 So now we have a quorum. We'll start the meeting. I just want to remind everybody that we are alive and being recorded. Yeah, I normally just allow everyone to be panelists and to speak freely and I guess I can't do that unless I know who the person is from now on. So it was my fault. Sorry. Okay. Other things going on too. I'm going to, can someone else share the agenda actually that would make it easier. I'm trying to find it. I'm taking notes. So I can't do it. Almost there. I can't. Julian's coming out in and out, but he's here. He's just as video is coming in and out. All right, while we do that, let's collect ours. Shawna, you're muted. Four hours. Okay, Ellen, you're muted to Ellen. Oh, there we go. Three, Bennett. Three. Me, I probably had 15. Julian. 10. Okay. And hopefully we'll get from, did I miss someone? Sarah is not here. I can't. And Brit, she's going to put her hours in. Okay. Good. So there's the agenda. Hopefully everyone can see that. And do we approve the October minutes. All in favor. Thumbs up. Again, Julian can't see you. Shawna. Yep. I approve. All right. Minutes approved. Bennett, do you want to take over minutes right now? Ellen's doing it. I'm happy to do it. It's got to pull up. It's okay. I've already started. It's fine. Okay. Yeah. Good. Okay. Thank you. All right. The chairs we go. So let's see who we do have someone else in the. Too many things going on here. Brooks Ballinger. Is that a real person? How do I find that out? I guess I'll allow them to talk and. Brooks, if you could introduce yourself. Hello. Yes. Hi. Hi. My name is Brooks and living in Amherst. And I just joined up with your committee. Great. Well, welcome. If you want to put on your camera, I can allow that. Yeah. My camera doesn't seem to be working. I don't know what's up with that. Okay. That's fine. Thank you. And Sophie is a student who's visiting us. Yeah. Do you want to say more Sophie? I'm really interested in. I mean, for us to, in general, urban forestry. As sort of a subset of that. And I would love to just like. Listen to how that manifests in a civic capacity. I'm also, I should say, I'm not going to put my camera on either. I'll be back. I would like to just. At work delivering mail as I listen in. Okay. That's fine. Thank you for joining us and both Brooks and Sophie. If you have any questions, please feel free to either raise your hand or just speak up. Okay. And we'll move on to the agenda. So the first thing is the chairs report. Not a lot to report. That's not in the agenda elsewhere. from people, someone requesting an Allen, we should talk about this at some point during the meeting. Some replacement trees are a lot of ash trees that are dying along Applewood and Bay Road near there. Also heard from the Amherst Garden Club, they're wanting to sort of re-band and working on pollinated networks that would love to join us at some point. December, every source is gonna send someone to talk to us about tree clearing along their lines. And the other thing is we used to reach out to a lot of the other committees and we haven't been doing that much, but I think now's a good time to contact the planning board, attend one of their meetings, invite town council members to join us and things like that. So let's talk about it. It's not on the agenda for this month, but maybe next month we can do that as a full agenda item. Okay, that's all I have, Julian. Yeah, I have three things. A, I've noticed ever source has done quite a bit of tree work around town or their contractor has. B is that Amherst College appears to have planted unless the town did three trees where the Norway Maple was removed and then the last thing that I had was just I guess curiosity about the new project on Ball Lane and if any trees would be included or if we'd have a chance to plant there or that sort of thing. Helen, do you have something about that? I'll start with the last one, the Ball Lane one. I mean, if the trees are planted in the public way, we can do that. It looks like it has some tree planting going on in the development itself, but along Ball Lane and along Hopewood Hill, we could definitely plant trees. Route 63 is actually maintained by the state money road. So if we wanted to plant along that, we just need to get permission from the state to do that. I know in the development plans for that, they're planning to keep some of the standing trees as much as possible and add new ones. Wonderful. Good. Thank you, Julian. Tree Warden report. I don't have a lot to report. I mean, obviously we had a very successful tree planting on West Pomeroy, West Street. That was a big help getting those trees in. The Tree City, USA Awards, Tree City, USA application with the National Labor Day Foundation is due next month. So if the committee wants to tell you all of your activities, write up a report, send me pictures of what you did, we should be able to go for a growth award this year. And I just need to document all that and go for a growth award. I'll start pulling together a overview of what we've done. If anyone wants to send me photos from any of the events we've done this year, that'd be great. And then, you know, it's the newsletter, you know, PDF of the newsletter items, anything the committee has done. So it all counts. We'll be spending $20,000 of the $40,000 that was put into a capital account to do tree work. I'll be putting some tree removal and stump grinding out to bed in the coming weeks. And we'll have the $20,000 to buy trees. Sugarloaf nurseries, I think most of you know, donated 12 to 13 trees last month. And we have them, most of them have been planted, some of them we healed in down at the new nursery, Hofestation Road at the horse barn. So if you, you know, drive down there, take a look, you'll see some trees healed in mulch. There are large root balls, balls and burlap trees. And looking forward to get those planted next spring. Thanks for having me. Alan, before you move on to the next thing, I'm just gonna make a note for the newsletter that seems like something we would wanna acknowledge, right? Yes. So Sugarloaf gave us how many? I can send the exact number, I think it was 13, 13 trees. Okay. Nice trees, I mean, they're big, you know, some of them were the size of the trees that we were planting Saturday, so. Cool. Very, very generous. That's great. But I can send you the exact species and everything. Yeah, if you think about it, great. If I don't get it, at least if I have the number of trees and I can work with that, so. I'd like to recognize if the committee can recognize them, personally or on the webpage or the newspaper or something that they're making these donations. I mean, they're $400, $300 trees, so it's pretty good. I will take the action. I'll write, this is one of those feel-good letters to the editor, I think, is that right? Yes. They probably published that, the bulletin or something. So I'll take the job of doing that. Thank you. Yeah, that'd be nice to acknowledge their generosity. Yeah, I agree, that was certainly very generous and they looked like really good, healthy trees on Saturday too. Yeah, they were a little long in the grow bags rather than that, they were good trees, yeah. We'll make a note of that and a thank you. Shashana, can you also post that on Facebook and Julian on Instagram? Yes, I would also like photos from that. I can send you the photos. I took some photos of the trees being loaded up and being healed in at the nursery, so. All right, cool, thanks. And then we did get a lot of info, I've been getting a lot of requests from the Ramling Road, Hampshire Village, Alpawood, Upper Orchards area where the developer planted a combination of ash, pinnoke and nori maple and the ash trees are all dying and one by one we're taking them down. And last, not this past summer, two summers ago, we did do, we did plant part of Ramling Road and we went down country corners up to West Street. So we've kind of started the replanting there. I'm discussing with, beginning the discussion with the property manager along Ramling Road in Alpawood, the possibilities of setback plantings because there's not a lot of space in the grass belt. We've got a lot of sidewalk damage from the pinnoke trees and the ash trees, the sidewalks almost impassable. And I'd like to see if we could do a planting in the setback commission from the property owner. So we're working on that that might potentially next planting, second anxiety, planting round, we can sow Ramling Road in again. I think that's the fewest covers all the highlights. All right, thank you. The treasure is not in attendance but Britt couldn't make it because of work and Sarah also. I was wondering, maybe we should think about changing the time that we meet and I don't want to do that today partly because we didn't advertise that on the agenda but also because two people are not here who couldn't make it today. So I'm gonna put that on the agenda for next month to see if we can come up with a different day or time that works, everyone. So think about your schedules, maybe we can't change it, but maybe we can. All right, social media, Shoshana and Julian. Yeah, I posted for our planting and I think I posted something else as well. It's been kind of slow and steady and I'll be posting about our thank you after I get all the information about that in all the pictures and such. Yeah, pretty much same here. Okay. One thing is I put it on Facebook today, the meeting. So I think if you can, a few days before the meeting, post that the meeting's coming up as well as the plantings, that would be great. Okay. Good. I see Julian, yeah, okay, good. All right, presentations and discussions, the library trees, is there any follow-up with that or are we done with that issue for anyone? Well, I guess we're done with it. I don't think so, Clark. Yeah, second Saturday workdays, I think we had a good year this year doing the nursery, doing the November planting. I'm pretty pleased. Anyone have any other comments about it? Yeah, same here. I think we got good attendance for most of them. We did quite a lot of trees and it's certainly great to have the help of Alan and his crew, so that was great. And oh, the other thing I would just note is that we sort of broadened out where we did in town this year, I think more than past years, at least from what I remember, which is good and we should keep doing it. Okay. Do we have a count of how many trees we planted this year? I don't have the count with me, but that's easy enough to get. It was down from previous years, but we did a number of trees. It's just good information to have to promote ourselves. Yeah. And Sophie and Brooks, we do tree workdays every second Saturday of the month from April through November. So if we're not planting trees, we're taking care of trees you already planted or working in the nursery. We started a nursery last month on the workday in South Amherst, so we're gonna grow some trees. This is just a thought, but in the winter months, if there's snow on the ground, we can't really do anything, but would it help if there's not snow on the ground to do mulching, pruning, that sort of thing on Saturdays? Pruning is dormant season. There's always a great time to do pruning. So as long as you're not trudging through snow on the side of the road, it's dual. Well, do we wanna try to schedule December or January, second Saturday planting? I do not want to do one in December. Maybe start in January. Yeah. Yeah, December is very busy. All right, let's try the second Saturday in January. We'll do a pruning project somewhere. Great. Anyone have that date, Handy? 13th. And if the weather's miserable, then we don't have to go out, but yeah, we'll try not to cancel it. That's my goal. Okay, any other comments on workdays? We should start thinking of where we wanna plant for the next year. Sounds like we have an idea if it's starting and we have the nursery to work on, but it'd be good to be able to publish a list saying here's what we're gonna be working on this year. We used to do that. All right, town tree inventory. Anything new on that, Alan? Nothing new, unfortunately. Okay. And the town tree tour, it was a good success. We only had about a dozen people, but everyone really enjoyed it. Paul Backelman was there again, which was nice, and he really enjoyed it. And we were walking by the Lord Jeff and these two women were walking by and overheard us talking about a tree and they asked what we were doing and they ended up joining the entire tree tour. That was cool. Everyone enjoyed it, so it was very nice, yeah. Yeah, that was fun. Is that down from the previous year? Because you say 12 people. I'm like, that sounds like a success to me. That sounds good. We actually had, I think, 47 at the first school. Whoa, I forgot that, yeah. We weren't expecting that either, so yeah. I thought it was great and I actually learned a lot. Say that again. I thought it was great and I learned a lot. Oh, good. All right. Thank you, Brooks. Yeah. All right. Anyway, I don't know if we'll do it again, but we probably should, but it's a lot of effort and there's not a difference. I don't think we're gonna do it in the summer, so it's spring or fall, so maybe we'll wait a year and do it every year and a half. How's that sound, Ellen? That's fine. I mean, we've talked about doing different locations or different routes. Yeah, we could do that too. All right, let's think about that, especially if you have some more time at some point. Good. The nursery, probably not much we need to do right now, but once we start planting trees, we'll need to be keeping it mowed and water the trees. And I thought it'd be good if we have some way of scheduling that. Julie, and you mentioned you could bring a lawn mower over. I have a little ego push mower and would be happy to go down there, I don't know, once a month and cut it back. Doesn't have to be perfect, but at least walkable. Yeah. Anything else we might need to do for maintenance, Ellen? Yeah, I mean, just like watering is the most important thing and if we can keep the grass mowed, that'd be great. It helps keep the mice down. And yeah, just keeping an eye on it. So if something falls over or looks like it needs repotting, you know, replanting in the grow bag or something, someone can keep track of it. Any danger of deer or other critters chewing on these? Great question, yes. We'll probably be using some kind of trunk guard to keep the mice and voles and other critters from chewing on the trunk flares. And the deer we're hoping will be discouraged by the fence from the old horse corral. It's not deer proof, but they'll have to work to get through it. Okay. Good, so that's something we should be thinking about towards spring is how we can do the work of mowing it and keeping it running. So maybe Julie is doing all the mowing, but just in case, yeah, good. I think it's a great project. Is water available at the building or would we have to bring seven, one in and water it? Hoping that the water would be working at the building. Okay, great. It had water, the meter was pulled because the building was abandoned. So we have to reconnect the meter to it. And hopefully, you know, nothing, there's no other. Pickups. Thing has happened since the water was just abandoned. So there may be some expense in fixing water lines, but there is a, what they call the yard hydrant on the side of the building facing the horse corral. Is that on your list to look at for the spring, Alan? Yes, it is, yep. Okay, thank you. All right, UMass interns, Britt's not here, so there's no word on that. The Mary Maple table, I think that was Britt. Alan, you were going to do a label and then Britt was going to contact the library. I can do that whenever, yeah, anytime, whenever I think we have a date. Deadlines help me. Okay, let's wait till Britt's back and we'll keep it on the agenda for next week. Okay. So possible state funding through Mindy Dom, she has money, she calls airmarks that she can put to anything in her district. And it's a good chunk of money. And so she had talked to me when we were trying to get the town line item budget thing and said, if they don't give you the full amount, then I can give you money for my account. So we did get the full amount. I don't think we're urgent for money right now, but if we have a project that could use some funds, the deadline to approach her is the end of the year or approximately the end of the year. So we should be thinking about that. I can't think of any reason to ask for those funds this year, but if you guys have an idea, let's talk about it next month. And future reference, if we're gonna, especially we're gonna be working on areas that are not town street trees where we can't necessarily use our funding for, that might be another use for that. All right. Urban forestry management plan. I've not made any progress on that. I'm hoping that things will slow down and I'll be able to spend some time with winter on that and the tree inventory. Again, if there's anything we can do to help you, let us know. All right. Environmental justice neighborhood planting grant. Someone was looking into that. I forget who I don't have that written. Yeah, there's money available through the TD Bank and the Arbor Day Foundation. They do a lot of focusing on environmental justice neighborhoods. The DCR promotes, when you go through the urban forestry program and apply for one of their grants, if you're working in an environmental justice neighborhood, it gets a higher ranking for tree planting. You know, that would be some of the money that you were mentioning from Mindy that they're not public ways. So, we can't use the money we have for tree planting to plant there, but it would take coordination. So somebody would have to be reaching out to these neighborhoods. It's mostly parking complexes, like the boulders, that area, that are not public in the property, they're private. And there's a big need to educate the property owners on why trees are good. A lot of them look at them as just something that takes more maintenance and makes a mess. So, you know, we should be reaching out to these places now and seeing if they're interested. Do we need to apply for a grant from that? Or do we know a deadline? Well, it sounds like if Mindy has money, then we would need to let her know, you know, before the end of the year. I'm not sure what that money is or what the application process is. But yes, with the state and with the Arbor Day Foundation, there is an application. I'm not sure what the deadline is. It's usually early spring sometime, I think I have to look that up. Yeah, the thing that it requires from us is somebody to, you know, initiate the conversation with the property owners. You know, whether it's the, we talked about the housing authority place on Lower Main Street also. But so we need to reach out, we need to get a partner there. And then from there, we can say, all right, how many trees are you gonna plant and we can come up with a proposal. Before then, I don't think it's worth, you know, figuring out when the grant deadlines are. Is this similar to what we did? And we weren't at the boulders, we were at a complex next to the boulders maybe two years ago. It was private property, but we planted a lot of trees there. Oh yeah, the brook. I think those were mostly donated trees, correct me if I'm wrong? Yes, they were donated trees. So we did it ourselves and Alan helped, but mostly we didn't. Oh, okay. So somebody donated the trees to the brook and then we just planted for them, is that right? We'll donate the trees to us. Oh, okay. We used to have the garden center this year, like we got the trees from Sugarloaf, so yeah. Has anybody been back to look at that planting, see if we had any success? I went back a while ago and it was less than half were there still, but. Yeah, I went back like a month ago and pretty much all the small ones just looked to be crushed by a mower or some sort of equipment. Some of the bigger ones on the main drive-in made it, but other than that, not many. Yeah, I'll try to swing by and look also. Yeah, that's the thing. Not only do we need the property owner's permission to do it and to apply for a grant, but we would need their buy-in to take care of the trees as Alan was mentioning. Yeah. And to communicate with the landscapers and the residents and so on and so forth, which obviously if you're a big property owner, that takes time and money, which often they, even though they should, don't want to do. Would it, if we did something like this again, would it work to like just put little hardware screening around the baby trees? So the lawnmowers are discouraged from hacking them down. I think that's a great idea. We could even like make little like square fences. I've seen them like this around gardens and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Sophie, you have your hand raised. Sophie, I want you to talk. I thought you were allowed, okay. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes. So I was wondering, I'm totally just curious. Do you have a program or a protocol or some kind of like publication fact sheet for homeowners to be like, these are the benefits of the trees here or how you can plant them to also mitigate risk and cost and messiness and things people don't like? Like how do you usually give people that information? We at least last time went to the farmer's market. We had a good bit of literature, educating folks on that sort of thing. I don't know who has it currently. Shashana, do you want to say anything? Not Shashana, Ellen, I'm sorry. No. No, okay. Henry, I'd like to add something to Sophie's question. So I think a lot of the times we get somebody from within the complex or within the neighborhood and they ask us, ask the town and ask the committee if, you know, could we plant trees there? So we have an inside person who helps coordinate between the property owner or the neighbors. And a lot of times neighborhoods have, you know, they have their own network email, whatever kind of exchange going on what's happening in the neighborhood or in the apartment complexes. And so we have a pipeline to get information to people. And then we have met them, you know, sometimes in the evening or on a day when people are available to actually discuss the planting and things like that. So. And we do have some literature. I don't think we have anything exactly like you're saying, Sophie, would that be something you might be interested in working on? Yeah, I can see that being helpful for people. I've, I mean, I don't know everything. I don't know a lot, but I've been taking a course about minimizing tree costs and maximizing benefits. And that's just on my brain is something that sort of plays in as an availability of information issue. Okay. If you can send an email to the Shade Tree Committee email address, do you have that? I can find it. Yeah. And just once we have your email, I can try to send you what we do have in the way of literature. That would be good. Thank you. And then yeah, that'd be great to think about. So yeah, let's keep that as an idea. Ellen, make sure that's noted in the minutes. And good. Anything else on environmental justice neighborhoods right now? No? Okay. So the old ongoing items, state level initiatives is nothing to report on that. I haven't done anything significant tree ordinance. Sarah is not here, but I don't think she's done anything on it, the solar bylaw group. Anything, Julian? Not really. I am, they have now changed their meeting time to be when I don't have a worker school. So I can now attend and attended their last meeting and we'll attend their next meeting, but I don't have any updates currently. Okay. And the Mary Maple love letter exhibit that's Britt and she's not here. So I think we have completed the agenda. Any comments from anyone on the committee? Yeah, I guess, I don't know. Just seeing that we probably, if we were gonna do a love letter exhibit, this is the time to do it the year after the tree came down. So at the holiday season, obviously, and I don't know that it needs to stay on our agenda if it's not gonna happen this season. I'll contact Britt and see if she can do anything for this winter. Yeah. Is the new Mary Maple, the Maple on the South Common near where the farmer's market is? Yes, that's the Maple that's gonna be lit this year. I believe the plan was to go back to the North Common and light the Norrie Maple that's on the North Common. That's the construction's finished. Great, sounds good. All right, and then Pat, you're here and you wanted to talk about trees along Bay Road in that area, do you wanna speak? Yes, I live at Applewood, can you hear me okay? Yes, how much do you say your last name too, please? Swataka, S-V-E-T-A-K-A. And I'm a resident at the Applewood community and we have a number of trees along Rolling Road that are ash trees that are dying that we heard were gonna be taken down and we were just wondering what might they be replaced with and what kind of schedule that might be on for replacement. Okay, thank you. Alan, do you wanna talk to that first? Sure, again, like I said, earlier we have had a lot of interest from that neighborhood about what's going on with the ash trees, why they're dying, what are you gonna do to replant? So it is definitely on our radar and we are essentially right now we're just taking down ash trees around town as they decline from emerald ash borer which is a non-native pest that's killing ash trees everywhere around here and in the Northeast, unfortunately. There is really only thing we can do to protect the trees would be to inject them every two to three years and we don't have the resources to do that. So we are hoping that maybe one of these trees that we're not treating is the miracle tree and is resistant and doesn't get killed by emerald ash borer but it's unlikely. So we're taking the ash trees down as they decline and in neighborhoods like the Ramblin Road neighborhood where there's a lot of ash trees planted we will be trying to plant new trees to make up for that canopy loss in the neighborhood. So we can probably schedule a tree planting for some time next year. You had asked in the email about what kinds of trees being that the ashes are a large shade tree we would probably look for other large shade trees. We do try to plant a diversity of trees and we don't always plant native because there's so many natives we can't plant like the ashes now. So yeah, we will be working on that in the spring. It's a challenging place to plant there's a lot of underground utilities even in the setback side on the house side of the sidewalk not just in the grass belt. So there's a lot of underground utilities there and it's gonna be challenging to site trees. It can be done. It's just gonna be, it looks like a nice wide open lawn it's not underground. I understand. Yes. Speaking of ash trees, are there species of ash trees that are more resistant? Cause I got one growing in my backyard that seems to be doing fine. To my knowledge, I don't believe there is I believe all ash trees will succumb to their melash poor. Don't believe there is one that's sort of resistant to it. Now, which side of town do you live in? North, South, East. South. Yeah, Pot-Wine Lane. Okay, yeah. So most of the ash trees on Pot-Wine Lane have already died and taken them down. So that's Pomora, Pomora, I'm sorry. I'm talking about potwines. So North Amherst, the ash borer hasn't really hit that side of town as hard yet. It started in the southern side of town and it's working its way across the town. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, this one just appeared. I didn't plan it. It appeared about six or seven years ago and it looks pretty good so far. Yeah, that's great. You know, the emerald ash borer, ash will sprout from the stump often and so sometimes ash, emerald ash borer will kill the top of the tree but it doesn't kill the roots. So the tree will resprout and it'll grow for a couple of years until it gets large enough where the ash borer can actually get into the wood of the tree and start feeding on it. So hopefully we're not gonna totally lose ash and some native species will, you know, pests will find they really like or disease will like killing emerald ash borer and there'll be a new balance in nature and everything can coexist but not the moment, not for a while. Okay. They have found woodpeckers feeding on emerald ash borer in the Midwest area. So anyway, yeah, it's a difficult thing to figure out what trees are gonna survive with the climate changing and with the invasive things. So we try to plant at diversity. Are there any other comments about this issue or about anything else? I just wanna ask, just occurred to me, you know, we need potentially, I would like to do another lecture next spring for every day and I'd like to coordinate with the Amos College again if possible and then other organizations. So if, you know, if anybody knows of a particular speaker or somebody that, you know, can give a great presentation that people would enjoy hearing or maybe they haven't heard before, let us know. Now it's time to plan and reach out and try to get some of you lined up for April, every day. Yeah, Britt might have some context. A few years ago, I went to a really good lecture by an apple tree guy, a palmologist at the Hallam Library and it was very well attended and he had like all the different kinds of apples to try and it was fun. Hey, why don't you get his name to Alan or reach out to him yourself? Yeah, I would be good at it. Good in the fall. Yeah, in the fall when the apples are around to try. Yeah. Yeah, I think of Doug Tallamy who, you know, wrote that book about oak trees. He's a good speaker. Hallamy, does that work? Yeah, T-A-L-L-A-M-Y, I believe. I think so, yeah. And he wrote a book that's called Something Like the Nature of Oaks, something like that. Thank you. Good, all right. Well, thank you everyone. Thank you, Brooks and Sophie and Pat for joining us. We meet second Tuesday of the month, although next month we'll talk about if we're gonna change that. And you're always welcome to write to us or join us for any of the events we do. And if you have ideas of things you wanna actively pursue, then we're very happy. We're all volunteers and we're happy to get more people involved, so. Yeah, thank you very much everybody. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Hi, thanks. I will close the meeting now, thank you. All right.