couple of quick responses and I'll be real brief. But one thing that we definitely noticed at the City of Thousand Oaks and that I've also noticed in a lot of our recent outreach, and I've brought this up to both Aaron and Greg, and Alan as well, is that you can ask people to come to a meeting. You can have city council meetings. You can have meetings at the libraries. You can promote, you can do all of that, but the online presence of people now is so much greater and outreach is completely different than it used to be when we all grew up. We get 10 times the amount of people to respond to a survey if we send it via Nextdoor or it's on Facebook or it goes on Twitter or, you know, you name it. Social media nowadays, that's where everyone lives. That's where they're at. You wanna find people that aren't in this room? That's where they're at right now. So put something together. You know, what we did in Thousand Oaks is we hired, you know, some of the millennials came and they made our analog presentations. We gave them a couple thousand dollars and they turned it into an app. People had an app that they downloaded. They clicked a few buttons and they voted what trees they wanted for those areas. I mean, it's real quick, it's real easy. And then you just made me think of one other interesting thing on the acorns. There are a couple of people in Thousand Oaks because it is really more the city of like 15,000 oaks. But they go out and they collect those acorns and they make acorn pancakes. They make acorn flour. They do what the natives used to do with it. So if you wanna fill more than just your pockets, you can dry them on a rooftop. You can do something with them. They don't have to end up in the gutter. Well, I'd just like to say I live on Oak Avenue and the city planted a great, well, an oak tree that turned into a giant oak tree and then it died of sudden oak death. And it took me six months to get the city to come out and take the tree down. I was threatened with having to pay for it if it really wasn't sick, et cetera, et cetera, which was very difficult. But at this time, we must have a Thousand Oaks growing in our yard. The birds plant them and they're not just from that tree. There's oak trees all over the place that were growing by themselves because it's a rental area and no one took care of the yards. And so I had an oak tree from the neighbors that was taking my roof off. I had to, and it was the neighbors that were just renting, it was just really a problem. And over the years, I've taken out nine mature trees from my yard because they died. I would love to have a tree and I was offered a tree from Tree Davis and I said, you know what? Then there's shade and nothing else grows. I don't know what to do. And that's kind of why I'm here. I love trees, but to live with one is really difficult. So I'd like more help with that. Panel, any thoughts from the panel? Maybe we'll, I'm gonna take that. I mean. Oh, well, yeah, I totally get it. So yeah, there's kind of the two sides of trees. And yeah, I think, I guess I, it's really a personal thing. And it's a matter of, there is the cleaning up. There is the mess. There is everything that goes with the trees and the shade, but there's also the wildlife. There's the color, the beauty, the seasonal change. Well, yeah. And it would be great if the city had the funds and the resources to be able to respond to every request. Ideally, that would be, you know, what we are striving for, but it doesn't always happen because the program doesn't have the funding to allow that to happen. And I mean, that's a whole nother topic that we can get into, but you're right, you know, the management of the tree is really important. And to the extent that that can minimize the negatives associated with trees, then that's important and good. Follow up with a couple of words on that. A lot of our city trees are actually within a 10-foot easement on private property. Right, right. And that's sort of the difference between just private benefits that benefit an individual relative to public benefits that benefit many, many people. And I think that's why the city of Davis has the policies that they have with regard to having city trees that are city maintained. And perhaps it's true that the maintenance doesn't happen as quickly as would be preferred, but ultimately it comes down to a cost benefit analysis. And in a lot of cases, the benefits of trees far, far outweigh the costs. Yeah, I guess those are my two cents. Great, thank you. So just a quick time check. I know there are a variety of people that have questions, so I would love, raise your hands for just a sec so I can get them, one, two, three. Well, if you haven't asked a question yet, we'll do those first. One, two, three, four, five. Great, so five, five for now. So, because it's about 8.30, and he has to get to the airport, right? Okay, so 8.30, so we have five questions, so then we're just gonna proceed in that order. And then we will wrap up. Thank you. Well, I'm definitely a tree person, but I'm also a wildlife person, and we're in a biodiversity crisis. And I would like to know how you are thinking about making sure that the new trees you're thinking about planting are really wildlife-friendly, and because you can see differences already in trees, some are really wildlife-friendly, and support birds and insects, others are like deserts. So just wondering about that. Well, that's a great point. And to be truthful, the wildlife habitat value of the species was not one of the things we looked at. We looked at invasiveness, and things, pests and disease vulnerability, but we did not incorporate that. So to be honest, that's something we need to look at and to incorporate in. Yeah, and then, and it maybe is complicated because what's here now, wildlife-wise, may change too. Piggyback on that as well real quick. So we plant trees in a lot of different spaces. Some of those are city trees, or excuse me, street trees, and some trees are in the city's open space areas. And currently we're not planting a lot of native oaks as street trees, but we are planting and stewarding a lot of native oaks in the open space areas. So I think it has to be a little bit of a patchwork mosaic in terms of thinking about which trees are in which areas and what purposes they serve. So, but I wholeheartedly agree. I wanna provide those benefits to wildlife as well. I had a question kind of looping back on the school involvement program and getting kids involved. The Better Trees program for our schools that was just part of the last bond measure, is that something that Tree Davis is able to help with in, or Jeremy, is there a way that you found that schools can get involved and help on things as well? A few words. So Tree Davis actually works Yolo County-wide. We work in West Sacramento. We work here in Davis. We also work in Woodland. And for the last five years, we've been helping the city of West Sacramento to implement another massive scale tree planting effort that we call Trees for Tomorrow. And through that program, we started an internship, an urban forestry internship program with the public schools in Westsac focused on natural resources, career, and college readiness. And so we started with the high school students and we would go and do lectures in their classrooms. We held career days where they got to have exposure to professionals that are working in a variety of fields and natural resources. And as those students headed towards graduation, those students became tree ambassadors where they would go to younger age schools and then teach the younger students what they had learned. And as they were graduating, we helped them with college applications. We helped them with resume building. So we are working directly with schools in West Sacramento. And then we've been strengthening our partnership with DJUSD here. That's something that we've really been focusing on in the last few months. And in fact, the planting that we had this past Saturday, we did 16 trees at Korematsu Elementary School and a lot of families and students came out for that planting. So we're embracing the schools. Yeah. That's great. Thank you. Hi, mine's actually just a comment. Going back to the challenges, I think one of the biggest challenges that I see is that Davis has such a high rental population, transient population. And I think the master plan really needs to address how to get buy-in from renters and absentee property owners to support street trees on their property. And kind of following up to what Aaron said to how so many areas the street trees are in an easement. And I think visually, because there's a lack of a divided planting area, it kind of sends a message that this area doesn't support a healthy street tree environment. Like I'm in West Davis, so there's to me a very strong lack of street trees in the residential area. And I think, I don't know, I think there's a lot of just public education that needs to be part of the implementation of the street tree plan and the strategies so that need to be addressed. Thanks very much. I actually just had a comment as well. I agree with what you're saying. Management is very important. And I agree with the comment where there is a right tree for the right place. And that I think is huge. And that is something that I would like to see focused on. Thank you. Hi, I'm the sole landscape architect on the planning commission. And so I'm the tree lady. And it continues to disturb me as to how many mature trees are removed for development in this community. We don't do a good enough job. We have the municipal code. But we don't do a good enough job of protecting the existing trees. I appreciate your statement that if you replace it two to one or three to one, in 2060 you're not gonna have replaced the canopies that are gonna be lost. And it's, you know, our plan is to densify this community. And I would like to do it in a way that doesn't negatively impact our urban forest. So I'd love to see the plan include maybe some recommendations for updating the municipal code and the penalties for removing large trees so that we can rectify that. I did have two questions on the, well, it went on the assessment that's been done. So is that on all trees in Davis or just the street trees? Well, Rob, maybe you can, I think it's all of the street trees, is that right? And park trees? It was done on all of the trees that are in streets, medians, parks and green belts. The holdup is the 10 foot easement, all of the trees were inventoried. And so we're having to parse out all the private trees. So that's kind of been the holdup because we took on about 10,000 trees that we probably shouldn't have. So we're parsing those out and that's kind of the time but it was done on everything city owned. It wasn't done on commercial or like multifamily property, private trees. Thank you. And I do wonder about the overall master plan, whether that's going to include parks and schools, our downtown plan that we're working on could have some real negative impacts. I've been advocating for, instead of awnings, let's do more trees downtown to mitigate that. So commercial areas and backyards. You mentioned that street trees here and are considered the public benefit and other trees are considered the private but I love having trees in my neighbor's yard because they provide me with huge benefits. So if you address what kinds of things might be in the master plan in some of these other areas other than street trees or open space? I'm gonna have to ask for Rob's help with this but my understanding is that in our conversation so far we've been focusing on basically city owned trees, trees that are city property and we can make recommendations for private property, we can espouse the benefits of trees in private property but we can't necessarily tell people what to do on their private property. Yeah, I think development we could certainly implement some ordinance changes and implementation of things that would help with development. That takes a lot of buy in from a lot of people. Private property that gets into kind of private property rights and just the amount of staff it takes to monitor privately owned, say neighborhood trees. So historically that hasn't been done in Davis and just the monitoring and the new code that would have to be written would be, have to be watertight with our community involvement and I'll just leave it at that. I know but where it's being recorded that's why we want the mics, yeah, yeah. So one other thing to think about and there's a word called liability and the city cannot take on the liability of private property. There becomes a very big gray area if the city recommends a tree and that tree say falls down and crushes your house or that tree is a palm tree and it catches a fire like a catcher's mitt and burns down. If that's something that the city recommended someone to put in, who's getting sued? It's the city. So they can't really, for liability reasons, take on any private property and I think that would make sense to most people here because when the city gets sued it's your tax dollars that pay that lawsuit. So you would prefer them to, as Erin said, you can, master plan is gonna be public knowledge, you can use it and benefit from that and get a recommendation but the minute you start asking the city to take on private trees, it's a liability issue and I wouldn't recommend that. Thank you. Any final thoughts from our panelists or Jeremy? At all? Not hearing any. Well, and then I'll give Alan, Alan just give Alan the last word here since he was the primary organizer this evening. Thank you very much. This is a question kind of, I go to the city council meetings very frequently and I've kind of known as the part-time Lorax. I put for the trees here. I'm also very, very alone when I'm at the trees with the council meeting and it makes the changes here, it takes political will and I'm wondering, have you seen any cities where, and how can we basically mobilize more people to go to the council, to get council to fund more, to make more presence politically and go to the commissions to push, to develop, and Rob's frustrated, developers basically walk over him and he doesn't have the tools to basically push back. Have you seen any cities where basically people have mobilized to basically push back as a force at the city council and also how can Tree Davis get more involved politically, not just wonderful planet tree but you need to basically be out there and pushing on our leaders to say, this is important as cannabis. I mean, the tree ordinance was delayed for 18 months because everyone wanted to legalize cannibals in the city of Davis, which was wonderful but I thought the trees are a little more long lasting things. So I'd like to comment about, who has a model of doing political work and what can Tree Davis to get more involved politically? I will just briefly say that the new mayor in the city of Thousand Oaks ran on the urban forestry master plan platform and getting those five medians implemented was one of the key parts of her platform that that's the reason why we're doing it right now. So I mean, you've got to go from the top down. That's my recommendation, email, talk to them, get out there, get to the council meetings. I mean, there are guys at the city of Thousand Oaks councils because I was there for years on end and there were guys that showed up every single time and gave a presentation about something else that nobody there was talking about but there's no reason you can't do that. You can't sit there and say, I've heard the urban forestry master plan is coming. I care. That's all you need to say. If you say it enough, they will care too. On the Tree Davis issue? So Allen and I have talked about this one on one but everything we do at Tree Davis has to be funded basically and that's when I was describing our relationship with the city, changing from just being contractual to being more of a partnership level that was enabled because of funding. We worked directly with the city to apply for this grant and that allows me to pay the bills, pay the good people to do the good work and so basically if Tree Davis is gonna be able to be more of an advocate at a political level, we have to find the funds in order to be able to do that. Here, here, it's good. So, well with that, thank you to our panel. Thank you to our speakers. All of them are streaming, big round of applause. Once again, this event, this evening's event has been videotaped and recorded and so will be available. I know that Cool Davis has been posting them on the Cool Davis website and I think Davis Media Access has also been running them as well so you can be in contact with the Davis Futures Forum folks or Davis Media Access about future opportunities in Cool Davis to see these videos and thank you very much for coming. We really appreciate it. Have a good evening.