 You imagine how much time out of your day it takes to join public sherry committee meetings to just disrupt them. That was funny. I'm glad you're using you were the target. So I just want to let everybody know as you come in that we are being recorded at the stage of the meeting. There are no other attendees everyone from the committee who's going to join today seems to be here. Alan, have you started recording. Yes, we have. Okay, so the meeting is officially in progress. Welcome everyone and that was a good tree hearing. Find my notes. Of course I can never know the agenda. I think what I'd like to do for hours is if everyone put your hours in the chat. That would save us time on doing that. And approval of the minutes is the other next thing. Minutes from the me. Whatever the date was. May 9th meeting. Do we approve them? All in favor. Okay, they're approved. Hi. Great. And then next on the agenda. One second. I get a little more organized. Chair's report. I don't have a ton to report. I did speak with. I emailed Mindy and Joe Comerford about the four ongoing. State regs state bills to deal with trees. And Mindy, of course, right away, I saw her at the puffers pond breakfast and she's our biggest fan and totally in support of all of those. I think what I want to do is maybe write a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe about these four issues and tell people to contact their congresspeople because that's probably more where the issue is. I will sign as chair of the. Here so that. That might spark some other committee. So anyway, I will promise to do that before next month. She's great. She also reiterated that if we need money for a special project, she has a contingency fund and can use that money. That's four things in the chat. That's the hours. Great. Okay. Thank you everyone. And what else do I have? Oh, I've been listening to this podcast called this old tree, which Bennett put in the newsletter. I think it's great. They had a program on the charter oak in Hartford. I mean, every drive to Hartford and there's like six different things named the charter of this the charter of that. And so now I know what the charter oak is. And the original Connecticut charter was signed there. And then scholarly ways of the British didn't come and try to take it back and destroy it. So it's a historical shrine also. The tree is no longer standing but this historical stories based on a tree but it's it's much wider than the tree. Another talk about this tree that used to be on Broadway, but it goes way beyond when the tree was cut down for widening widening not Broadway and one of the one of the highways one of the rows in New York City. So it's a fascinating podcast there's a lot of episodes. So yeah, Chris, Chris who was here earlier he I think is Britt student. So that's good that he was here. Hope he joins us again. And I wrote up an individual tree request policy which we can talk about a little later. And Sarah thank you for the outdoors for all act I did contact people about that as well. So, I think that's a good thing. I think that's all I have. Vice chairs report. Yeah, thanks Henry. I also listen to that podcast. Just a little bit of it. Slowly on my ride school each morning. So that was pretty interesting. I got a delivery of a variety of different trees. I believe four of them that are relatively small that a resident dropped off saying she couldn't plant them on the property. As a tenant her landlord might not have wanted that and I said I'd be happy to take them, and she was grateful for that so I planted those on my in my yard this weekend. And then I think there was one thing about bird habitat in the email that I also responded to and a and some stuff on that and then there was also someone who I just noticed Henry responded to related to a lot of trees not leafing out this time of year. And more with hands back notes. Yep. So yeah that it those are the main things that I have noticed. I also, when we did our are planting right downtown. We noticed that one of those trees the Magnolia needed some pruning. It's not in poor health or anything I believe Alan told me that that's just regular maintenance pruning so if anyone from the public is curious about that when they see it driving or biking or walking into town. Yeah, I think that is, those are my main updates for tonight. Thank you, Julian. Treasurer's report. Okay, thanks. And Alan tree wardens report. Excuse me one second Bennett. Are you taking note minutes. And did you take the minutes on at least the, what the decision was that we made at the hearing. I didn't, but I can. Okay, if you can remember it otherwise. We can go over it again here. Let's go over it again before we leave. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so go ahead Alan. Should be quick one. So we had the award ceremony Britain I went to the tree city USA award ceremony Greenfield at the Greenfield Community College. Nice ceremony. Great presentation. About every word utilization and also sort of forced health update. Which was very informative. So we're 36 years tree city USA. There's a photo op that we can use in the paper to publicize the work of the committee and why we maintain a tree city USA status. Grants so just an update on the grant so we wrapped up the numerous history museum, here's tree grants, I just have to get that information. And sent back, and then we did receive an extension for a year on the tree inventory so we have a year to complete the tree inventory and urban forest management plan component. That's a big relief. Alan, just a quick question about that does that mean that training volunteer training for the committee is back on the table. Yes, it is. Cool. I think we should can try to coordinate to do this summer, you know, if people are going to be around. Maybe instead of doing a work day we do a day in the tree inventory training day. Sounds good. So we're tree crew. We move the mostly dead sugar maple tree in the North Common North North Amherst Common. Where the multi use path sidewalk project is going down and took down the Noray maple that had the tree hearing this winter. We transplanted to trees, which is all we ended up needing to transplant which was nice. Then I've been watering those the the Elm that we transplanted didn't like it, and we're watering the heck out of it trying to keep it from going into shock, but it's not the leaves are not fully hydrated at this point so that's why I'm not projects moving forward very fast. Mr. Hill nut tree. No, this was, it was an Elm, a Princeton. Has no we didn't have to move. Right. Okay. I did hear a lot of flak about this from people. Yeah, they're my understanding is there. The concern is around the project itself. The Kelloggad project. First phase of the Kelloggad project is done so the tree preservation tree protection that we did there I think was very successful in protecting the root zone of the tree and the trunks of the tree. We've managed to prune all those trees that were first initially impacted by the project and there's two remaining large, you know, trees there that. And then do some pruning on before the next phase of the project starts next phase of that project is from North pleasant streets along the Unitarian Universalist Church sidewalk there to to the parking lot there for used to be rails coffee. It's now a taco restaurant, a nice restaurant there. So there's a short section sidewalk to large peanut trees in it, and we need to prune those. That's where the rubberized surface is going instead of from the asphalt up against the trees so going to be our first attempt at using these porous rubberized surfaces around the trunk root zone area of trees. They've been successful in other municipalities and doing this Cambridge uses it all over the place around trees. So, I have a colleague in Schenectady who loves them. They've had a lot of problems with plant planting trees and then having the trees be ripped out of the ground destroyed vandalize. So that's a big concern just about like safety and cleanliness and keeping the trees they plant in the ground and they use that rubberized surface and they really love it so that's another pro. Good to hear. You didn't use it on Kellogg have them. Well, this is reading us on the other side of the street wasn't proposed is only proposed to be used near these two trees because we don't have this. We can't maintain them. We don't have to create compliance on that side of the street without doing something like this so we're, that's why we're using it in these two locations so. There'll be asphalt and then a large, you know, like 12 or so foot long stretch of rubberized surface and then asphalt and then we get close to the next tree. There'll be another stretch of this rubberized surface for the sidewalk. And that's some pretty much it we did a lot of tree work. Before the pulmonary paving project took place we had to take down the remaining dying ash trees on pulmonary. And then we have some more pruning to do on West street west of pulmonary for the sidewalk is going to be part of the roundabout project is going on there. And the trees on the other side of the street and took down the dead, excuse me, took down the red maple that was also a past tree hearing. So, trees in the cemeteries, you know, three days out of the week. So tree work is dropping off. So, that's it. Much. All right. So, the next thing on the agenda is the presentations and discussions, Mary maple love letter exhibit will postpone for a month. Since Brit couldn't make it she went to a, her daughter's favorite performing groups had a concert tonight and so she went to that. The individual tree request policy did everyone see that. I'm sorry. I'll share it with everyone now. Just hold on a second. It's not coming up. Okay. Is it long or is it something you could read. I could have to find it I thought I had it on my desktop to share but it's not appearing anywhere. One more time. Definitely not on my desktop. I'm sorry everyone. I'm going to say that Henry fumbled around for several minutes trying to find the document. Great, thanks. Okay, it's coming on now. Get it into a good place or it's easy to share. Okay, that's not it. Here it is. I will share this in five seconds. Share screen. So big enough. I'll do it bigger. She'd be coming not home in there. Sorry. Henry. What is this? This. Sorry, can you just. Yes, if people are getting scattered requests from people during a tree, and we used to always provide that and we stopped providing it. But the request to keep coming in and Alan can't really do that. So we talked about this last meeting. And anyway, I said I'd write something up until I did. So this is my proposed policy. And when we get a request for a tree what we do. Any comments. My first comment would be to just say the tree warden as opposed to Alan. I don't think people may not. So the first sentence when new requests for trees from. Individual property owners come in might be. One way of putting it to. And it should be property owners rather than residents, right? If you're, if you're a resident of an apartment building. For example, you couldn't do that. Okay. I've worked it out in my head. I could add to this so we could just know this that if we get a request from a renter. That we then have them contact the landlord. We're talking about trees. We should determine whether we're talking about trees in the public way or trees in the setback. I would say the same thing because if we get a request for an individual public tree in front of someone's property. That is a little different in the term that like a renter or a neighbor or anyone could really theoretically request that. Without meeting any sort of permission from the landlord and they should bear of that right. I don't need permission from a Jason property owner to plant a tree in the public way. I do need permission from a property owner if it's going to be a set, set back planting and we have a form that they would have to fill out to do that. I think we need something on here about, you know, what if somebody wants a tree for their backyard, you know, for their own. I mean, we want to say that the trees, we only accommodate requests for trees. That are shade the public way or something like that. 30 feet from the public way. Yeah, some type of, you know, we're not going to put trees in somebody's backyard. Right. It has to sort of conform with our mission. The distance is 20 feet according to law that allows a tree warden to spend funds on private property in a setback planting so 20 feet is the distance. Okay. I think you need to define ROW. Well I'm going to put it I already put in right away up here I'm going to put that there. I think I'm going to do that also with the public shade tree. It's not saying we will the public shade tree committee will try to accommodate them. I can be really obnoxious and say I can put this in the in the active voice if you want. So, you know, the Amherst public shade tree committee. We'll try to accommodate new requests for trees from individual property owner, you know, just more dramatically. Okay. I think rather than do all the editing as a group, maybe if you don't mind I will send this to you and you can finalize it. Sure, happy to do that mostly it was wondering if I'm on the right. Yes. And if people support this. That is another question I had. I think there's something in here. Something like the tree committee appreciates donations. Or, you know, if, if the homeowner cannot afford it, then we will use money from the tree gift fund or, you know, something along those lines. It says we will use money from the gift tree fund. If the homeowner's if financially able are encouraged to assist in purchasing the trade. How about we will use money from the gift tree fund and request donations from the home. Our donations. Appreciated but not required. I don't know we don't want to give. Good idea. Another question I have is this will seem much easier once we have our nursery up and running and driving. Do you think I just don't know how many requests we get on sort of an annual basis if we can actually accommodate the number of requests we get. We don't get a huge amount. So I'm just going to say, we've got a couple of days left. And that's why I wrote that if we start receiving many requests, we'll use the second Saturday planting. Okay. Yeah. We're not going to get more than probably more than two in any month, maybe four in May or April. If we got 10 or 12, you know, that would be huge amount. I believe we only got to last month. Okay. And I'll send it to Ellen to write a final policy. We'll discuss it next month. Tom good. Okay. I know Ellen, you need to go. Soon. So let's. Back to stop sharing screen. Back to the agenda quickly and see if it's anything that has your name on it. The town tree tour. We haven't done anything on that at all. Have we? No, we haven't. Okay, so we'll pass on that. Second set of the plantings. We'll talk about a little later. Town budget line item. We'll talk about later. You mass interns is. Between nursery. Well, any of these. Issues on the agenda. My, I just had a question about the line item in the budget. Did that get approved or is it still up for a vote? I believe it was passed with the rest of the budget. Last night at town council. Oh, that's fabulous. If they pass the budget, which I don't know if they did or not, but if they pass the new fiscal year budget, then they likely pass that as part of. The budget because they look at it as a package, not as a individual. Type line item when they look at the budget. Great job, everyone. Congratulations. Yeah, that's great. Okay. So. All right. Let's just go in order until you have to leave the known. Second Saturday planting. First of all, how many hours of volunteers did we get there? How many volunteers? Not from the committee. Two. I think Rona and then we had a new volunteer Lori. Yep. How many of they worked a whole three hours or. I know. We finished up around 1115. Okay. So I'll give them each two. Yeah. They're both adults. Yep. Okay. All right. Good. And it went well. All the trees got in. Very much so. Good. Okay. I apologize for missing it. What's that? They were saying something, but he's muted. Okay. Okay. Next on the agenda. The tree nursery. Yeah, I think, you know, I think we have a good site. Off the station road. Town property, wash, supply. Some fencing already installed to keep the deer out. Now it's just a matter of, you know, It's just, you know, This late summer purchasing some grow bags and some. Watering systems, something to keep them watered and. And then purchasing, purchasing the trees probably. You know, as bare root tree stock. In late fall. And doing a. The late fall planting in the nursery. I'm not sure if we touched on this before, but is the town considering that site for. New DPW, new fire station, affordable housing, any sort of development that might interfere. I'm not aware of any development there. The town of the property actually belongs to the watershed. It's part of the watershed. Right. We're not actually going to be, you know, I think the system we're going to do and we don't really, you know, plant these trees in the ground with planting them in grow bags that are going to be recessed in the ground with mulch around them. Perfect. We won't be using native soil. We'll be using compost. Things like that. Great. Thank you. We just need to work on a species that we'd like to plant. So we can, we can, we can, we can, we can, we can, we can, we can. Something committee can discuss. How many trees first of all. Well, I mean, 50. You know, so we want to plan this so that we have. You know, X number of trees that we can plant every year. So some species grow faster than others. So if you want to plant, you know, 10 trees a year, then we need to. Space these up. Year after year. And if you want to plant them in the spring. So that they mature to planting age. You know, unevenly. If you don't want them all getting to the right size. The same year. We also might want to. Work on installing some fencing or at least fixing the fencing already there to help keep. Yes. Species choices. I think, you know, we've had a lot of success with Oaks. There, you know, some of the larger native trees that aren't done. Currently in danger. From some kind of pest or climate change. So, oh, we definitely get a swamp. Oh, white oak. Any other hearty trees, you know, red oak. Red maple, you know, always a winner. About Hackberry. Hackberry probably would work some locations. I don't want to plant beach. I want to plant ash. I want to plant sugar maple. Sycamore, you can do Sycamore. Just, you have to realize that it's, you know, going to get Sycamore's back nose in the spring and that we've out until the conditions. Improve improve. And I'm thinking all big shade trees and not thinking smaller. If you want to select some. Other nut trees. You could do that. Shag bar kickery. Shag bar. Well, if we're going to grow and not, it should be an edible nut. It's big, but it's not edible. I don't think so. I think it's kind of bitter. Why is for pigs? I've never tried. So. Yeah, so it's something we can all as a committee, as the committee and I can come up with some. Species and check on availability and. Get it or put in for a fall. Okay. Let's think about a little more and finalize the list for sure next month. I, my suggestions, we do 12 of each kind. I tried to plant 12 out each year. Or six of six kinds, but do 36 trees. I'm just, I just wanted to say, I think Oaks are a great idea because they're really beneficial for a lot of different species. And they, they do really well. I'll, I think Alan said. And I guess I have my, my instinct is to plant things that are hard to find. That are, that are bigger that we might want street trees, like species that are more, more difficult to come across. So I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think we could just get from a nursery. And I, in that vein, I'm kind of wondering if there's any merit in looking at things that are. Developed to be narrow. I can't think of the word right now. Column are. Thank you. Yes. Column are varietals or like things for hard spaces where we might want to put a tree that's difficult. Or Alan, if you have any recommendations for species that we might want to plant trees that we could have trees that were growing specifically for those conditions. So it's, you know, large growing to medium sized growing under power lines sort of. Species for narrow root zones or reduced root zones. Or if there's any merit in maybe doing 12. Of a smaller species, if we could plant under power lines or something. So I'm just trying to think of difficult areas where we might want to plant trees that we could have trees that were growing specifically for those conditions. So I'm just trying to think of ways to do that. Or reduce root zones or reduce root zones and other areas for a larger root zones. Yeah, exactly. And I can do some research too. But. Great. Let's do that research and finish next month on this. Any other things before we switch. Before Alan goes, I want to do two things. One is go over the decision we just made. But the other thing I want to do is. You know, I don't know if it's the table. Oh, wow. Is that from the merry maple? That is the merry maple table. Yeah, that looks great. What did you finish it with? I didn't finish it was finished with eight coats of some kind of. Polyurethane, I guess. It's got a little bow tie that's keeping it from cracking more. I think she said sugar maple, but I don't remember some kind of maple. Beautiful. Yeah, lovely. I would love to put like a merry maple exhibit together with things like that. I think that's just such a great use of the situation. I completely agree. And even possibly if we could. Offering or holding a. Place where people can. Buy or even give away some of these artifacts. That local artists have created if we could. Yeah. We're talking about doing that. It's a matter of, you know, reaching back out to all those people. We took pieces and said they were going to make something out of it. So. Nice. Working progress. All right. And then. Yeah. So we need to decide what to do with it. I mean, if we have an exhibit, that'll be the first use. So. Let's review the decision we made in the tree hearing. For Bennett's notes. Yes. And for me, if anyone wrote down this, I did not in that meeting, I was not taking notes that even occur to me. If anybody had the exact language or free. I think we all know the gist of it. But. Guessing nobody wrote down the language. We just kind of came up with it on the fly. I believe I didn't write it down, but if my memory serves me well, we decided to. Vote to advise the preserving. Of the tree in that location. And. If not possible. Seek compensation at the. $90 per inch. Of diameter of breast type. Right. So we agree to sounds right to me. Yeah. Okay. Give me the, and Julian, give me the reimbursement amount per inch or whatever that was. I $90. Per inch diameter of breast type. DBH. Correct me if that's incorrect. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Do you need me for any votes or anything? Otherwise I'm going to. Any of the votes. We still have a quorum. So thank you. Okay. Thanks guys. Good to see everyone. You too. Bye-bye. So not too much more going. Bennett, you mentioned you were going to. We're going to talk about the tree. We're going to talk about the native tree policy. Yeah, I'll have it to you tomorrow. I've just been on my list the whole month and I just thought it'd be so easy and just never did it. And I realized it 30 minutes before our first call today. So. Anyway. Okay. No problem. We'll do it next month. The town tree inventory. It sounds like that's moving ahead. What more do you need from us right now? Yeah. We need to schedule a time for training. So again, if we wanted to do that in July or August. Instead of a work day, we could do that. I can arrange for. The training. And then I need to. You know, get the people. Somebody to do the actual inventory. For the rest of it, And then I'm going to have to do that. To finish up right now. We're, we have 700. Over 750 tree points that have been updated or added. To the inventory since last June. And I have started the. Urban forestry management plan, but just need to. Dive back into that. And then I'm going to get it out to the committee for review and get it out to the other departments, planning department and stuff like that for review. Okay. I think the simplest way to pick a time would be to get a list of dates from the guy who would do the training. Well, I mean, I think our date, our date is the second Saturday of either July or August. Okay. Okay. I suggest we go for August. It always seems like July. It's often still an okay time to plant in August is sometimes oppressively hot and dry. Let me look at those dates. I've got a show on August 12th. I might. What time it is. So it works for everyone else. That'd be fine. So August 12. Does that work for a tentative date? Yes. For me. I'll see what we can do. Let's check another calendar. It works for me too. Okay, we're on to that then. The story history museum. Did the work on the tree get done finally. Yeah, works done. New trees planted lighting protections installed. So we're good to go. Little bit of cleanup work to do. And we were going to do a big mulching around the tree too, right? Yeah, I just got to talk to the image history museum around that. See if you can pull that grass away from the trunk. They're going to be stuck maintaining it. So if we put a mulching around it, then they have to keep that weed free versus just mowing it. Okay. Library trees. I guess there's nothing new on that. The state level initiatives already talked about. Yeah. There is something new on the library trees. So I reached out and they weren't able to come to this meeting, but they're going to be in touch about maybe coming to our next meeting and they're trying to put together. Basically like an Amherst community outreach. Program. And we are one of the committees that they're going to talk to, but they're hoping to have. And then I'm going to be speaking with Rachel Laughler from the library. So I'm going to be speaking with Rachel Laughler from the library design who's doing the landscape. As part of the renovation. Speak to these groups. And it would be Rachel Laughler who used to be on this committee. So hopefully we will having Rachel. And I don't know if there's any going to be anyone else from the library committee specifically, but hopefully we'll be having Rachel Laughler from version design come and speak with us. And I will keep you updated about what meeting. Okay. Significant tree ordinance as I mentioned, I spoke with. Mindy Dom. And that's moving along and I'll write that letter. And then one more thing in the agenda, which I already forgot. The solar by log group, Julian. Yep. They met the last time. Not last Friday, but Friday before then I believe. And I attended that meeting. They're still in the process of drafting their bylaws. Their recordings can be found. On both the town website and I believe Amherst media also puts them on their YouTube page. And yeah, not many updates. There is a solar study that's been launched that they're encouraging the community to fill out. So if you haven't filled that out, just remind your to do so. I sent it. It was a good letter to the editor yesterday's paper about it. I did not see that. I will have to look for it. Thank you. Yeah, I think it was yesterday. All right. Any other things we need to discuss? Henry on the agenda, you had social media. On the agenda. Ah, yes. I must have missed that. I just want the reason why is because. The town's social media person. Reached out to me and wanted to know if there was any, any questions or anything. But the committee might have, and I think it would be a good idea. Committee is very active on social media. And I think it would be nice if maybe at the next meeting, we invite her to attend. The meeting to give you an update sort of the town has. Is there working on a new handbook for you? Social media and all the guidelines, things like that. So I think we're good to invite her to the. Next meeting if she can attend. That's great. And maybe. Have her contact Julian ahead of time. Sure. Yeah, that would be wonderful. I might even see some advantages in integrating. Our social media with the town. Social media that way we're a little more officially connected to them. And we could also get some of their, some of our events advertised on their base, which is significantly larger given that they have the Amherst alert system and all those types of things that we could theoretically. Work with. I didn't bring that up on the agenda, I think, cause she's not here. And she doesn't seem to be very active in the committee. She posted, there was somebody posted the work day, but nobody posted the meeting today. So I did it. Okay. Yeah. I don't believe I have access to the Facebook. So whoever did that. Thank you. Okay. I can try to figure out how to do that. If you wanted to send me an email or something about that. And I can look into it. Okay. Actually, I'll do it as soon as the meeting's over. So then if you need to get a phone call. For a code. The code will come to. Well, probably come to my email or might come to the committee email. Comes to the committee email. Yeah. I don't believe I have access to the Facebook. So whoever did that. Thank you. Okay. I can try to figure out how to make you a co-host on the Facebook page. That would be great. If you wanted to send me an email or something about that. And I can look into it. I can look into it. I can look into it. I can look into it. I can look into it. I can look into it. Committee email. It comes to the committee. You can get it. That's perfectly fine. I would probably end up doing it tomorrow. Given that I have. Finals to study for. I could probably do that tomorrow afternoon. Okay. Tomorrow. I'll be here to miss. Call me before you do it. If you, you know. Okay. Really whenever works just shoot me an email and I'll try to get it resolved. Okay. Great. Yeah. I appreciate that. That's awesome. I think it was a productive meeting. And. It was nice having the guy from Belcher town and. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Thank you everybody. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye.