 Hello. Hey, just so you know, we are being recorded already. As we populate the committee. You want to make me a co-host. I already made a co-host. When I sent it, but I guess. Oh, am I. Big co-host. Okay. Okay. You're good. Ready you around Thursday. It depends on the time. I'm around. I'm down in spring field. Between eight and one. Before two, so. I'll be back by. I'll be back by 1245 or one. All right. I'll try to figure it out to get the table to you. Okay. Let me put that on my calendar. So I don't go anywhere. Hey, Alan. I was in Orleans last week. Nice. Family store. Yeah. And lots of money, I hope, right? Yeah. Is the library your family as well, the snow library? It's. Part of, yes, not directly, but it is. Not a direct. Yeah. Well, cool. My mom was very active in the library, you know, as far as volunteering and. Book sales and all that fun stuff. So I'm very fortunate to be able to have that experience. I'm probably going to have to move inside. So my dogs. Didn't have any trees get hit by lightning during that storm on Sunday. Had a couple around town. Some town trees. They're all private trees, actually. No, no. Dairy barns on fire this time. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No dairy barns on fire this time, though. So thank God. Yeah, that was quite a storm. Yeah. I was looking at pictures from Vermont. It's just incredible. Yeah, I mean even over in Florence, honestly. But the mill river flooding just on the other side of the river is pretty significant. And then I saw somebody in my department. When did took a video of Shelburne Falls and it's, it's pretty intense and like the upper upper deer field is really going and I think it, I think it's not supposed to peak tomorrow. So, yeah. Well, Wilmington, Vermont where the field goes through was flooded so yeah, yeah. Yeah, the site the picture that they were using in the New York Times or was a video on the New York Times that they were using to show the flooding in Vermont was this big actually a restaurant this part of this glass blowing studio that I we ate in last month. Because it's over, it's a, it kind of like hangs over the river. And it looked pretty intense and actually part of that bridge had been totally washed out I think in Irene in 2011. So, I don't know we'll see what happens. Well, we have a quorum, not sure where Shoshana or Sarah, Shoshana had posted something today that she was in the hospital with her daughter so I don't, I don't know if that was planned or not planned. But that's where she was this morning so that could be. Okay. Yeah, I didn't see that I saw the benefits of going to be here. I'll text posted something on her personal Instagram that they were over in the hospital. So, hey Sarah. All right. So should we start. Sure. Okay. I'll just, I'll just announce to everybody that we are recording this meeting and it will be available for you. After the close of work on Friday. All right. Let's start with ours. Julian. Only eight or nine. Okay. Three. I think just two. And I probably had seven. All right. And approval of the June minutes. I was not present at the meeting. No, everyone else look good. I didn't hear anything. I assume they're approved. Okay. Go with that. And it's approved. Oh, who wants to take notes. I can try to take notes. Okay. I don't know how detailed you like them, but I'll, I'll. Either overdo it or underdo it more than. Overdo it. I can, you know, we can discard, but if you don't have. Okay. Yeah. I don't need everything, including the said, but. Minutes approved, you know, who's here. Yep. Yeah. Great. If you have last month's, you can use that as a reference, but. Okay. So. Not a lottery port. I still have not written a letter to the Boston Globe. Just not writing these days. I still have the table. I'm going to get to Brit. We talked about that. Yeah. Yeah. On the. On our email accounts, we got one question. Someone worried about the. Sycamore trees. And I assure it's just a disease that happens every year and. And Thracnos. They're all coming back. They're looking fine. So. It's a drag. I mean, they don't look good early in the season, but. I do survive it. Okay. So. August. Well, I have the date set. I just don't have to arrange for the actual training. So I'm working on. Should be okay. Okay. And that's about it. Except the municipal reforestation program that. Governor Healy's doing. Where that. And there's also in the legislature. I was right about that. I. I filled out the form and signed on to that letter. I think Sarah sent it around last month. I, yes, I did sign on to that as well. Cause that's, that's a pretty good thing to really push forward. All right. Julian. Nice chair report. Yeah, I sent. That. Thing out to five or six. Folks. And got a good amount of signatures on that. So. In addition to that, I have. Recently started working for the town. So I get to see the tree side of things. In different work going on in town. One thing I did notice today was one of those. Trees on the town. Common. Was near the bus stop was hanging a leader down. So that's something. For the beach. Yep. And yeah, I think that is all I have. Thank you. Alan tree ones report. Not a lot to go over, but just quickly. Obviously we removed the, uh, no remapling college street ever sources continuing to. Work on their project and work their way down the street. Um, In that project. I had the date set. We have the date set for the 12th. Retro training. Ash trees are declining pretty rapidly right now. And we're going to be losing. You know, but, uh, 12 or 15 ash trees. In town downtown. Um, Are going to be. Need to come down soon probably by the end of the summer or fall. Um, And, um, Tom manager wants. Me to work with the committee. So the town and committee can come out with sort of a public information piece. On, you know, Why the trees coming down, you know, or are we, um, You know, What homeowners can do to protect the trees. Things like that. So. I'll try to, um, Get that ball rolling. Um, Yeah. How old are those trees? Uh, realignment park trees. They're probably. Yeah. 20 years old. Okay. Something like that. Okay. Um, We will be the town mice, the tree warden and. Committee will be asked to review the. Removal plan and the tree protection plan. For Jones library. So, um, We'll try to set up a meeting. To meet with, um, The landscape architect project manager. Jones library so that we can all look at it. Um, I think that's great that they're including us, even though it won't make a difference, but nice to be included in these things. Um, Also with the four rear of school. So as that project moves forward with it. Building of a new school. Um, I think that's great. I think that's great that they're including us, even though it won't make a difference, but nice to be included in these things. Um, I think that's great that they're including us. Um, I think that's great that they're including us, even though it won't make a difference, but nice to be included in these things. Um, I think that moves forward with it. Building of a new school and demolition of the old school. Um, I've been asked to review the plans there for a tree protection zones and, um, Potentially. You know, DBW may end up doing the work. To help save money for the project. But that's not. Hasn't been determined yet. I think that's great. I think that's great. I think that's great. I think that's great. I think that's a great project that would probably need to be removed. But I have not had to walk through yet. So I'm not. Not sure on that. I'm just basing it on the plans that I've seen so far. Where trees would need to be removed. They do have a lot of trees planned to go in. Um, It is a well landscaped design. Tree design. Yeah, Britt. Yeah, I wanted, I, I wanted to bring up last month when I wasn't present, um, that my wheels started turning on at the. Tree city awards ceremony. Um, there was a presentation. Um, uh, and maybe you all discussed this last month. I'm not sure, but there was a presentation about, um, not wasting, uh, Public trees at, you know, the wood resources from public trees after they've been removed. And including that would in public works projects, um, in public projects was one way, um, to make sure that they get used, but also to kind of incorporate. You know, history in some way, the, the, um, I think that could be something interesting to, for us to, um, Um, propose particularly in the elementary school project, you know, if, if trees are going to be removed. Is there a way that we can work in, um, some of that wood into the design of the project and the, in this presentation, there were some examples of, you know, libraries and schools and other places that had done it, done this really nicely. Um, so I just wanted to raise that point. That's a great point. We can, you know, We can also, um, There's, uh, some honey locusts and some red maple and, and sugar maple. They're not large trees. There is one red oak tree. I think there's kind of large. I'm not sure if that's going to impact. But it would be a good idea to, you know, to investigate whether or not, you know, that's feasible to do. I don't think anything is going to be happening there for a year. Um, so, um, I don't think there's going to be, um, some time to kind of figure that out, which is great. There's also like benches downtown and other things like that, that would could probably theoretically be used for as well. Sure. And I think something on the, you know, with the library would be, I mean, that's later, that's already been designed. So that may be more challenging. And one of the points in this presentation was, you know, that this conversation has to happen. Like redesign, really. Um, so, you know. Um, I think that's one of the most creative ways for us to, to try to get some of this wood used. Um, The Amherst History Museum lost their, you know, their historic apple tree, which fell over in the storm. Uh, I think it was Sunday storm. Um, so, uh, they asked for some information on kind of replacement and whatnot. So I haven't responded yet, but it'd be great opportunity to try to figure out what, um, you know, figure out, um, how to source a nice, you know, apple tree that could be planted. They had to replace it. Maybe the committee could be involved in that. Yeah, that tree I'd noticed was in decline before it went over. Yeah. No, there's a lot of decay, which old, old apple trees fall out. No, but this one looked, it looked pretty bad. The week or so ago. Yeah. And, um, I think that's it. Yes. That's all I got. Good. Thank you. Uh, well, our treasurer is not here. So no treasure report. Uh, Julian. Anything new on social media. Not specifically, I have logged into the Facebook account so I can use that and monitor that. I checked it before this meeting and. I'm thinking to periodically post updates before. New meetings and that type of thing on to the Facebook account. I'm just learning how to use it. So spend some time here and there sort of navigating the controls. What does what could I am used to Instagram, but I'm not used to Facebook. So. Okay. And, um, did this meeting get posted on either of them? This meeting got posted on Instagram. It's not Facebook. Okay. So. Between the new and Shoshana really we want, I want everything posted. Got it. That's pretty important. I think. All right. Thanks. And on to our agenda items. Mary maple love letter exhibit. Anything new on that. You're muted. I haven't had a chance to do anything on that. Um, I was going to look into some grants. And I will do that. Thank you. All right. The individual tree request policy. Um, I get it mixed up with the other one. Is that the one you went over, Ellen? Yes. Do you have it handy or. I emailed it to you. Yeah, let me see if our last meeting. Let me see if I can call it up. We lose Alan. There we are. It looks like it says he's the host now. So he's come back, I guess. Yeah, Mike. I don't know what happened. I lost my connection there briefly. So. So I apologize for that. Just went out. Okay. So here's this. Sarah said she'll join when she can probably around six. Let me share my screen with this then. Everyone see it? Yes. I can make it bigger. I don't think this is the one that I sent you. Okay. The other one was. Yeah, this is not it. Was the native tree policy. I'll look it through my emails to see what I can find. Well, that's coming up to me. But let me bring that one up. Stop sharing just to make this easier. I can't find it. Okay. Somewhere. One more try. Now I'm not going to be able to find it. All right. Does anyone else have it? I have the one that I wrote. I can pull that up. Yeah. Okay. And if you can share it, that'd be great. Okay. Hold on one second. Things get lost in Gmail and folders. I don't have permission to share. Let me see if I can give you more. I'll just make it covost. I can't do that. So you have to do that. Okay. So, um, yeah, this is just the individual tree request. Yeah. See. I think this looks good. The only thing that's not clear to me. And then maybe we don't want this to be clear. I don't know. I mean, I think it should be clear. What are the criteria. That we. Consider in approving or not approving a request. Like if you have, if you're making a request for a tree to be planted in the public right of way or in a 20 foot setback. You know, is that automatically. Is it just a formality for it to be approved or. Do we want to say like based on budget or tree availability or, or things like that. Yeah. Be nice to prioritize. So obviously you want to. Like you're going to set criteria. You want to prioritize large trees. You'll end up getting a lot of requests for dogwoods. You know, which. So if somebody has a location that is. Large soil volume and no overhead. You know, utilities or obstructions, then. You know, you nice to be able to prioritize large trees to act as public shade trees. Yeah. And that, you know, dogwoods could be plant, you know, smaller trees could be planted if it was in a confined root zone. Or, you know, overhead obstructions. I'd say that. And then we're feasible large shade trees. Okay. Yeah. I mean, is there something. I'm just asking this question. Is there. Do we want to take into consideration. For example, the property value of. The property value of the property. Is that a requirement? That request a right. If somebody, for example, who owns a $1.5 million home is requesting that we use public money to plant a tree. Is that going to be evaluated in the same way as someone. You know, renting. An apartment that is requesting a tree outside of their property, right? Like they're requesting a public tree because they're not willing to use public money to plant a tree outside of their property. So that's a requirement that we should be considering. I'm just posing this as a question. Well, in terms of renters, can't. It has to be the, the owner. Right. Okay. Okay. So, so let's say then, you know, a lower income family owning a home. You know, are those to be considered on equal. Grounds if we have a limited budget. I don't think this comes up often enough to worry about that, but I don't think we should prioritize areas where. There are fewer trees. Okay. You know, it could say we prioritize environmental justice zones. And we'll work to accommodate the needs of. A diverse range of homeowners. You could say something like that. I also think it's worth noting that. Renters and. Homeowners can always ask for it to be within the public right away. And the landlord or whoever does not need to give permission for it to be planted within the public right. And always offer that as an option. Like I'd hate for someone basically just to say, no, we can say, well, if your landlord doesn't want this, but you do, we can always put it in the public way. I think this is good. I don't think we need to say that. Take some more time. Okay. Yeah. That's kind of what I'm trying to do originally. And I think we will do that. But. Yeah, I just want to be clear for anyone. Yeah, I think this language that. Ellen is adding here. Works the committee prioritizes large shade trees. Yeah, I think that, I think that's great. I think that. You know, gets at what I was getting. It's not addressed here is, is there like a one person, one request, one tree policy or could somebody request three trees. I think you could request three. We may not do that, but. Okay. Someone else. I was just going to say, definitely, you know, if there's a large stretch in front of somebody's. Property in the public way or. As a setback planting environmental justice neighborhood. No, we would definitely be able to. We would want to plant as many trees as possible. You know, right tree, right place. Right. So maybe it's a matter of chain, you know, going back to what I was saying and some of these. You know, points of changing the language of once a tree, once a request is approved to if a request is approved. Parentheses based on. You know, budget and the, the. Decision of the committee. Right. So these are all things that we would discuss, but it's not, I don't want to imply that it's a given that you know, it depends on the, on the situation. Absolutely. I would also say like, for example, I remember on East Hadley road. We planted the re trees in front of a homeowner's house. And it actually made a very nice. Sort of line. Both for the homeowner and folks exiting from. River Glade drive onto the main road there. You know, you know, you know, you can just, you know, it's, if a request is unreasonable or not a good idea, can just, you know, not prove it essentially. It's. All right. Any other changes? Do we want to approve it? We want to think about it some more. I can send it to everybody and. I think this was going to get posted on our website. Correct. Yeah. If we, yeah, somehow. Okay. I'd like to run it by superintendent. Just make sure that we're. Not saying something we're not supposed to say. Okay. So yeah. Ellen might you send it out to everyone. And we'll discuss it again next month. Hopefully approve it by then or finish it. Okay. All right. And then. The native tree policy, I guess that's what. Then it worked on. Let me share that again. I think I already have it open. Oh, this. I actually had the individual through request policy one version of it. Oh, whatever. I think what we have is good. So let me find. The other one I can't find. The native tree policy. Oh, that's what I can't find. Did Bennett send it to both to everybody? Cause I can look. He sent an earlier. He sent an early draft. Cause I remember commenting on. Here I have it. Hold on. I found it too. Dated. June 16th. Yep. Okay. Right. Share it. I pasted it in the chat. And I think my comment, I had sent an email on the 17th of June. That said. You know, to me, it doesn't read like a policy. It reads like it's a statement, right? And so could we include some clear guidelines or criteria. That our committee and future committee committees can use to guide their decisions around, around what trees are being planted. Right. So is there like a hierarchy of questions. That we can ask ourselves when selecting trees for giving planting. Site. Right. Like, is there a native tree we could plant here that could do well. Or I think in an earlier conversation, somebody had mentioned, like, are we aiming for a certain percentage of the total trees we plant. To be native. You know, is there some kind of goal. Right. And of course this is complicated because what trees thrive here is a change is a moving target. You know, but I guess my main. Suggestion or my main, my main. Issue is like, can't, can we provide some criteria? So it reads as a policy rather than just a statement. Yeah, we can. Do you want to try to rewrite it and. I can try to rewrite it. I'm, you know, I would like some input or guidance from, from others about like, what, what are our goals? Right. What, what are we trying to do? To me, the goal of having the policy is we get asked this a lot. Not a lot, but some, you know, why are you not planting natives or, right. And I think it's important to explain. I think that's the reason we came up with this. Right. I would also add something like we seek to plant a diversity of species to present. To prevent the potential loss of many trees at one time. I would say due to. Factors including disease. We aim to avoid. Synchronicity in our ecosystems. Or something along. We don't want monocultures, right? Yeah, of course. That type of thing. But that doesn't. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, just, um, you know, changing some of the language from seek to we do or. Yeah. You know, just being more. Fourth rate or direct in. I think it's, this is a good thing to have though, because of the questions we do get. Yeah. So maybe. Maybe we don't want to then quantify or. Apply a percentage. You know, maybe the language of like, we seek to plant. Yeah. Negative trees as the first option. Maybe this is sufficient. Maybe it's just me being. Really analytical. As usual. Why don't I copy this onto the other document and we can read them together. Because I think we want our language to sound. Okay. Yeah. And then we can make changes on that. That's great. Thank you. And Britt, you'll work on. So rewriting. Sure. If, yeah, if, if I'll send it. Yeah. Not be necessary. And this is called the, what, what is the title of it? Native. Native tree policy. Okay. So the individual tree planting policy and the native tree policy. Yeah. Hello, Sarah. Do you want to do a treasurer's report? Hi, I don't have anything to report. Okay. Thank you for joining us. All right. So we are on. Second Saturday plantings. We did good. I think it was a nice work day Saturday. We got everything done. It felt nice being out there with everyone. Okay. Next month we're going to do hopefully the tree inventory training on August 12th. How long do you expect that would take now and any idea? I would say we just take the regular, you know, three hours. Nine to noon. Okay. I'm sorry. I will be on vacation that day. Okay. All right. So that's good. September. Do we have ideas? What we're going to do. Okay. I do not have one selected yet. Anybody have a place to recommend. My daughter is not in this room, but. On Saturday, she had suggested cracker farm elementary. So I will put that out on her behalf. Okay. Yeah, I think we had a running list of places that we've all suggested. Yeah. I can never find it. If anyone else haven't handy. I'll have it in some of the minutes I took over the years. I'll have to look that. Someone mentioned. Drive or something where we can keep all of these type of things. Yeah. That's a good idea. It's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. And it is under the shade tree Gmail account. So it is basically, you can log in to shade tree committee, Google back shade tree committee Gmail, shade tree committee, Google drive sheets, et cetera, slide shows all at the same time. Can we share that with members? Yeah, we absolutely can. Make those folders all available to everybody who's on the phone. Yeah, I think like we can go in and share the folders or whatever. I don't know exactly how to do it. Yeah. Can you do that? If you. Totally click on a document. There's a thing you can click on share and then type in everyone's email addresses. Awesome. That'd be great. Thanks, Julian. Yep. Okay, but I found the list. The list we have from January. Main street. Root nine Belcher town. Road college street. Watson farm. Dana and Blue Hills, which we did and orchard street. Which we did. So. Crocker phone might be a good selection for a September planting. Yeah, it'd be fun to get, you know, families and kids involved. It's, they could certainly use more trees. We've done, we've done several plantings there. You have. Okay. We don't have a good success rate there. Oh, the facilities folks are not. Careful necessarily around the trees that we plant there. So. A lot of, a lot of mortality in our new tree. So what, what measures could be taken? I mean, could we just put like cages around like, you know, little. Are there things that we are talking about like mowers primarily. More string tumors and mowers. Yeah. I mean, I could also. Approach the principal and say, Hey, we'd love to plant some trees here. However, we've tried. I've done that. We've tried. Okay. We run into this with the facilities folks there. It's, you know, They're bus drivers that go out and mow and trim. Yeah. They. Don't focus on preserving newly planted trees. Got it. I think we could, we don't usually put cages around the trees. And that would probably help. So. Yeah. I would think they wouldn't want to hit, hit those. I mean, I don't have. That particular school. That's just, you know, my daughter said, Hey, we could use some more trees, but certainly, you know, other schools as well. You know, I think the other two elementary schools are going to be changing. So it doesn't make sense to, to plant there. But. And I don't have a good. Feel for what. The middle school and high school. You know, whether or not they need that, but, you know, I'm just passing on the suggestion of an eight year old. Yes. Julian, are you here? Do you have an idea about the middle and high school? Yeah. So the middle school. Has a small arboretum in back that always has trees that die and need replacing and that, and it could be expanded. So that would be an interesting idea. I recently actually just planted one tree at the high school in honor of a retire and retiring dance teacher. But there are probably more planting locations in the high school. Oftentimes the trees at each end of the parking lot. We'll get hit by kids being idiots. And so those will always need replacing and then. There is that center island area in the front of the middle school and the high school that new trees can certainly go in. All right. How do you want to proceed Alan? Do you want to. Look into the schools for the September planting? Yeah, I can look into it. Someone mentioned something on the second Saturday. Workday. The location and I didn't write it down. Fortunately. But it was a really good location. And now I can't remember where it was. When we had discussed in the past. So I'll try to remember. What about down on one 16, like not, not all the way up at the new traffic circle that's going in, but it seems pretty. There. Down there. I mean, Ellen, you, you cycle that way. Is that something you've noticed? Do you mean from the roundabout at Pomeroy to. Like further, further up from closer to town from the roundabout. So I guess it's more like Hampshire college. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Territory, but. Yeah, there's a lot of just open. Farmland there. I mean, there's some beautiful. Giant maple trees, but they're set back farther on. Yeah. Yeah, that's a pretty long stretch of sunny sidewalk. You could look into that, that section. I had suggested Main Street. Sort of near Amherst Dental. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of trees. There's a lot of trees. And that is a very well. Walked upon. Yeah. Main Street was on our list from the January list. It's tricky. There's not much public right of way there. Most mostly set back plantings on that. Yeah. But be worth doing if we can get it to do have to happen. I think I brought up a while ago the possibility of. Watson farms, the apartments, affordable apartments in. Off of Main Street. I don't know. I think we might have to coordinate with the housing authority on that. Then the other thing is that. I'd imagine the housing authority probably might have similar problems to the schools with the mowers and folks. And the people who mow at truck or farm are the same people who mow at the middle and high school. So whatever happens at proper will happen at high school. That's worth noting as well. And then. The other thing was I just shared a new Google drive. Folder. There's nothing in it with everyone on the committee. So. It should be in your emails. Yeah, it seems like cages could be. An approach to these. Sites maintained by. You know, the same, the same people. Yeah. Or consistent watering in the beginning too. Right. And when doing a maintenance day and mulching, so there was like a clear, large mulch circle around the trees. Help. But it would fade over time. So we have to like stay on top of it. But if we like prioritize doing the schools with maintenance days to keep the mulch circle away from the tree, then they wouldn't have to get as close to trim the grass or use a string trimmer. That's just an idea for. The other possibility is we could. The little like watering bags around those trees. Maybe that would push them away from it, or maybe they'd just rip open the water bags and shoot them out with them. Oh, I don't know. North. North prospect, which runs. Alec North prospect streets. We did a planting on part of how like a while ago, but we've been taking down some. A lot of the sugar maples on the North prospect side of that. So that might be a good place to. Yeah. Any, anywhere where a lot of trees are coming down and. I mean, Alan, you have a much better sense of this than I do, but I feel like so many of the sugar maples foot, they just look rough right now. And you know, if we can preempt or, or get in there as early as possible with some new trees that can get some growing time in. I would imagine it's very hard on it. I mean, let's think about it. That's two months away. Now, if you could, you know, think what's the best choice. I'll put, I'll make a new list and I'll put this on our Google drive. All right. Okay. Anything else on. Second Saturday plantings. All right. You mass interns. Anything new on that? Everybody's gone for the summer. I mean, the one student. I've already forgotten her name. This is bad. Hey, when I think who attended our meeting. In May. She will be back in the fall and she is interested in being involved in the in with the committee in some way, particularly around GIS and tree inventory work. So if there is a tree inventory training next month, I can certainly pass that on to her. I don't think she is in town right now. But, you know, this is, this is something that we can revisit. Let's say in September when everybody's back on campus. If we wanted to put out a call, you know, to environmental science students. Or being engaged, you know, we could certainly do that. Okay. Um, tree nursery. I should have shared this last month when we were, but I wasn't here, but when we were at the, um, when Allen and I were at the tree city awards. Ceremony in Greenfield. There was a presentation from the Greenfield tree committee. And they are having. I wrote this down. I wrote this down somewhere. I don't have it in front of me. I'm pretty sure it's July 15th. So, um, So, um, So, um, I don't have a tree nursery open house. Um, in Greenfield. That is in four days. Um, with the goal of kind of like sharing best practices and sharing their experience in setting up a tree inventory. Um, and it struck me at the time that that would be perhaps a very useful thing for. One of us to. Um, I won't be able to attend that. Can anyone attend? I could probably attend that. I'd have to check my schedule. My phone's not in front of me, but yeah. Let me see if I can find the, if there's like a link or something. Um, Do we know, um, if the town is committed to giving. The committee land. Um, for the nursery. Or is this just in discussion? Like it's, it's, it's not in the, it's just a movement. Um, So, um, I think it's a real definite. I approached the superintendent. Um, About using that space. And he said he had nothing against us. Doing it there with the realization that, you know, it may have to move at some point in time, but, you know, if we're doing grow bags, you know, moving, moving trees is not a big deal. And we wouldn't have to move them. You know, So, advanced notice that the use of that has changed. Do you know Alan if there is any proposed use for slow buddy farm. None that I'm aware of. So that's station road. Should we plan that for the October of planting. Set up a nursery. It may. Just thinking. Maybe at the place they would eventually put a public works facility. No, no. Okay. I think it's. I think it's preserved farmland. I don't think you could do that. Oh, okay. Good. Actually part of the wall. Part of it's owned by the water. Water division. And part of it's owned by conservation land. The proposed area we're going to use is owned by the water. So I couldn't. Okay. That makes sense. That's good. Actually. Okay. So that'll be October, September. We'll figure out from one of the choices and that's good. Can you say just for note taking purposes. So October we're thinking about doing a tree. Nursery. Set up at what site. Yeah. Which what is the site. Station road. Station road. Okay. Slow body farm. S L O B O D Y. It's right over the bridge. Yeah. Got it. An old equestrian. Farm. So there's a big horse barn there and an old paddock that's falling apart. The nursery would be in the paddock. Which is partially fenced and will fence it more. Right. And what, what they shared some slides on their setup and it's all, you know, bagged trees. They were able to set up a pretty simple irrigation system. And they did fence it. I think primarily to protect from deer. So it seemed pretty simple, you know, if the site needs to move at some point. If they're bagged, that shouldn't be a problem. The one thing they mentioned was. In the winter they push, I think they push all the trees together. And cover some of them, right? Alan, isn't that what they said? Yeah, they mulch them in. They mulch them in. Okay. Yeah, but they didn't have any significant loss. Over the winter. Yeah. But I'll look up, I know I took a picture of the flyer that they handed out. So let me see if I can find that and send it to. Send it to everybody. Yeah. I'm going to send it to Alan for the open house on the 15th. Great. All right. Town tree inventory were set. The town tree tour. Okay. If we're going to do that this fall, Alan, you and I should figure out something, but. So now let's table that for now. Have a library trees. We talked about Alan's going to. Send us the invitation to meet with the. The, the, the developing whatever that the design team of the library. State level initiatives. Talked about the municipal reforestation program. And I'm still in touch with. Mindy and I'll keep working on that. Significant tree ordinance. Anything new. No. And the solar bylaw group. Nothing new. Okay. So one thing that I wanted to mention also, and it's kind of goes in tandem with the tree nursery was this idea that came up at this tree city awards. Of a, a woodyard. So other did, I don't know, did you all talk about this? At all last month. I don't think I saw it in the minutes. But other. I think that was a good idea. I think that the grounds have set up. Woodyards again, taking the wood from public trees that are removed. And trying to create some kind of, you know, there are lots of options. You know, one connecting with public works projects that I mentioned. Two. Creating some kind of inventory or system where you're then actually selling some of this wood. And the other thing that I wanted to mention is how trees are cut down. So that the wood can be used for various purposes, potentially sold. And then that money can go into a fund for planting new trees. Or connecting some of the wood with local artists. And builders. And so I, I mean, I thought there were some amazing ideas. This was the same presentation that I was referencing earlier, but I thought it would be a good idea. I think it would be a good idea to bring in money. For future plantings to set up some kind of woodyard. And the last piece that I'll mention that I, that I also thought was interesting for us to think about. I think they called it a wood bank. And the idea is that. Low income folks and folks who don't have access to. A lot of people who don't have access to wood. They don't have access to wood. So that's why I think a lot of people that are. Can get access to wood. For fuel. And you know, in the town of Amherst, I don't know if that's something the town would be interested in promoting like lots of people burning wood for fuel, but there are wood banks in, I think, Athol was on the list. I was talking to somebody. From the DPW and Athol. Yeah. Who said they do that. And it's a very successful program actually. And the DPW gets rid of the wood currently. The town has a pretty large site. Off a pulpit hill road at a place called the Ruckston. And. Some of the debris and stuff get chipped up and composted. Some of the tree debris and that goes back into. Mulch that we put around the trees and put in. The parks and downtown and around buildings. But. Aside from that, there's not much of a way to get rid of those trees. And some of them are old and rotted away, but others would serve fine for firewood and others. I'd imagine local artists and other folks might want. Even for free, if not. To be sold. I think it's getting pretty full now at this point, but we don't have the time to have a lot of. Plans to do with it once it goes up. Yeah, exactly. So, so basically the, like the, the crux of this presentation was that something like 95% of all public trees that are removed, get chipped. And like, are there other. More useful ways that we could be. Putting this wood to use. And so the wood banks, right? Like even donating some of our wood to these wood banks and to, you know, alternatives to, to chipping essentially that. Put that wood to use is something that I, I would love to. For the committee to talk about at some point. Could the same thing apply to chipped wood? Like could we do a mulch wood chip mulch bank? Cause if we don't want to, if there's not a big need, or we don't want to encourage burning fuel, wood for fuel, we can't have a lot of. We can't have a lot of. You know, I think we can sell chips for mulching to private owners. The mulch for the town's work, but I don't know. There probably would be enough stuff back there. Have the town's mulch, the access mulch. And the. Wood bank and give away some of it to local artists. I would not surprise me if there's enough for all of that. I would like to give away some of the wood. I would like to give away some of the wood for burning. So if we're already chipping it and mulching it. And there's extra that could be burned. Then. Supposedly there's extra that could be chipped and mulched. And if there's, if the town's mulch needs are already being met, then they could be extra that could be sold or given to home owners. Yeah. Just an alternative to burning. If that's not a big. Need in, in the town of Amherst. So that's kind of what happens now is that we have. You know, we're out doing tree work. We have a truck full of wood chips. We have a list of places that want wood chips. People call up. We try to drop it off. And, you know, that way we don't have to drive back to our. Area to dump the chips. We also dump chips at the transfer station. So people can take chips from there for free. If they have a pass to get into the transfer station. We sometimes, you know, in. When we're down at Rockston and we're moving things around with the front loaders. We will load a truck up and deliver wood chips to people who have requested it. Because we don't. You know, we don't always have a truck in the area. To drop wood chips off. So if we have a period of time where we can actually just deliver some chips, we do that as well. As far as the wood goes. You know, we sometimes leave it on the side of the road, disappears, which is good. We ask the homeowner if they want it. The adjacent property owner. The word generally goes to Rockston where. You know, it gets cut into random lengths. You know, you can have the proper equipment to load logs and sort logs and create a wood yard where we can actually say, you know, here's the nice wood. You know, here's the junk wood. Here's oak. Here's maple. You know. And. And sizes as well. Just gets put into a one ton dump truck and gets dumped. And then that's a random point in time. We do have from. A couple of businesses around who will. Have a log loader come by and pick up loads of wood to take for. Turning into bowls or. Your cutting boards and things like that. So they, you know, we'll take the wood off our hands. There are some local artists who take wood. I try and I try to find places to take it. I try to find places to take it. As I've said in the past, you know, About 70 years ago, we spent $20,000 to process the last. Woodyard, you know, At Rockston, which was probably about nine years old. That same pile now is probably going to cost us closer to, you know, 25 $30,000 to process. So we are, there's a lot of incentive to find ways to reuse this word. So, you know, I don't know, I don't know if I'm applying for some grants. Couldn't get it. DEP, I think it is, has some. In their waste reduction grants. Sometimes you can. Get some funding to do that. So, you know, what we need in town is we need a, we need a log loader in a way to sort wood. Which we currently do not have. And I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how to grant. Possibly a contractor on there could do. And then you also have somewhere like Wagner would, maybe they could use the one for their mold. Together. Operations. They will charge us. They don't take word for free. So they, you know, if we bring something there, we get recharged. You got it. Okay. Okay. So I'm just, you know, the person who gave this presentation, and I can't remember his name, but I wrote it down. He was a DCR guy. Like this is what he does. Maybe what makes sense is for me to reach out to him. He said. If your town or city is interested in this kind of thing, I will help connect you with resources and ideas. So maybe it makes sense for me to reach out to him and say, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. If a dog loader could go a long way. And a couple of other pieces of equipment. And like, here are some of the ideas here. Here's how things are currently operating. Like, what do you think and what are, what are your ideas? Maybe that's a good. First step, right? Because if this is something that, you know, would be helpful to you, Alan. That is, you know, costs the town money. You know, it's a really meaningful way. You know, it seems like it could be really. Something to, to devote some attention and energy to. Yeah, you know, I'm Sean. Sean is his name. This is the first name. My camera. Sean Mahoney. Sean Mahoney. Yeah. And yeah, he runs a good program. For DCR. And, you know, if you want to reach out to him and see if he's interested. That would be great. Yeah. Great question. Do most of the people who use the wood chips today, mostly use it for mulch or burning? What do they use it for generally? Mostly for gardening, mulching, best for gardening. Yeah, as a recipient of a lot of the wood chips. We, we use it around all our bushes and trees here. We have a big invasive sweep where we've got a grant from the USDA and we've been pulling out invasives and mulching around that to keep new stuff from coming in until we plant new things. So it gets used, gets used. And it's well appreciated right now and drops a load off. Nice. Okay. But this wouldn't like diverting some of this wood from mulching. Like there's so much wood, right? There's still plenty for mulch. Yeah. Yeah. We did talk about this a number of years ago. And we didn't really get anywhere with it, but it's great. If you have energy, Britt, to do this. And if we can get this guy to come. Invite him to one of our meetings. Yeah. Yeah. I was just really energized by his talk. I thought it was great. And, and I would be very happy to reach out to him and just start discussing ideas. Yeah. So, I think folks generally burn like. Cut up logs or do they generally burn the chips? Logs. Logs. Okay. So we might want to think about that because maybe it's less work from the town to chip it. Rather than just have the logs and do it like that. And most, most of the wood banks. That are out there are volunteer driven. And they have a log sprinter, and they have a log sprinter that's together. On a weekend or whatever, and they have a log sprinter, and someone's cutting wood and people are cutting, splitting it and people, other people are stacking it. And then. You know, there's a, some way to have people sign up and demonstrate the need. There's something. Yeah, go ahead. That's it. So, you know, it's a volunteer. I don't know. I don't know. Most of them. That's not employees. Splitting wood. Yeah. To. To give away. Yeah. I don't know, but maybe folks would be okay with getting. Like a whole log and splitting it themselves and using it. If we don't have the volunteer capacity. I mean, I don't know. I think that probably requires a lot of resources in and of itself, but still, they're probably our folks out there who would be willing to do that. Greenfield used to use their log loader. They could. People would buy a log loader full of wood and they would. Take a load and drop it off at somebody's house. That's, that's the ideal way to do it because then you don't have to. There's less handling of wood. Exactly. Yeah. Is that something that we could do as a work day and advertise for volunteers and get people to come and do a work day? I don't know. In the fall, maybe when it's not hot. To have people split wood organized stack, something like that. Or is it too big of a job? Like it would need a more sustained specific volunteer effort. I think it would be. Yeah. I think it would be better if it's cold. Generally it's better if it's cold. And yeah, you spend. Four, eight hours. Rotating through cutting, splitting. Everything is. Everyone sign a waiver. Yeah. I was going to say, my God, we were freaking out about just having a horse at the museum. That would be a good idea though. And I mean, like. That's probably the time when the most need exists as well. It's a great workout. Yeah. So let's. Let Britt talk to the sky and we'll keep it on the agenda. I'll put it as an agenda item. So we don't forget it in the future. Yeah. Okay. Unless anyone has anything urgent more to say about it. I have a question about something else, but I'll let you finish. Oh, okay. I'm just on the Greenfield tree committee website, which is very nice. They also have a walking tree tour online. Which is. Very nicely designed. I'm just curious, are they an independent. Committee from the town. Like, how do they have their own website that looks so lovely? And. So here's the interesting thing about the Greenfield tree committee. And Alan probably knows more about this than I do. It's a nonprofit. Okay. So they're, they're their own. Yeah. They have like members or something. And then they collaborate with the town. But it is a non, it is run as a nonprofit. Okay. Interesting. Thank you. All right. Anything else? We finished the agenda. No. Do we want to meet in August in the past? We haven't. We're meeting August 12th. That's the. Do we want to have our second Tuesday meeting in August? Didn't you do a picnic? We did a picnic last year, I think again. Yeah, last year, the before I remember, and yeah, we invited other committees, North Hampton committee came. Yeah. Do we want to do that again? Okay. Okay. I'll reach out to some other committees and then we need to figure out, you know, snacks and food and where. Do it across park again. Sure. Yeah. We need to reserve that Alan. I do that Kendrick Park. Rough parks nice because the kids can play, but also like Kendrick Park. They don't. No, that's. Pretty nice park with playground. Kendrick's nice. It's nice and shaded too. Central too. If people want to write downtown. Yeah. Yeah, I like that idea better. Do we need to reserve Kendrick or not? No. Yeah. Sorry, let's plan that. Someone want to take charge of coordinating. Food, you know, just do Paul luck. I think we did last time, but cups and plates and all that stuff. Anybody want to. Take charge of that part of things. I'll invite the other committees. I mean, I think everyone can just bring their own cups and plates and, you know, just buy some cups and plates and stuff at big one. Maybe a table for. Well, it'd be nice. I mean, it'd be nice to have something where we're not just throwing a bunch of stuff away at the end of the event. Yeah. Just a pet peeve of mine and public service. And, you know, if people bought their own reusable. Plates and silverware and stuff in a basket and. So you don't play that idea very much Alan. We can put up. Like I'll bring my reusable plates, silverware, all that type of stuff. And that way we don't have to throw anything away in the next morning. I won't have to deal with a heavy trash though. Yes. I found the link to the. Just as a side note. I found the link to the green field tree committee, the green field tree. So I found the blue field tree. The green field tree. There's a history tour and best practices thing. I'm going to share it. Quickly here. Okay. Sarah, how many hours did you work? To. Okay. So I shared that. Oh. It says event canceled. All right. Never mind. That's weird. Too bad. Yeah. I guess no one else cares about. Yeah, I'm sure if we reached out to them they would welcome members of the committee so maybe we do that at some point. Yeah, I have a field trip. All right, any last minute things, questions, complaints. Thank you, everyone. And we'll see you next month or sooner. We pass. I'll try to see you on Thursday. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, everyone. Thanks. Thank you.