 Hello. Hi. Hello. I guess we're not particularly well attended right now, but. We've got two more coming in. They're not. Oh, you have to make me co-host Alan. Sorry. Okay. There you go. Yep. All right, we'll get started in a minute. Just waiting for a few more people to join in. Great. So there she comes. So we actually have a forum, but let's wait a couple more minutes. I probably have to. Sign off a couple of minutes early. There's a school committee meeting. Tonight. And they're trying to cut. The orchestra and band programs. So. Yeah. What time is that? That's 630. I will try to. Get most of the business done before then. Ellen's here. It's good. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. All right. Welcome everyone. There's five visitors. I'm going to have them. Say their names and what brings them to join our meeting today, but welcome everyone. So Anna Carter. Hello. I'm representing Mr. Meadows. We spoke last meeting about. I'm hoping we could be. Two, two trees that would be. For Memorial of two presidents who've we've lost. By, by that they passed away. And we discussed maintenance and I've. Gone back to my neighbors and we've agreed. That they would take measures so that lawn mowers and landscapers would not damage the trees by putting fencing. And mulch. And also we've committed to watering the trees during the hot weather and basically. Making. Taking good care of them. So I think those are the outstanding questions from the last meeting. And I said, I would go back and check with my neighbors and. They've agreed that we will, we will do that. So I think that's a good question. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So you are on the agenda for that. We'll go along with the other visitors. Brooks. Want to introduce yourself. Yeah, I've been here before. Brooks Ballinger, you know, the. Was that a meeting. Like two meetings ago. I'm Pat. I live at Applewood. I saw that Applewood was on the agenda. And we had seven trees that were diseased that we're going to be coming down at some point. And replaced. So I'm just trying to get an idea of what, what the status of everything is. Okay. Great. Thank you for coming. Sue. Hi, I'm. Here to talk about planting a tree at the months in library. In honor of Sue Huges, who was a librarian there for many years. And the trustees had approved it. And I had spoken with Alan and. We had hoped to get it planted. A while ago, but things come up. So I'm just following up on that. Okay. Thank you. And yeah, that is on the. Agenda, I guess also. And David. Hello, I'm David. I'm just a. You math student who also rents here and has gotten. Youth to seeing the trees around the area. And I had an assignment that I had to come to some meeting and thought this would be the perfect excuse to learn more about the Amherst Shade tree committee. Yeah. Well, welcome. And please feel free to ask questions anytime you want. I'm going to promote the five of you to panelists so that we can see your face if you want. You don't have to do that. And I might want to meet if you're not speaking. Yes. Okay. All right. Well, welcome. I guess we should introduce ourselves on Henry lap and the chair of the committee. Julian. Hi, my name is Julian Heinz. I'm the vice chair of the committee. Uh, Bennett. I'm Bennett. Hey, Zip. I'm a committee member. I'm Shoshona King. I'm a committee member. I am Alan Kiter. Also a committee member. Brick Crow Miller. The only person missing today is. Sarah. She had a work commitment and couldn't make it today. So. Let's jump into the agenda. I'm not going to share screen because I'm looking at too many things at once. If anybody needs, I can. We don't really have a chat to put it in. So, right. Uh, first we do announcements and public comments, which we sort of did approval of the January minutes and volunteer hours. So committee members. Do we approve the January minutes as written and sent out. All in favor. I think we had four people. Yes. The thumbs up one more time. Yeah. Okay. Is somebody taking notes for this meeting? Uh, thank you for that. Are you doing that? Yes. Anybody else want to do it? I've already started the, I've already, I'm good. Great. Well, thank you. Ben is our recording secretary. Most of the time. Good. Volunteer hours. Julian. I'd say. Four or five for me. Five. Okay. I need a number to put in the thing. Great. One. Well, this meeting is. Over an hour. So. Okay. So. Who's this meeting? Yes. Uh, one and a half. We don't do halves. Okay. Two. Two. Okay. Bennett. Four. Uh, I did bow. Six. It's a slow month. I'm sorry. Four. I did bow. Six. It's a slow month. Often we have many more. And Shashana. Two. Okay. I didn't hear from Sarah, but she'll hopefully send me the minute. All right. So that's the business taken care of. What's wrong thing. Hold on. There we go. Agenda is back. So we'll go to. So what we're going to do is we're going to jump ahead since we have our guests here. So. Let's go to, um, the order it's on is Applewood, Misty Meadows, and then months in library. Under presentations and discussions. And we'll go back to the chairs report and all that. So. Um, What do they say this first? I think months in library. Okay. Months in library. Alan, do you want to talk about that? Do you want to talk about months in library tree planting? Yes. Okay. Sure. Yep. I have. Yes. Sue McCoy and I have been in contact. Uh, and. We have great to plant a tree. Town has. And, uh, We need to make that happen. We haven't, you know, We don't have a species. Um, I would prefer to plant something that would grow large and be. You know, In front. Uh, we have to come up with a. A location that is agreeable. Um, You know, with the town and with, uh, I guess it would be the months in memorial library. Board. Um, you know. That replant tree where they prove it on their property. Anybody have any comments about that or. Are there. You know, You know, We always removed there earlier on the South Amherst common. Did we want to maybe do a planting in that area? Put a few trees on the common. I like that idea. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. Is there a way that we could piggyback the planting at the library with. You know, Make it part of one of our spring. Um, It could be an area we could plan more. I would, um, We could expand it out a little bit away from, uh, Amundsen and there's a probably a couple of locations on the common itself. And then. Um, Shea street. Uh, Polyroy. And, um, Southeast street. Middle street. Yeah. This is actually a. Pretty good footprint there for, uh, some tree planting. Um, I think it would be fun. And I think, um, you know, we could try and, um, Get, uh, Participants from the, from the neighborhoods kind of get the community invested in it down there. Great. Yes. Yes. Um, I was just going to say about the planting at the months and. Um, The board of trustees had approved it and they said, I then needed to get it approved by Al and, And where he felt a good place would be to plant it. And we had talked about near the driveway. In front of the library, he suggested that as a good spot. And I agree, kind of in line with the last tree that was planted, I think for a memory of Claudia. Brian's son. So I mean, I think that would be a great spot. Um, Just wanted to add that. That sounds very durable. You can make that happen. We'll try. Great. Go ahead. Yes. Um, I'm just curious. Do you know anything that is being even discussed about the abandoned school on the common? Um, I, I don't officially. So, um, There's a lot to talk going on. I don't think there's any plans. I don't want to, I don't want to speak out of place because I don't have, there's nothing in. Plans, but they do have. They do intend to reuse that location. It could use trees, but I don't want to say anything. We don't want to plan if. Something. Happened. So. Um, so we'll, um, try to figure out which month we'll do that planting in. So let's plan on that being one of our, we always plant on the second Saturday of the month. Starting in April. So we'll try to figure which month will be best for us. And so we'll let you in the library board. No. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Um, Mr. Meadows. Anna, we, I saw the locations you sent us, which are right along. Stanley street. So I think that's definitely something we can do. Maybe even in conjunction with that same planting. On two trees on Stanley street, or there might be a separate planting. Excellent. Sure. Yeah. I think everything you brought up last time. And by the way, thank you for, I found the movie. Or the video. And I was able to forward it to some of my. Key members of the neighborhood and show them exactly the conversation. So it's wonderful that, that you record these sessions. Yeah. I think we're all set with. Agreeing to care for the trees and water them. There is some. Suggestion of installing this bigot on the land there. I don't know. I don't know how, what that would entail. Does that mean. Talking to the town about water, but at any rate, I can also see saving up a whole bunch of. Gallon containers, maybe gallons of water containers and filling them up and just driving our cars over to the trees. We're not talking about all the trees in the whole. Area there, but if there's two new trees, I think we're talking about getting them started for the first three years. Is that right? As far as watering. The first three years are the most critical. But I think we can handle that. And we're talking about maybe forming a committee of volunteers from the neighborhood that would take turns. Watering twice a week during the hot weather. Putting little fences around to. To guard against the lawn mower. To guard against the lawn mower. To guard against the lawn mower. To not bump into the trees. So I don't know if there were any other issues with us. We're happy to have you say you can bring some trees. And we sent you that map. And I sent you that map to Henry about the location and I don't know. Is there any other question about it? Well, we should make a decision as a committee if we're going to do that and fund it with our funds. Yes. So it is within 25 feet of the right of way. So there's no reason we can't do that. Anyone have any comments from the committee? I think as long as it's within 25 feet of the right of way and within that public area, then I think that's fine. I would just suggest, and maybe you all discussed this, I wasn't present at the last meeting, but maybe there's a way to be careful about our tree selection, given the logistical challenges of regular watering. You know, with, with selecting natives or trees that maybe do a little bit better with less water and attention. Obviously, you know, they need to be established first, but just being mindful of that. Yeah. It's a kind of a dry area there. Sandy soils. Yeah, Sandy soil. Sandy soil. Okay. So the suggestion for watering is also sorry, we'll also mulch clearly so that'll help as well. Right. You can also buy a big water tank. Some of them you can buy even on wheels is like a little toe behind or walk behind thing, or even just a water tank that you fill every so often near the trees and that could help with watering. Maybe a rain barrel. Right. In case we get rain. Yeah. Yeah, that too. Any suggestions are always welcome. Thank you. Okay. Alan, do you want to site and choose the tree species for those and the months in library. Yes. Okay, great. I think that's good. Let's move on to Applewood. Thank you. You're welcome. You talked about possibly doing a planting there Alan was concerned about. But it's not, it's not much right of way and there's a lot of utilities underneath so. Yeah. Is that there still. Yes, I'm still here. Okay. So I did, I did reach out I haven't heard back from the manager yet on as far as a site visit. But you know I need to walk the site with her and find out where they would like to have trees planted in the setback along Ramling Road. Okay. Once that's done. We can start kind of determine how many trees we can do. We also got to replace some of the trees that we lost from our previous planting there on. Country corners. Yes, somebody told me they thought there were about seven along Ramling Road that were on the Applewood, but Jason to the Applewood property. That were diseased. We plan on removing those in the next couple of weeks to maybe in March, get those taken care of. Okay. I'll poke it Debbie and have her see if she's around if she can contact you to get this moving. Because she'll know where the utilities are or have to have all the information on that. Thank you. One question I had I scoped out the site a few days ago, and the sidewalk there along Ramling Road is quite bumpy because of tree roots as well as just cracking and pop holes. But I'd imagine sometime in the near future, the town will be looking to redo that sidewalk. And what I was wondering is we just need to make sure we're planting the trees location wise. I don't know is there a location far enough back that if we, if the sidewalk gets redone after the trees are planted, that we won't have to move them again or have that disrupt the trees. It's, you know, the way I see it along that stretch for future tree plantings. We can remove the existing sidewalk and move it on to Applewood property. And that would give us a wider grass belt to plant trees next to the road in between the road and sidewalk. And that needs to be done anyway, because it's, you know, almost impossible at this point, at this point, you know. So that's one option that takes a lot of capital planning and permissions from private property owners to put a sidewalk on their property. Very complicated process, or we try to get permission from the Jason property owner to plant trees in the setback. And I hope that in the future, they don't move the sidewalk closer to the trees you plant. Is that something the committee can help with that? In the, in the Applewood area, the tree that. In the, in the Applewood area, the sidewalk is right next to the road versus further up in the community. There's a space between the road and the sidewalk and the trees are planted in that space. But at the Applewood property, the trees are on the, it goes straight, then sidewalk, then where the trees are planted. So there's plenty, there's more room there and I don't believe any of them are, have encroached the sidewalk adjacent to the Applewood property. So are you talking about the sidewalks that are on the orchard drive or. It's on the beginning of rambling road, like the first quarter of a mile or even less than that off of West West. You're talking about the first stretch of rambling road. Great. Correct. Yes, you're correct. Okay. I will, we'll continue to pursue that. I was asking Alan, is there anything the committee can do with that or is it in your court right now? Right now to try to, you know, get permission to plant on private property and then once we get that we've got to do dig safe, find out where all those utilities are because they're just scattered all over the place. We had to, I had to do a dig safe to remove a tree that blew over in the grass belt. A few years ago, when the dig safe came back, I was shocked to see what it looked like. So I'm not sure how far we have to go to get away from all these utilities. Pat, would you tell me your, your last name just for the notes. Thank you. I'm a resident at Applewood. Wonderful. Thank you, Pat. As I said, I'll give Debbie a push to give you a call back, Alan. Appreciate it. I wanted to speak for another second on the library planting. I did a quick check to see if there was any sort of like date that would make sense. And it turns out that library week. And it turns out that library week ends on the second Saturday in April. And so it would seems like it would be kind of like a perfect opportunity to like do like some sort of joint event that showcases, you know, the, the tree committee and the library together. But did you say that was Trishona? It's the second Saturday in April. Okay, so that's also our Arbor month planting. Yeah, but that, like this Sunday before, and then end is when it starts and then it ends on that Saturday is like National Library Week. According to Google. Do we want to then do, we'll just make a decision now that's where we'll do planting in South Amherst for the first planting of the planting season. It's not very far from the nursery if there's stuff we could do there too. True. Just walk down the road. Yeah, I think, I think that's a great idea. I don't see why not. Is Henry still on the call? Um, but yeah, no, I think that's a great idea for the rest of the committee is good with that. I'm good with that. I don't think we have to take an official vote. Is that correct Alan? Correct. Okay, great. If Henry rejoins, I will hand the meeting back over to him. If not, I will take a shot at running the next few things on the agenda. Hopefully he returns. Yeah, so here's Henry. Perfect. Hi Henry. Sorry, everybody. I, my computer is having troubles is going in the shop tomorrow but anyway, I'm back. Okay, so the next on the agenda is chairs report. Pat, thank you for joining us and bringing that up. Let me just get everything back to where I was good. Okay. So the chairs report. There's been a few emails that have come into the tree committee website, tree committee email list. A woman named Lakota Sandow, who lives at University Village is interested in actually doing she actually filled out an ants form. This is the old Amherst neighborhood tree planting program that we used to do the programs defunct. I don't know where she found the form. I don't think it's on our website anymore but somehow she found it and applied she wants to do a planting at University Village I guess I'm not sure if that's public or private property. But she was hoping to come to the meeting tonight and then she emailed me that she couldn't make it. So maybe she'll make the next meeting. And also we should try to figure out where that form is and how to delete it if we're not going to be doing that program. It was a great program where a neighborhood would come together and propose that we do a planting at their place, and they would get lots of people to help and it was sort of like we do on the second Saturday but it was a bigger event with a lot of volunteers. So that was a nice program. So we'll see if that woman Lakota can come to another meeting and we can discuss it then. Yeah, Henry can I just say. Our first planting day is April 13. We also have the St. Billy Festival on April 20 and Arbor Day so we'll have a pretty full month in April. There's an email someone was worried about the safety of the groom tree, the bride and groom trees at the MS Historical Society and I assured her that what we had heard when we met with the library board was that those trees will be not in any danger from the construction. Anyone have any comments about that stuff so far. Yeah. Henry, I just want to say I, I really like the I can't hear you Brooks. Oh, we can hear you. Your computer. Okay, everybody else can hear me. Okay. I really like the idea of us working at University Village. My thought is that this woman that reached out to us, we should get back to her and say, if you can recruit like three or four other folks in University Village who want to do this, we would love to come there and plant some trees. It's a great place for us. Alan, is that private or public property? Do you know? One site says university managed. Yeah, well the site is but I can't, is that all be a drive. I'm trying to blank. Olympia is I thought Village Park, right? North Pleasant. Yeah, I thought it was off North Pleasant Street. It is. Yeah, it's where they tore down all those other ones. Yeah. Yeah, so it used to be, I don't know if it's still, it used to be like international grad students. Oh, a Lincoln apartment? It's family housing. Yeah. North Village. It used to be North Village. Is this near the fire station, near the North Fire Station? It used to be North Village. Yeah, okay. I know where I am now. That's where they called now. University Village. That's what she called it. I don't know where it is. That's what it's called. Yeah. So we can plant on, you know, we can plant out in front of, of there. It's cross street from kind of across street from Hobart Lane and in the other development. Old apartment subdivision. Yeah, I mean, we could plant on North Pleasant Street, but we can't plant inside the, you know, on the road. Donated trees, right? We can't use town funds for that. But since it might be a economically disadvantaged area, we could possibly get a grant to get some funding for that too. True. We have other. We have other projects that are less disadvantaged. And the brand new lead housing complex, the university built and landscaped quite nicely. But yeah, we could plant on the street in front. We couldn't plant, you know, on university property. Okay. I will get back to her and hopefully she can come to the next meeting. I'll suggest that. We'll get a group of people together to help and we'll pick a date to plant. I'll tell her that we can plant by the road. We should look into who owns it and whether we can plant further in. If it's already been landscaped, if it's the new place, then maybe that doesn't make sense for us to do it, but. It's owned by UMass. Okay. So we can encourage her to go to UMass for the money for planting there. All right, good. Any other comments? All right. Let me see if there's one other thing. Oh, I had to do a conflict of interest training, which we all have to do as members of the committee, but I have to do every two years. So be aware that you might get a note from the town saying. Do this. And it was actually very simple of this time. Just had to read something and check that you acknowledge that you read it. So what last time we had to take a test and the whole thing was a bigger to do. I think that's all I have. Oh, no, one more thing is the town council offers liaisons to town boards and committees. And they don't guarantee they would do this, but they wanted to know if we wanted a liaison from the town council. That would be someone who would come to our meetings. Let us know what's happening with the town council bring our concerns to the town council. It might be a nice thing to have. We don't need to, we can say no. I think that would be great. The more understanding town councilors have of what we do. And what our needs are. The more likely. That funding will stay in the budget because it's not guaranteed. Exactly what I was thinking. Well, I propose that we. Say no. Committee members think. I don't see why we would say no. Do we get to pick which one. Maybe. Yeah, I think, I think that would be great. The more understanding town councilors have of what we do. And what our needs are. The more likely. That funding will stay in the budget because it's not guaranteed. So I think that we say yes to that. Committee members vote. Yes. Okay, unanimous. Good. I will. Let, I think it was Pat. From the committee. I can't remember. I think that was who it was. So I will let her know that we was like a liaison. If they want to provide us one. Good. And that's, um, That's all I have. So Julian. Yeah. Thanks, Henry. I think you're thinking, you know, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My updates, three updates are a piggybacking on what you said about. The library project and the bride and groom tree. It's my understanding that they're having an arborist. Who is going to work with the tree to some extent. To make sure it is protected during the renovation is what I've heard from members of the historical commission. So that's thing a B is. B is just that I sort of on an unrelated note applied for the mass tree wardens and foresters scholarship. So I put that in. And I think that's all I have. I may be forgetting one thing, but I will check my notes once my phone charges. Okay. And we don't have the treasurer's report because she's not here. She was supposed to send it to me, but forgot. So. Tree warden is report. Alan. Right. So just quickly, just following up on the tree hearing for river tree hearing. So obviously. The. The vote there at the planning board was to. The tree warden was to recommend the removal of the trees so they can put the driveway in. And that's going to happen. Probably in March sometime or April. For those trees. The trees for the nursery, the bare root tree stock has been ordered. And should be. Hopefully available. For April, but it may be later than the second Saturday. April. So we may have to have a special day or. You know, try to keep them on ice till March, but we'll make it work. As I have to order the grow bags. And I found a supplier for those. So I'll wear those as well. And then we have plenty of compost to put in them to, you know, bag them up and get them growing. So. I do need to make sure I in April. I'll have the water turned on at the. Okay. It'll be the third Saturday. In April as the sustainability festival. On the 20th. So hopefully we can have, we need it by then really. Well, these are the seedlings. These are the bear root stock that's going into the growing trees at the nursery. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah. The other ones. You said you were ordering some trees. No, I didn't. I think we're going to vote on which varieties to have this meeting. But you said that you had some trees that you were ordering for the community and that you were going to order. An extra. Number. And then I said I was also going to order seedlings as well. From. Right. So. Anyway, I'll look into that. Yes. Okay. So we can order seedlings. I'll just just put them on the table. So, I'm going to order it. I need to get some other seeds. Let's see. What about the harbour day seedlings? I hope I have that with me. I did. I can find it online very quickly. All right. Here we go. Okay, rapid fire. Concolor fur. Whites, Bruce. Douglas fur. White oak. Too popular. Red oak. White dogwood. American hornbeam. winterberry, lilac, redbud, Washington Hawthorne. Those are the species that Shagbark, I haven't seen Shagbark history ever. I don't remember ever seeing Shagbark history before, but I don't know if the committee has any favorites in there that you'd like to see handed out for every day. I feel like a redbud. I was just gonna say red buds or something on the smaller side might be nice because one of the reasons why people last year weren't interested in taking trees or as many people I'm thinking of like younger folks in particular weren't interested in taking trees is because we had the tulip poplars and we were showing people like hey these grow really big they get to be like this tulip poplar outside the boatwood and people were like I'm renting I can't do that I don't know you know if there's something they could plant and then transport or just like a more manageable size I think red buds are a nice option. Yeah the redbud or the Hawthorne or the lilac which would be Hawthorne or redbud would be you know decent size trees medium-sized trees. What about winterberry how big do they get? That's more of a shrub really I mean it's a not really tree form. Right but that might be good for that kind of situation that's true talking about. We could do both we could get a tree and we could get a larger arbor day seedling and a smaller size tree seedling. I also noticed that people were interested in like the fruit tree that we had last year because they were excited about the idea of having something that they could eat. The Paw Paw trees. Yeah yeah they liked the Paw Paws that's true. I mean red buds you can eat the buds Hawthorne's you can eat the fruit. The Hawthorne and the lilac are not native trees to this area. Washington Hawthorne's not native? I don't think I think it's a west coast tree. But it's a native sure the berries the birds seem to like I worry about the birds spreading them and if they're not native that'd be a problem. Right. I don't think lilac is a great choice for trying to do habitat and you know. Yeah I agree. They have white dogwood whatever that is I don't know what white dogwood is so it must be a cusa dogwood. White dog. Yeah it just says white dogwood. There's so many dogwoods that just pop up around here I don't know why you would get something that wasn't a native. Every time I turn around a new dog would grow in my backyard. Yeah same with the red red buds too. Yeah we could do one large and one small so a native red bud and you know eastern red bud and the shag bark hickory so there's you know there are options and both are good on the you know both are native both have wildlife value. I'll check to see if it might be that we ordered I think it was witch hazel and so we're getting some from my community I was going to give some to the town so let me just texted my partner to see if she had ordered those I'm not sure so I'll get back to you Alan if not then let's do those two. Yeah witch hazel would be great too I think so. Yeah so the large tree let's use the shag bark hickory. Sure. Okay then continuing. So the tree inventory quest for quote went out last week and I had three people expressing three companies expressed interest in it so responses are due by the 23rd of February and they're supposed to be completed with the inventory in early June so that we have time to bill everything and get it submitted before July first because everything has to be submitted before July first. I also went in for an option to have them write up a report that also included sort of the ecosystem services that the trees are providing for the community and the cost benefits of the trees so that would be something that would be very helpful in making the point why it's important to care for and maintain and promote trees in town so if the inventory comes in at a good price then I would go ahead and take the option to have them write up the report as well. I also. I'm sorry Alan I'm sorry I think I missed the beginning of that what do you mean they they company the company that gets selected to do the inventory oh yeah went out to bid to have a contractor um redo our 2010 2011 inventory um and to add some new streets onto that as well. Thank you. Also put on our request for quotes on some stump grinding using some of the money that you help get for the town for tree planting and tree maintenance so by February 23rd hopefully have all the quotes in to grind roughly 36 stumps that are scattered around town that have been trying to get done for a number of years um that includes grinding, cleaning up, loaming and seeding um and that will free up a lot of planting spaces that I just kind of awaiting to plant because I'd need to get the stumps out of the way first so that'll be nice. I also used a little bit of the money to hire urban forestry solutions to come out and do a risk tree assessment on a large white oak tree on Pelham roads right next to the Siowark is right next to the town line with Pelham so if you go up Pelham road right hand side just before the marker this is welcome to Pelham um there's a large white oak and it has a very old wound on the trunk and um probably there's been a concern about it for years and occasionally you go by and check it out and I was doing my walk around with it and thumping on the trunk to see if it sounded like there was more decay in it than before and there did appear to be the sound of more decay uh hollow wood um so to be on the safe side I hired urban forestry solutions to come out with their resistograph and write up our risk reports so he measured the decay at the trunk around the decay and it came back not very good there's a lot more decay in the tree than I expected unfortunately it has a beautiful healthy crown and um but his recommendation was to remove the tree and I agree with him that the tree probably has reached a point where it's becoming structurally unstable and probably should come down so um it's uh a nice technology the wrist resistograph takes a lot of guess work out of measuring where solid wood is in the tree and where decay is in the tree and so that was it was helpful um for me to be able to take the guess work out of it is is that some type of x-ray machine or it it it uses a uh very fine drill actually it's about the unit itself it looks like it's got the handle of like a a drill like a cordless drill and it's got this long rectangular box on it with lots of electrodes and sensors attached to it and as the drill goes through the wood it's measuring the resistance the drill needs as it goes through the wood so when it it's solid wood it's it's graphing that out and then when it hits either a void or decay it gets less resistance and it graphs that out and you can do that at three or four different points in a large trunk and you can come up with a very accurate measurement of how sound the wood of the tree is at that location it doesn't tell you an inch above or an inch below it tells you right there where that what that wood is doing but you can figure out if there's a you know if there's a 40 inch trunk and there's 10 inches of wood solid wood then you can assume that the cavity goes up and down in the trunk as well so is that like equipment super expensive or something we could find it is expensive it's expensive it's something that I have been thinking about getting for the town it can be used for other things it actually was used developed to do structural to test beams in buildings and bridges for decay it's been turned into a great tool for the tree care industry and I have been thinking about it and see if I can get some funding through grants or something to possibly do it. How much did it cost to hire them to do that tree? It was about four hundred dollars he also writes up a report so it gives me something to hold on to and show people to justify why I'm doing what I'm doing. How how much does the piece of equipment cost roughly? I looked at it a year ago and they have some options to lease it has to be serviced every year and we calibrated and sent back to the factory it was it was like $12,000 around there and it's it's all digital now too so it actually doesn't give you a piece of paper with graph on it he used to it just plugs into your computer and dumps it all in and there's a bunch of pre-made you know graphs it can do and charts and everything so it's it's pretty nice nice trees so yeah that's all I have for nothing okay all right I just heard back we did order the witch hazel so let's just get the shack bar kickeries for the main tree so you don't want to get the red buds okay any opinions anyone I think that sounds fine just the hazel uh sorry the witch hazel and the shag bark we had we had a reasonably sized excess of seedlings last year okay all right good uh what's next just recommend that if we're giving out witch hazel we should all get a tutorial on male and female witch hazel because we fielded many questions about fixing the witch hazel that uh I wasn't prepared to answer one question for Alan which is I saw the tree on Dana street was removed is that was it just continuing to decay or what was the situation there I know the one of the property owners nearby have a lot of concerns um which tree on Dana Street you're referring to uh big maple um in the front yard of a house sort of early on on Dana Street near Amity from from main street you mean yeah from sorry Amity street yeah yes yeah that tree was um far gone it was um it was in very bad shape um it was a big tree took a lot of work it was uh white removal but um yeah so it was just dead pretty much ready to go wasn't totally dead it was just far too far gone to try to see it to save it and all the entire half the tree over the road was dead quarter of the tree towards their sidewalk was dead the only thing left alive was a piece of it that was kind of leaning towards the leaning towards the house so got him we just chose to take it down and get the stump ground and then plant some nutrients sounds good okay I just heard that yeah that we got to which is there were a dollar each and um you know we bought 100 we'll probably need 25 here so the 75 we can the town can use for that thank you okay good social media report shashona and social media report I don't have anything to report on the instagram we haven't had really anything going on um there uh shashona I think you do facebook right yeah yeah I do the facebook um I have posted a few different things to um you know it seems like we get around like four likes on our things yeah we're not getting huge numbers of people to the page and to follow us that's part of the problem so I don't know how to do that I don't know how the social media thing works but if you guys want to look into how to get more likes and how to do that um I'd probably be useful yeah I'm absolutely um I'll just bring it up right now for us to have a reference point on the shantry committee account uh basically we we actually just got two likes um so that's cool um but we have about 100 and 506 followers and like an average post maybe gets like 15 10 to 15 likes um so that's sort of where we stand currently one thing I can do is I can repost it on my personal account so maybe some of the kids from the high school will like it but um that I guess is one idea another idea is we could when we write editorials um oh right that was the other thing I meant for my report um sorry your your letter yes the uh the letter went out to um the daily Hampshire Gazette the emmerced bulletin and the emmerced indie so it's been published there um but what I was thinking is when we write letters in the future um I should have thought of this earlier we could also put our social media Facebook and Instagram tags at the bottom of the letter so anyone who wants to can follow us there is there a way since we are a committee of the town government that we could um the the town who you know has tens of thousands of followers um and then there's like a you know I live in emmerced Facebook pay all those things like I want but I think that might be private but if the town could somehow post the importance of liking or following us on social media that would help a lot rather than just grassroots asking people to join I mean I think I think we actually have to post things that people well yes like the the Instagram page has like six posts ever so there's no reason for anybody to engage with that right so we need to be if this is a strategy that we want to have and say like use social media to gain more public support or to gain more volunteers or whatever the goals of the social media engagement strategy are right like there should be a plan developed and I think whatever that plan is it's got to involve posting more stuff that stays up right so like Julian and I had I had said you know when you post something like from our plantings don't do it as a story because that disappears do it as like an actual post or post and a story right so if there's more content up there then people are more likely to see it they're more likely to engage with it and follow it but I don't think we all as a whole have been using it in in that way I also don't know how much of how much time it's worth right if like yeah the algorithm have to post something at least once a week but ultimately they want you to post three times a week and the bet and if you're only going to do it once a week they want you to post at noon on Wednesday and that usually can get like the most traction and you have to have a like right away when you post it to get it shown to other people so like for anyone here please like anything that gets posted and then that way it'll be more likely to be shown to like to beat that algorithm to show that it's relevant like because the like the Facebook gods are constantly trying to chew down the things that it considers not relevant and if you're not posting enough content regularly or if something you post doesn't get caught right away by someone it does show then it will bury it as irrelevant content what do you post on Facebook to show and I know generally I post whenever there's a second Saturday planting but that's generally about it I should probably start doing it for tree hearings I think that might be something worth posting about um when like when do you post about I post definitely the about second Saturday plantings and I post like a picture of us after the second Saturday planting the the meetings and when I'm cruising around on Facebook and I find something that seems like of interest to tree folk I'll share that but that won't be original content for us that's shared content to um you know be useful for our members I guess we could make a post every time the newsletter goes out that might be a good idea well the newsletter is probably not itself worthy of Instagram posting um not because it's not good I think it's very well written and an amazing piece of work every month but what what is of interest I think is that there I mean there is local news in there about trees and every time I send one of those things out I try to find like I will literally just go to Google and type in trees and hit the news tab and you'd be surprised like there's always there's some the somebody's always some national publications always got something interesting about trees in any given month um and so that's the kind of you know for people who just like you know as an Instagram follower they're not maybe they're not engaged too deeply but if you get some warm fuzzy tree news or like oh my god looking how big this tree is or things like that that's enough you know to probably juice our numbers a little bit and then I was also thinking that seasonally you know like um when people I mean it's hard in February it's really for the newsletter for sure it's just hard to think about tree news like there's just not a lot of stuff out there um but once we start our plannings and people come by you know I think about you know when people help us do their plannings it could be fun to do a you know it just takes doing it which is the effort is the hard part but if somebody joins and they have an Instagram account we take a picture of them we do a little profile of them they share it to their friends and suddenly you know that kind of starts to build um and so it's probably okay for it to ideally if we you know this were a big deal for us we'd be posting every three days throughout the year but maybe this is a baby step we just look at it as a seasonal thing like once we start planning that's you know that's newsworthy and it's a good community feeling and we can highlight people you know that kind of stuff but starting to ramble but you see what I'm saying like there's a there's local news there's topical tree news and then there's kind of the more intense seasonal stuff that we could post once our plannings get underway yeah I definitely think plantings are worthy of posting and same with like hearings and that sort of thing regular meetings I'm not sure about newsletters not sure about but there's certainly a ebbs and flows with the season so to speak yeah I think we could probably send stuff to the town to post on their accounts that would link to our places and that might get more people coming to our page yeah I'm sending to I'm not sure who's the director of like outreach and stuff now that Brianna left um but we could send an email being like hey could you please repost what we have on your town pages I don't think town has an Instagram but they definitely have Facebook and Twitter okay so yeah can you guys reach out to the town people who do that and try to get things reposted there yeah I will absolutely do that I'm just not sure who is in charge of it currently okay sorry I just want to add when I searched for public Shaitree Amherst Public Shaitree on Instagram I got two accounts to meet Amherst Shaitreys and Amherst Shaitreys committee so that might be I don't know if that's intentional or not but one of them looks older and that might be confusing yeah that was there's the old account that was I believe managed by somebody else and then there's the new account that's managed by me um and we weren't able to get the login to the account to be able to either use it or shut it down I see and I also think I email I like didn't know Brianna left I emailed her and the automatic reply was like email the town manager's office so I don't know if there's a new person for the social media and outreach you know I've not I've not heard of a new person yet so they haven't announced it at least you know who I'll email I'll email Jennifer Moisten and Angela Mills because they used to work with her and Angela Angela Mills would be the person to ask yeah okay perfect all right let's move on it's getting on in time I know Britt has to leave or um so the only thing uh those two things you mess interns Britt yeah I haven't I haven't done anything with that this semester um I mean the semester just started last week and a half ago um I didn't I didn't bring any students in for credit mostly because I just don't have the capacity to effectively oversee them and be helpful um but you know if we have specific events I can certainly promote them and try to get students engaged you know on a per event basis well definitely in April I have second Saturday planting and then the third Saturdays I will need help for the booth yep at the San Bernardi festival great all right good um and then the merry maple table yes yeah so I emailed I think her name's Sharon um who had given us the presentation a couple months ago and asking if they would be interested in um you know a long-term semi-permanent loan um of this table and she replied immediately like one word yes giant letters exclamation points um and I said that I would follow up with you all um to see what else you know we had talked about like a a plaque of some kind that Ellen was thinking about um I mean I have the table I'm happy to arrange delivery um but I don't know if there were other things that the committee wanted to make sure um we're thinking about with this loan well we definitely wanted um at least a sticker on the bottom saying this is the property of the Amherst public shade tree committee on loan I don't know if should we have a contract or some sort of letter of understanding between us in the library yeah I have an MOU makes sense yeah I would tend to agree especially given that their furniture costs and stuff have been in issue yeah so do you want to check in with them about that great yes yeah do we have like shade tree committee letterhead yes we have letterhead I can send you do great love it okay um yeah so I could put something together on that and just say you know we'd like to do an MOU and then um Ellen were you thinking about something other than just like a sticker on the bottom or you know I think in my mind it would make sense to have something that indicates to people honey hold on something that indicates to people um that this is from the merry maple um just so there's you know people don't just think it's some random wooden table yeah I was going to ask do we want to sort of give the table a title and I think we should also acknowledge the person who made it yes so um and then follow up with them and let them know that it's on display yeah right and I would put the year too so I mean we're sort of following museum format um so yeah we just need the name of the craftsperson um and I guess a table from the former merry maple it's gotta be called the merry table the merry table it's right there Ellen do you have the name of the woman the artist I'm sure I do in my I think Henry and I have it somewhere too yeah okay let's all look forward and uh we'll send that to Ellen I'll send you letterhead Brit okay and that's great we'll actually get that happening get it off the agenda it's been there for months and this is going to the library not to the historical society correct we asked the Jones yeah that was the just because it would be more viewed I guess they're widely viewed I guess yeah so nobody carps into it or something no yeah what are you talking about okay back to the agenda second Saturday work days do we want to just make a decision for the April planting or you want to Ellen do you want to wait on that I would say we April second Saturday at least is set for once in memorial and southeast South Amherst planting and I can definitely make that happen that is the beginning of school vacation week so I don't know if that impacts anybody it impacts me but um I don't know the 13th is that really yes okay yeah the following the following Monday that whole week is off there's a there'll be more kids around to help plant trees yeah I don't see why not it's just if anyone has travel plans yes yes yeah great okay um that's good for April and then we'll go from there that's also someone mentioned that was the library week so that's a good time to do it okay back to the agenda um Arbor Day plans speaker see things right as we talked about um Allen did you reach out to Doug Ptolemy I've not I totally forgot to I apologize yeah okay so let's try to get that happening yeah Henry I just sent a quick note to Angela um asking to repost um some of the stuff that we post on our account on the town accounts will keep the committee surprised of what she says good thank you okay um okay so second study work Arbor Day plans town tree inventory Allen talked about you mess interns we did Mary Magdal table we did urban forestry management plan uh the update on that is that the information that we get from our inventory and the report is going to be crucial and helping to create our data driven urban forest management plan so I have sort of the backbones of the management plan kind of outlined um and I'm filling in bits and pieces of it as I'm motivated and have time to do um and then once we get all this information then we get kind of just going to look at our old inventory and look at our new inventory and see how our efforts to mitigate risk trees and plant new trees yeah are we accomplishing our goals and where we need to improve um to accomplish our goals great okay and then the environmental justice neighborhood planting ideas any news on that from anyone uh I don't know if Olympia oops or Olympia Drive is a town owned road but we could do some planting in there or in the affordable housing um units back off of Olympia the road is town owned I'm pretty sure but the you know the dryways off into those are not um so that's where we'd have to use the other funds to plant tree got it let's keep that on the back burner at least because it's getting late tonight um all right uh last thing on the presentations and discussion is the website update uh Bennett I mentioned the request to tree page which uh needs our new uh new decision about what we do with that right so um I don't remember the issue it's that we have a request to tree page that currently promotes a policy that we don't actually support right and then we we wrote up that agreement that what we do when we get um requests for trees all right I can send that to you again if you want yeah that would be helpful sorry can we update it the website ourselves or does it have to go through the town no it has to go through the town we don't know who's doing it now that Breonna's gone no no we can update it ourselves oh I didn't know that or I forgot it I go in every time yeah we have editing permissions on I just use Henry's login and we could we can edit whatever we need to oh well I'll send you the login and yeah then I won't have to negotiate perfect there's back to David's question about the two pages so there's another web page out there that is a committee there's another Instagram page Instagram pages one is active the other was managed by a previous committee member who I don't have the info to log into so you know who that was you have a name I don't remember Shoshona did you manage it or is that no I didn't manage it Becca did and even when we were like corresponding with her and she was giving us like her information to like try and like do a handoff or something like it just wasn't working it yeah like we me and Julian were at the library yeah we met a few times about it I think yeah and we spent like hours trying to like make it work and it just would not work yeah so Becca was the last person who had access yeah yeah yeah and Henry you do not have contact information I can talk to her again I'm not sure I do have her contact I'll reach out to her again sure yeah if she was able to just go in and kill that account that would yeah that would make it a lot better um she just got rid of it that was for Instagram yeah okay good for any reason she can't get rid of it just right like old account or defunct account or whatever yeah with the name of the new account so yeah um good uh website request okay I think that's all there's some statewide things but I have nothing to report on that is there anything with solar bylaw group Julian uh no the bylaw went before town council they sent it back to the I believe CRC committee community resources committee and now they will eventually discuss it um and bring it like recommend it one way or another um and offer their views on it but it often takes a while to get through the committees can you keep track of that when it comes back would be good for us to speak up a little bit yeah say fees are not covered in this and we want it's pretty weak bylaw yeah for anyone who's right it yep great okay so julie no keep track of that and uh that's everything on the agenda david uh what did you think of it uh it was fun I enjoyed all the thought that goes into it okay feel free to come back next month and uh in april we'll do the planting second saturday so second tuesday second saturday that's our main things that's good thank you so much you're welcome thanks for coming anyone else have comments no pat anything no I'll just give debbie a portion make sure she gets in touch with alan great all right well thank you everyone um have a good month and uh yeah send out the minutes and I'll send the things I promise to do and I'll see you all soon take care thanks everybody take care everybody thank you