 I have started the webinar. So everything will be recorded from this point forward. We'll be available on Friday evening. We're going to do the downloads. I'll be right back. I'm going to get my notebook. I'm going to get my notebook. I'm going to get my notebook. It is joining. So we'll have a quorum at least. Ellen's not coming. So. Just Shashana and Julian. Now wait two minutes. Should we start? I guess. That sounds good. Okay. Well, welcome, everybody. I knew Julian was going to come. I haven't heard from Shashana, but. First item of business is on this one else. Okay. I'm going to click on the participants. I'm going to click on the participants. And I'll share my screen. Sarah, do you want to do that? Yeah, I can do that. Okay. Promote you. I can get that. Okay. Great. So if you click on the participants, then you can see as people come in as attendees. I'll shut that off. I've got a honey. Good. All right. And. While waiting, I'll share a photo that some of you may have seen on Facebook, but where is it? Hold on. I'm going to have to find it. You guys see that? Yes. So I was walking down the street from the apartment. I rented on Buenos Aires and these two women were putting these stakes and plastic wrapping around the base of the tree to protect it. So I thanked them for that. And then we got into a conversation of tree care. And they said the tree had practically doubled in height since it was planted a year ago. And I happened to have a picture. We had just planted the day I left. I drove from our last planting to the airport. So I had a picture and showed them a picture of us planting the tree and on McClellan drive and McClellan street, whatever it is. And it was like this great five minute conversation we had. And they plant a lot of tons of street trees in Buenos Aires. It's one of the nice things about being there. And they keep planting more and just like here, trees get damaged, dogs poop on them. Cars crash into them. They get broken by people. But it's nice to see the neighbors. Actually going out and taking care of them. So I thought I would share that. Yeah, thank you for sharing. Yeah. So now I can share the agenda. Are there any announcements or no public comments? Obviously. I'm going to change this view though. So I can see all of you better. Oh, that's the tree hearing wrong. Okay. Is this what I'm sharing? The agenda. Yes. Okay. Good. So no public hearings. Approval of the November meetings and the artist tree hearing minutes. I sent you all both of those. I checked, I watched the video, the end of the video and what I wrote in the tree hearing minutes was what we agreed to. So if we can agree to that, we can approve it and pass it on to Alan, to post. I reviewed it. Looks good. All in favor of approving the minutes from. I guess it was September. I forget we're September something. So August 9th. Yeah. Good. Okay. So that's approved, Alan. I'll send you another copy if you don't have it. Yeah. And then the. Minutes from November. Whatever it was. November 8th. Those get approved. Good. Thumbs up. Okay. So that's approved too. And can someone be the secretary today? I'm already, I'm already on it. All right. That's great. So you probably don't need the actual wording because that'll be in the minutes from the other meetings. Okay. Do volunteer hours. Yeah. Say six. Sarah. Three. Britt. I'm trying to think. So it does not include the last meeting, but it does include everything after that meeting until now, including this meeting, right? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. Let's say, let's say 10. That sounds right. And the planting. Yeah. Yeah. I'm probably got about eight this month. I will check the others as they come in. All right. So. I've been meeting chair report. I don't have a ton of things to report. I don't have a ton of things to report. But one thing I wanted to say was. It was great to be keeping an eye on emails while I was in Argentina and seeing how you, you know, I feel like. Sometimes I feel like I, if I don't. Organize and encourage people, nothing gets done in the committee, but I was gone. And you guys just went ahead with the Mary Maple thing. And that was great. I was really happy to read that and see, especially Brit as a new member of taking charge of that. And I think that's, um, Oh, there was an article in the paper that the town of Hadley actually did a tree planting. I think they planted four trees on the West common, but nice to see they were doing something. We got an email from someone who in response to, um, The newsletter that, um, Bennett puts out every month saying. Northampton road is the place to plant trees. That's great. I don't know. Don't know that anybody's. They're right. So they responded to your request for locations. That's great. And so I responded to her and said, it's a difficult place to plant because it's not really spots, but we should be thinking about that and maybe trying to get some trees in the ground. Um, And then there was also a request for trees on. Greenwich or Greenwich road. Did you see that Alan? Yes. 64 granite road. So I don't, I think that's a public road and I don't know. It is. Yeah. I'll reach out to them, but I'm not sure how we would do that. Yeah, Britt. Yeah, I would also suggest, you know, the mechanism of, um, having people have to be proactive about. Saying where trees should be planted may. Um, Be kind of an equity issue too, right? So like, not everybody's going to be tuned into, to what the local committees are doing or how to even go about asking for trees. And so I think as a committee, we might want to think about, um, spots around town that, you know, maybe people are not requesting trees, but, but that might be able to benefit from trees as well. Yeah, that's great. Um, we have talked about equity. Unfortunately, a lot of the spots where we would plant for climate change are not just as our rental properties with. The owner hasn't wanted to do that, but we can continue to pursue that. And, uh, yeah, I think Bennett putting in the newsletter was just an extra way to get people thinking about trees in the town. So yeah. Good. Um, so I'll. Reach out to the 64 Greenwich road people. I don't really offer trees anymore for planting, but maybe we can work out something or maybe we'll do a planting in that neighborhood at some point. Um, yeah. So again, good job on the Mary Maple. And, uh, on the agenda, I think is. Yeah, giving away the presentation and follow up. So good. All right. That's all for me. I know Julian had a few things to say, but he's not here. Yeah. Sorry. I was late because I have a sports practice that ends at 530. Um, so basically my only updates are. That we got a request. Um, for the granite road, as you saw, um, my other update. Oh, what was I going to say? Um, My other update was that we are. Um, Our, at least in my opinion should possibly prioritize. Plantings in like more diverse middle class neighborhoods, even if we can't always plant in, um, In the apartment complexes, which I think we should try to where we can, like in front of colonial village and on East Hadley road and whatnot. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, If we don't allow our, don't allow us to do. We can also go into like granite road or Glendale. And that area. Um, as well as some other areas of town, like along grid street and whatnot where there's still like a diverse working class population of people who. Um, Live there so we would still be touching on that environmental justice aspect. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, I think that's a good point on that front. And the newsletter looked good. Uh, I saw that I'm also doing, uh, interview to report on the Mary Maple to, uh, My school's journalism class. Um, So they should get that out to like a school newspaper, information flyer. Um, About that. And yeah, that's it. Great. Can you, um, Let me see. One year. Yeah. When it. Yeah, when it gets printed, I want to, when it gets printed, I will. Yeah. It probably will be a few weeks. Great. Thank you. Uh, tree one's report. I don't have a lot to report on. We did receive. Um, 14 sweet gum trees in, uh. I think there were 10 gallon pots. donated them. There were trees that they purchased for, you know, their ceremony for welcoming the new president of Amherst College. So these trees were used as, you know, at a stage somewhere or something to help beautify the area. And they didn't need all of them. So they gave us 14 trees, and we healed them in that Ruxton storage area last week, last Friday, I think it was. So we have 14 sweetcombs to find homes for. North Hampton Road project would be a great place for some of those trees probably. What else? Yeah, I'm still working on the tree city or say application. We're, you know, trying my best to kind of focus on tree getting caught up on tree work. Now, you know, we're done with most of our other cemetery duties and other things that the tree crew gets pulled into. And we're focusing on currently focusing on crown lifting along roadside. So as you, as I've said before, town is required to maintain 14 foot road clearance over all of our roads. So we are concentrating on areas where we get complaints from bus drivers and plough operators and things like that. Let's say the road is getting too overgrown to drive down safely without driving into the other lane. So if you see a lot of freshly pruned trees along the roadside, we're really just focusing on getting the branches out of the road at this point. So I think that's it really. Okay. Yeah, great. Thank you. Maybe the North Hampton Road could be our April planting location. Will the construction be done by then? It will not. So it may need to be late summer or fall planting. That's a two-year road project. I don't know at what stage they'll be at, you know, that time. Okay. So we'll wait on that tonight. We'll see where they go. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Sarah Treasurer's report. Yes. We currently have $14,912.79. And that reflects two deductions in November, 507 to Amherst Nursery and 675 to Sugarloaf Gardens. But I did follow up on the past charges that were listed as payroll, Alan. There was one in July for 302 and another in September, early October for 363. And that is a new change. Apparently, DPW has been instructed to charge for your time for doing tree committee plantings on the weekends for our second Saturday plantings to this account. And if that's not correct, then you, we need to talk to DPW and then DPW who billing needs to talk to accounting to get it straightened out. I can, I actually did try to figure out what was going on there and I was told the same thing. So since the money ran out on the tree planting funds, and I started charging my time to my division's regular overtime budget, which is $7,707 a year for overtime. The decision was made by somebody that I should not charge my time to regular overtime. Personally, I'm not, I don't like doing this. I'm not a fan of taking money out of the tree planting fund for my time. Then I'm going to try to figure out what we can do to change that. I don't think it's appropriate use of fee planting funds. But which means I need to find out how to get some more overtime funds, you know, into my budget to cover those costs. Yeah. The one of those charges was a reimbursement to me. It was $393 reimbursed to me for buying the seedlings. So it was just simple for me to purchase for the credit card the seedlings from the Mastery Wardens and it was to go through the whole procurement process. So that was a reimbursement for the 200 seedlings that we purchased for our day. Okay. Can I just? Yeah, Henry, go ahead. We don't need to sign off on those. You know, Sarah and I didn't sign or even know that you were. Yeah. And that's, yeah. So I don't know the details and all that, but I would like to correct it. So I'll work to correct that. I'm not, I don't want to continue to continue. Yeah, it's crazy. And it's exact opposite of what we're trying to do instead of getting a line and budget would be penalized. Right. And, but to that point, is there a statement or a paper trail or something that we could keep track of what's going on here and use it as part of our case for needing a line item budget? Like if Allen's time for the plantings is going to be charged to our account, then that should be factored into a line item budget for the tree committee so that we have funds for buying trees and paying Allen for that time. You know, like if it's town money, it doesn't matter if it comes from his overtime account or if it comes from the tree account as long as it's being funded. So we could, I think there's a case to be made here if we can kind of keep a paper trail or get someone to, you know, say something on the committee's behalf and use that for the next time they're voting for town budget. So I do, so on the withdrawal side of things, everything, every dime that DPW spends, you know, does go into the media system. So I get, I can actually get, and if you see this spreadsheet out of the municist and it shows what money was charged to that account, you can't see what goes into it. So we don't see who adds money to it, who donates money or whatever. But this does show what it was spent for. So and I can track that money this way, that part of it, at least and again, I'm, you know, I think this munist spreadsheet makes a perfect case for tracking and showing people why it's important, you know, that we fund tree planting, the purchasing of those trees and the planting of them. So one question I had is, so is it possible or how does it work where like the gas and the equipment used and that type of stuff, does that also, that won't also get charged to the tree planting fund eventually if those monies run out, will it? No, I mean, you know, I mean, you could say, you know, I get, you know, my division operates out of the general fund. So where we get our money from the general fund, and that money is, you know, controlled by, you know, the town manager and finance committee and others who prioritize where that money is spent. My fuel budget covers everything the division does. So, you know, being able, trying to break that stuff out is difficult. I've tried in the past to actually figure out how much money we're spending on, you know, tree care, not hanging banners, you know, not mowing cemeteries and doing it. It's actually difficult to try to break all these costs out of this, the way it's set up. So I don't foresee the town charging for something like that out of this fund. Good. No, I just wanted to make sure. I think that this certainly speaks to why we need a line item budget. And I mean, it's really sort of too bad in the first place that the town doesn't have adequate monies to compensate our staff for the work they do properly. Then it's the same $7,000 in $7,700 and over time that I've had my budget for, you know, close to 10 years. So, yeah, it doesn't change. And I mean, if you guys have more work one year or more snow storms or whatever, that changes. But yeah, also the snow budget is separate. We'll respond to snow that is separate. Yeah. Still it is really a reason we need that extra overtime, that extra overtime in a different budget. And why we need more funds for not only our tree planting budget or overtime or this or that, etc. So, yeah. Allen, why don't we just get in touch by email? Maybe I can pull together like just a simple kind of PDF document, you know, and like a cover letter and we can just kind of compile our case for the tree committee getting a line item budget and then we'll be more prepared for the next time we ask for something, you know, for the for the next budget. And I can use some of these numbers to kind of pull together or give rationale behind the number we're asking for. So if we're asked for a certain number for trees, then we can include the amount for your overtime and have, you know, however much data to kind of show why we're asking for the amount. So we can just communicate by email and then I can kind of pull together a little PDF package. Sounds good. And we should also include it for Ian and Chris and the other guys if they need to show up. Yeah, equipment, the whole thing. But we'll just have, you know, a comprehensive data that we can show why we're asking for what we're asking for. Okay. And that's so that's it for the I have two more things about that one is, maybe until we get this resolved, I mean, maybe it'll be resolved before our next workday or planting, but we shouldn't use the other two town employees. And we actually haven't, if you've been noticing they haven't been really participating recently. Mostly that is because they have a life and want to have a Saturday off. So but we have been, it's basically just been my time. So and that's, you know, it's just remind you that it's not, you know, nine to noon. The it's, you know, seven a.m. till like one or one 32 o'clock, but I'm usually getting paid to get everything ready and then break everything down and put everything away. So it's, it's a six or seven hour day usually for me. Sure. And then so the still it seemed like still we were a lot lower in the bank account than we should be. And I didn't I still haven't really heard how that happened. We were at like 26,000 maybe we're down to, you know, whatever we're down to now. So it seems like a lot maybe it's all accounted for, but I wasn't convinced of that. We were at 23,000 for quite a while. Julian, actually, if you have the numbers from when you were treasurer, if you wanted to send those to me, I can do some retroactive digging. Since I took back over the deduction, I'm getting every line item deduction for each month to keep track so that we have a little bit more information. And so far it's all been tracking since October. Yeah, I remember my last treasurer's report was at $26,080 and 32 cents. So that was my last treasurer's report. I could do some digging to see if I have previous ones before that. I'm not sure if I you are not. So that's where did we at now again? $14,912. So that's $11,000 plus deduction. Which how the tree plant means costs $3,000 each time. So that's only a couple of times though. How many times have we done it four times five times? Not since we started charging ourselves. I don't know. Yeah, maybe it adds up. If we charged ourselves three times, that's $9,000. That adds up. Yeah. Okay, thanks. To move on to presentations and discussions, and Mary Maple, again, thank you all for all the work you did on that. Yeah, Julian, by the way, what's your hours for the month? My hours, I put in 12 hours this month. Okay. All right. So follow up. One is the list of people that want to get wood and then anything else we're going to do, write or say or do anything else. So I have the list of people who want wood. And I, so we collected, we collected emails at the event, and there were about 40, 45 people on that list. So I sent an email saying that pickup information would be forthcoming, but asking if they could kind of let us know what size piece of what they were looking for. So most people are looking for just the small rounds. A couple of people have specific larger projects in mind that Alan suggested we could probably accommodate because it sounds like there are some larger rounds and pieces. So I have that information. I think the next step is for us to set a couple of pickup times and then I can communicate to everyone whose email I have about that. Okay. I have someone to add to the list. I'll send that to you afterwards. Okay. And Bennett, maybe if Britt sends you all the email addresses, you can add them to our mailing on MailChimp. Yep. That's a great idea. Okay. So you'll send that to Britt. Britt, we'll send it. I'll send it. Yes. Yeah. Good. Thank you. That's good. All right. So anyone, when should we do the pickup? Are you ready, Alan, to start dispersing? Yeah. I mean, as soon as I know who and how much, what we need to do to, you know, get the word ready. I also wanted to cross check our list to see if I had duplicates from the people. So if you could send the list out of who has requested wood, I will just make sure we're not both contacting people. Okay. Maybe it makes sense then for me to put, I've been behind this past week, but to put everything into a spreadsheet then with name, email, and then the request. And then I can share that with both Bennett and with you, Alan, to check, to add the email and then to kind of check to make sure we're not duplicating efforts, duplicating requests. More on the Mary Maple Wood, the 250th committee has requested for us to investigate or for me to investigate. There was a commitment made by the committee to place several park benches around town, Kinnock Park and such, with the 250th kind of logo on it to commemorate the town's 250th anniversary. So we met last week, looked at the wood that we have available, and decided that we have a couple options to do kind of non-traditional benches that might be interesting for people to sit on and appreciate and to make a note somehow on the benches that they were made from the Mary Maple and have them placed around town. So that's what I'm going to work on in the next couple weeks is finding somebody who can work with this wood and possibly has some ideas on how we can make some nice benches out of it. I'm not talking about ripping it into two by fours, we're talking about using larger pieces of the wood as a bench or sitting areas. That's great. If anybody has seen anything that you like, please feel free to share those kind of ideas and images with me. That's good. Yeah, so back to the Mary Maple in general, does anyone want to say anything about how the memorial went and the new Mary Maple lighting since I wasn't there either? It was nice. Shashana, is that you? Yeah. Right in there, you're here. Okay. Yeah, I couldn't come in through the, I never got like an email with a thing, so I keep the link on Facebook. Okay. I heard it was a bigger turnout than they had in years past. It had a pretty sizable turnout for the event. It was huge. There was tons of people there. I went, there had to be at least probably a thousand people there. It was pretty amazing. Well, a lot of people taking pictures on the stump, I think I heard. Yes, it's true. I did, before we move on from the Mary Maple, I did prepare a presentation on what I discovered during the removal process and afterwards. If the committee wanted me to share that now, I could do that at this time. I feel like that would be, I would love to hear that. Yeah, so nice. Let me practice this a little earlier and see if I can do it right. I'm Shashana, can you give me your hours while we're waiting for that? Um, probably four. Okay. Okay, everybody see, yes, it's on the screen. All right. So Lyndon Treecare did do their removal of the Mary Maple. They had their crane, a log loader and a bucket truck there. And the town crew was also there with our chip truck and bucket truck in case it was needed. Took roughly eight hours, which was longer than I had expected. The Lyndon Treecare bucket operator would, you know, they'd extend the crane up, if enough moving crane operations, get it above the section of tree they want to remove, lower the ball down, hook up some slings around the trunk of the tree, then hook those slings onto the crane hook. It's quite a process. It actually takes a lot of experience to do because you're trying to balance these pieces of wood from a crane once you actually cut it from the trunk of the tree. So it's not something you want. You don't want to have a large, you know, five ton piece of wood spinning around out of control in that process. So they did a very good job, very good crew there. So essentially they dismantled the tree in large sections in the process. Once they made the pick from the tree, they swung it over and laid it down in the Spring Street parking lot, which was closed, where the town crew would limit and cut it into large wood sections, log sections. And then the Lyndon Treecare blood loader would load it up. And then at the end of the day, we took everything to our storage area. So, you know, what were the main concerns with the tree and why it was selected? Its health was one of the main reasons why the Mary Maple ended up being selected for removal out of all the other trees on the common. And the declining crown was, you know, the sort of main reason. It was an example of the state of the health of the tree and how long it would potentially have to live, especially if there was disturbance around the roots on. The other issue there was the unknown extent, well, the weak branch unions that were there. And then the decay in the main trunk at those branch unions were attached to the main trunk. And then the overextended branches that were very long, with a lot of unbalanced sort of leverage at the tips of those branches. And you know, a lot of this, you know, the extended branches, the decay, the weak branch unions. A lot of that, as I had said in the past, could be mitigated through pruning and other things on cable and bracelet. But there wasn't much I could do about that declining health. So, the crown was thin, it was notably thin. This picture actually didn't do a very good job of showing how thin the crown was. But you shouldn't be able to look up through a crown of a healthy tree like this. It should be much forward. And then that branch union where there was already some branches that had been removed or had failed. There was obvious decay in that area. But again, with the trunk, you can't see inside the trunk without some special tools. So really couldn't tell for sure what the extent of decay was. So after we took it down, so this is, this is that area that I just showed. And if you look at the upper right top arrow, it points to, you know, a decay area in the trunk of the tree with some discoloration of the wood where decay was present. Again, it's not outside the allowable limits of decay in a piece of wood that size. But it just shows the extent of decay. Decay likes to go up in a tree, in a wood of a tree, likes to travel up. The tree has better defenses against decay that travels down in a trunk. And the arrow on the left points to another example. The middle arrow is pointing to an area where it was just, you know, organic matter and root mass. So the tree was actually sending fine root hairs out into the organic matter that was forming in the middle of this branch union there. And then the other two arrows are pointing to branch one, branch failure, and a branch that had been printed away. So this circle indicates a crack that developed after the tree was removed. And in the process of lifting this piece with the crane, the leader that we're looking at here is actually the main leader of the tree, the one that was in decline. And a crack actually developed there during the removal process. It doesn't mean it would have failed, but it means that there was a weak spot there and so on. So what I'm looking at, what we're all looking at here is the bottom, sorry, the top of, this piece would have sat on top of what, sorry, rephrase this. Let me see if I can back up. This piece here sat on top of this. So if you turn this piece up, so this was facing straight up in the air, the bottom piece was connected to the stump part. This part was connected to the part that we were just looking at. And what you're looking at here is a lot of decay. I'm sorry, is this a leader or is this the trunk? This is the trunk. So on the right hand side there, you'll see like this flat piece that's kind of funnel shaped. That was where the main leader came off the tree. The, see at the very bottom of the trunk is, you'll see kind of a decay spot, discoloration there. That's where the main leader attached to the tree. But the big takeaway for me here is that this decay went up into those leaders that we were just looking at. And there was not a lot of wood there holding them off again. So there was very, you know, very weak area. It wasn't, again, it wasn't, hadn't reached that critical stage where the decay was so significant that it would be considered a risk tree because it couldn't be mitigated somewhere because we couldn't mitigate it. But there was a lot of decay there. That's dense organic matter with lots of fine root hairs growing in it. So, would it be a good idea for me to share some of these pictures on our social media so that people can see the decay or should I like leave well enough alone? Like, what's the opinion of everyone on that? I've been tossing that back and forth my mind, like what's best for the people in their mind? Yeah. So, you know, you, if you can have, you know, 10 arborists look at a picture and they'll probably give you 10, 10 different assessments of that picture. And you need to have the whole thing in context. So I guess, you know, this presentation is going to be posted on the town website because it's part of your committee meeting. So you can reference that. I like having some narrative there, but I think we could share some photos on the town website. That would be fine. Yeah. How about the picture before this one? If you share that with a link to Alan's presentation on the town website on Facebook and Instagram. Okay. Does that make sense, Alan? It does, yeah. Great. So the picture that we're looking at now, again, is, I believe, yep, this is the stump. So this was the last piece of wood that was cut off of, I believe, the tree. And the arrow is pointing to this discoloration. If you look at the main wood slab there or wood round, you'll see this kind of light, you know, yellow tan wood. That's sort of healthy wood. The darker wood is wood that's, there has been decay. And at the bottom of the picture where the arrow is pointing, it's actually, you know, out towards what generic name is sap wood, which is where, you know, that conductive healthy tissue is transporting nutrients up and down the tree. That's punky wood out there. And that's sort of what's referred to as sap wood decay or sap rot. That is not healthy conductive tissue. It's not doing anything anymore. And it's an indication of poor health of the tree. So the tree is not translocating anymore, either from the leaves or from the roots, you know, back and forth. It's just dead tissue. And that was, this is the side of the tree that kind of fed up to the main leader of the tree, which is possibly a good idea why the main leader of the tree was not, it was declining faster than the rest of the tree. This was, the tree had lost the ability to compartmentalize the decay in this area, and the decay was spreading. So, but again, didn't mean the tree had to be cut down, it was not a risk tree, it just was a sign of poor health and declining health. This is another piece of that section there. So again, you've got these top left-hand corner is sort of the decay barrier there. The tree's defense trying to wall off decay as it's spreading into the wood of the tree. And you can see that it's slowly spreading out from the center. The bottom right-hand corner arrow is showing you where this decay is getting closer and closer to the sap wood of the tree. So pretty soon it was going to, you know, impact the ability of the tree to transport water nutrients up and down the tree. So, and then the middle arrow is just pointing to punky wood that, you know, looks like carpenter ants, posthumous termites have been working in that center of the tree, that leader of the tree, excuse me, not the main trunk. And then further up there was that large leader that was overextended and headed out towards Spring Street parking lot. You know, the crown was pretty healthy. The leaf surface was pretty healthy. With the arrow points through here is, so the center of that is obviously decay. It's punky rotted wood or hollow. And the top right-hand arrow is just pointing to the amount of sound holding wood we have on that branch at that point in the tree. So that's pretty thin. For it to branch that size to be supported. And at the bottom right-hand or left-hand corner, it's pointing to the, you know, wound wood that was essentially growing around the crack in the tree. And that's punky wood. It's not sound wood around there. So that was a not structurally sound component. So the top portion of this branch cut here was under tension because the tree leader went out and the gravies pulling it down. So the top wood there was all under tension. The bottom portion of that, if you could put a line right through the center of that horizontally, the bottom portion of that wood was all under compression from the weight of the branch. And there was a lot of a lot going on there structurally. It was not surprising. It really surprised me how weak this branch was and still holding. Good. It was cabled. So that helped. The cable did something in there. So this is that branch there. This is the part that was cut off from that branch. And again, you'll see this kind of, you know, rot in the center of the tree. There's no structural value to that. At the top left center, sorry, top center of the picture, there is some of that sort of wound wood or tension wood that was leaves. This was the top portion. I'm confused now. I apologize. But what I was trying to point out with this arrow was that it's actually a crack that goes down and it's kind of funnel-shaped. The wood is cracked there. So there's no strength in that portion of the wood. And then at the bottom, the bottom arrow is kind of pointing to another crack that was formed. And this is where I said there is that brown punky wood at the bottom of the last cut. Let's see. This bottom left arrow was the bottom arrow here. So again, there's a crack there that goes almost out to the healthy tissue. So a lot of forces acting on wood that is compromised. And without the cable, I would imagine this branch would have failed. When we cut it, when we, when the linden tree care cut that cable, the whole tree moved significantly. So there was portions of the dead top of the tree actually snapped out and fell to the ground when they released the tension on the cable. And then up in the upper crown, this picture came out terrible and I'm sorry, but there's, there are multiple branches that had a lot of decay in them. And it wasn't until we got them on the ground and cut them, that we realized that they were actually hollow. And that, to me, was an indication of some damage that was done a number of years ago. My thought was possibly the October snowstorm that just stressed a lot of trees, create a lot of kind of micro cracks in the wood of the tree, and over time decay has worked its way through the branch and we see this in a lot of trees around town. So in just rough conclusion, saproth fungi was actively spreading in the tree. Again, not a, not a structural issue, but a health issue of the tree, the state of decline. Decay at the main trunk, branch union was extensive, but again, not had reached that critical threshold yet. And decay in the overextended branches was more extensive than I had been thinking possible there. So again, this is the merry maple, the mini merry maple that is lit now. This is from 2014. So we'll hopefully continue the merry maple history going forward. We close this up. Actually, Alan, can you just hold up? I have just for my notes, if he's bringing it up, give me two seconds. I'm just going to get one more point here. Thank you, Alan. That was very helpful. That was very, very informative. And I think that most community members who see this will get a much better understanding, so I appreciate that. Yes, thank you. I've had a couple of people ask me if anyone has aged the tree. Yes. So I have been trying to count rings on the tree since we took it down. And it's difficult, actually. The rings aren't very obvious. But when the word is wet, it becomes, they actually pop out pretty good. So I have to say that the estimate that came up days before the tree was scheduled to be removed completely blew my guess at the tree being 80 or so years old. It definitely was 160 years old or so. It was one of the earliest norway maples planted in this country, I would say probably, because a norway maple wasn't really in production in the country until like 1860s, I think. So you really couldn't even get them out of nursery. Bennett, you all set with that? Yeah, I'm sorry. Thank you. And from my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, norway maples don't normally live that long. Yeah. I mean, that's my in my experience, definitely with street trees and even park trees. A lot of the norway maples that we've planted around town in the 70s are aging out now. I mean, don't have a lot of healthy norway maples around. And these are trees that aren't on the roadside. They're in parks. But it just makes it all more sad that this old tree had managed to find its happy place to grow, like growing there. It was doing pretty good for a long time. Yeah. And it's really a shame because it means there was 160 some odd years of this discussion not having to happen, which is pretty impressive for a tree that size. Unfortunately, it happens to all of us at some point in time. Shoshani, you still have a hand raised. Yeah, I'll take that down. Yeah. The last thing that I wanted to bring up on the merry maple is that we have all these memories that have been collected. So Claudia at the Chamber of Commerce, I think, said that after so she had the box in which people were submitting their memories at the event, the, you know, pre removal event. And she said that it was so full that she had to remove all of those papers and store them. And then they put it out again at the farmer's market the following weekend or that weekend. And then they also put it back out at the lighting of the mini maple. And so I think we as a committee need to decide what the next steps are on that. I would be happy to go and kind of collect the submissions and see what we're working with and then maybe, you know, propose something to the committee in terms of, you know, whether or not we want to try to display memories or archive them immediately or, you know, kind of open that for a discussion once I see what what we have. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Alan. Sorry. No, I was gonna say we could definitely look at having those scanned electronically so that and then having them, you know, put in the archives at the library or something like that. Maybe a display at the Jones, you know, they sometimes use that center atrium for displays of different organizations or different artwork and keep them in the special collections as well. Yeah, I really like the idea of the display in the atrium that would be really fun, I think. And we could also share some on social media. Yeah. I was like a special edition of the newsletter divided only to select letters. Let's see if some of them are really cool. Yeah. Britt could probably use some help with that. Does anyone want to work on that? Yeah, I'll help with that project. I can give you a hand. Great. Thanks. I can offer up some DPW scanning capacity and we could try scanning these so we don't have to keep, you know, managing the paper product. Great. Thanks. It doesn't go on our budget. All right, should we get back to the agenda? Agenda. There we go. Okay, so Mary Maple is good. Town tree inventory, anything new? The, Nick, the intern from the summer is probably going to start back up in January starting to collect some tree data again. So that'll keep moving forward. I did recently get an updated spreadsheet of all the tree points that we collected over the summer. I kind of have to go through those and kind of check them out. There's some missing information that we have to add. But yeah, moving forward. The other component of that grant was the master plan, management plan, sorry, for the town trees, the tree program. And I've pulled together some major plans from other communities that kind of have a nice format that I think we could follow. So I'm going to start working on that this winter. Okay. Social media update. Yep. I don't have anything additional to report. I put out a little flyer for our last planting that we did. And I think that's it. Nothing new. Okay. Yeah. I think I put a thing about kind of personifying the new Mary Maple about like encouraging people to come out to support her so that she'd have a good debut. And it seemed to work because a lot of people showed up. And it did get picked up by some other groups like Mindy Dom picked it up. And I think the Greenfield tree committee and maybe Northampton. And there's a few people that picked it up. So it got some, oh yeah, Hilltown families got it too. I posted today about the meeting, this meeting, but I'd like you guys to really take that on in a day or two before, or even the same day. But that should be something that regularly goes on both our Facebook and our Instagram account and meeting tonight at 5.30 with the link. So can you guys make sure that happens? Yeah. Great. I need to be able to get the link. I don't know why I didn't get like any sort of email link or anything. And usually, Angela sent something. Well, I think that I deal with this on the newsletter. I think that's the link that we get. You're having difficulty finding and that's a problem for you as a committee member. But the public link is generally always available in the Amherst calendar. So that one's whatever I write the newsletter, I just go to the town calendar and copy paste directly from there. Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, true that. Okay. The town tree tour. Ellen and I are going to get together next week to start working on the brochure for that. So that is finally in process. Second Saturday plantings for next year. We have any more to say on that. We should be looking at places like Brit suggested, thinking about social justice areas and getting a list of places to plant and take care of trees. So let's start doing that in the new year. Yep. Anything else? I just want to comment about that. There was a time, Sarah was encouraging us to put together our own list of places to plant before she stepped down as the chair. And I did that. And I bet some other people did too. So just as a reminder, it's easy for me to just forget stuff like that. But I'll go back somewhere I have a little map that I've populated with good places to plant trees and I'll figure that out. But if you already did some work, this is just a reminder that you did this already. Okay. So let's bring those lists next meeting in January and come up with a good list. Great. Thanks. The History Museum, anything new, Ellen? Nothing new, other than the fact that I'm now in a place where I can put time towards it. So I will be actively moving forward with planning and getting, putting out to bid the actual work itself, the cable and the lightning protection and the pruning of the trees. So that will start taking place. And is there anything we can do now to help work on that? I think you're all set for now. It's just going to be, I'm hoping that in January I'll have more contact with the History Museum and try to figure out what they want to do as far as public outreach and possible fundraising. Is this in regard to the groom tree out front of the History Museum? Yes. And the bride tree will plant at whatever day we do a work day there. A second wife, a third wife, whatever it is. All right. Town budget line item, Bennett, you were going to do something on that? Are you going to reach out to one of the? I was, and I didn't. And I will. Thank you. Anything else? I have a quick update on that, which is that we have a few different folks who I have informed of our work on the town budget line item, different organizations from around town who work within the budget. And they all seem supportive and willing to advocate for it, including the ECAC and the Amherst climate justice lines. Good. All right. Hold on going items. Connections with Stockbridge School. I assume nothing's changed there. So I emailed Dan Cooley at Stockbridge and he basically said, yes, they do things related to trees, but the real tree stuff, you know, focus on the folks in environmental conservation, which is not related to Stockbridge. And so I emailed Christina Byzanson. I don't know how to pronounce her last name. And she got back to me and she said she said she has Allen in her seminar every year. She said she would be happy to advertise meetings and events to her students and in the tree program, including related to plantings and volunteering opportunities. She said the committee or, or, you know, me on behalf of the committee could come and speak to her classes, if that would be useful. She also suggested that Rick Harper's community forestry class in the spring might be an opportunity to connect the work of our committee and what's going on at UMass because they as part of this course conduct a tree inventory and write a management plan. So those were a few suggestions that she had in mind. So I don't know what we as a committee want to do in terms of our response, but that's where that is. Yeah. So my response is first, I think any public city we do toward the plantings and other events would be great. So if we can make sure that she gets notices when we're to have plantings and things, I'd be happy, very happy to speak to her class. I could do with you or myself. So if you want to let her know that she can be in touch with me or I can contact her at that point. Why don't you continue the initial contact and then okay. That'd be great. Sounds good. Okay. Thank you. North Hampton Road. We talked about a little bit. I took pictures and put them into the that file that's on our Google group page. Okay. I'm not sure you mean on our Google Drive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the Google Drive. The town Google Drive thing there. It's cool. Look for that. Yeah. All right. Good. Thanks. Library trees. Anything new, Sarah? All the construction's not happening at the moment, but. Yeah. No, no news on my end. But we're interested in having someone come and talk to the committee. Is that true? Yeah. I think my goal was that one of us follows when they're having meetings, especially construction planning meetings and figure out how to save as many trees as possible and how to do protection around the trees that they do keep before the plans get finalized. So yeah. Okay. We'll keep an eye on that still. Great. All right. Website update. Bennett, you're muted. That was a long way to go for you to know to hear what you already knew, which is I haven't done anything on that. Okay. Just checking in. So thank you. Complete street, state level initiatives. I haven't done anything since. Julian, have you had anything going with that? No. This is one where I'm sorry on the complete streets. I think this is the thing that many aspects of this one aspect of it is this is the thing that I wrote. Remember I wrote up like a two page kind of overview for legislative decision making and it was incomplete because we hadn't started the project yet, but that is something I don't think we've used that at all. It's certainly not final, but Sashana, when you were talking about taking the pictures, I think that one of the things that we were waiting on was to make it more complete with those pictures. So I just wanted to remind you that that's an asset that's probably like 80% done that could be useful. I think we conceived of that as something for like talking to somebody like Mindy Dom about what complete streets should be rather than what it is today. So just to reminder that that's an asset in development. And after at this point. Or they took down the trees. I took pictures and then after they took down trees. That was a big part of it. Can you send that open? I'd like to see it at least. Sure. Yeah. That's good. Significant tree ordinance. Sarah? No update. But definitely some literature review stuff to just keep working on. I would just like to note that we that I've had at least 20 people come up to me with concerns about trees being removed on various private property locations around town, including a lot of folks in my school. And I explained basically here's the significant tree ordinance. Here's what we're drafting. This is the state of things and they were understanding, but I think there's a lot of public push we should harness in favor of this. Yeah, I would add that I've had the same not at that number, but you know, a significant handful of people, especially related to removals on Amherst College property off campus. And I'm supposed to be helping out with that. I got sidetracked by all the Mary Maple stuff this month, but I will be on track. Would a significant tree ordinance have saved the Mary Maple? One critical piece about the significant tree ordinance that we're definitely lacking so far is public support. That's going to be huge. So if you're having all these conversations and you can get people to put their name down somewhere or send you a letter or somehow put into writing. So we have proof, you know, like a paper trail visible support from the community. And then, you know, however, if you want to send it to me and I'll keep a file or something and log it. But if if other people are having a lot of these conversations, that's something we should start to try to harness so that we can just like sign forward. I'll sign their names on a sheet of paper and send it to you. I mean, yeah, I mean, with some sort of statement or something, you know, or, or write a quick little email, I support a significant tree ordinance and Amherst or something. But we should just start to kind of catalog these things and use it to kind of support and getting legislation passed. We could potentially put something in like the Indy or Gazette asking for public support as well. Yeah, I think that's going to be a step a little bit later when we have something a little bit more polished to go public with. But if you're having casual conversations and you want to just like give them our email and have them send a letter of support, anything that we can start to kind of gather in this preliminary stage would be helpful too. That's great. And also you can encourage people to write letters to the editor. Yeah, I feel like a big part of it for our preparation is going to be figuring out like what the actual diameter is that we're talking about. Because I think that's going to make people, some people will probably bulk the idea of like not knowing that we're talking about, you know, actual big trees because they don't want to have like another thing that's like restricting their land use or whatever. But if it's made clear that we're talking about like legitimately significant trees, like we'll have to have like a hard number, I think for that. Yeah. Anything else? Last, oh good. Not on that topic. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead and then we'll go to the solar bylaw group. Well, should I save it for, I didn't know if you were trying to move on to like the end of things or I can save it for committee comments if that is better. No, I said no, why not? Yeah, I just had, I had three thoughts kind of coming out of the whole Mary Maple thing and talking with a lot of members of the community about trees. And the first is that I guess it's a question, is there a process for making sure that we as a committee see all of the statements that come in around a particular tree? So in the case of the Mary Maple, I don't know if it's because I wasn't on the committee earlier on, but I had lots of people say, oh, I sent a letter to the committee or I sent a letter to Paul Bachman. And many of those letters, I never heard a single one of those letters referenced in any of these meetings. So I'm wondering if they went to Paul Bachman, is there even any process that then gets them to us, right? Like as a committee, it seemed like there weren't a lot of people who were, you know, that concerned about the tree, there were a handful, right? And this tree is just an example. But then after the fact, all these people spoke up and said, no, I wrote a letter, I tried to get in touch. But I feel like we didn't, we didn't have a full picture of that information. So I'm wondering if there's there's a process by which or a new process that we can implement that makes sure, makes sure that, you know, there's some kind of communication between the committees and the town manager, you know, I don't, I don't know. So that's my first question or point that I want to make sure is out there. Several of the letters came into the tree committee email, email box and Gmail. And I responded to all those and they're archived in the Gmail account. Okay. But they were never mentioned to the committee. Is that right? I usually mentioned when I heard, you know, like we got two letters about this. Yeah. Okay. I usually do that. I can also send you relevant ones if you're interested. And then some come to me personally and in my chair's report, I always announce what comes into both of those. Yeah. It's not, I'm not worried about the Mary Maple at this point, but I, I think making sure going forward that any letters that come in to the committee email or to individual committee members are brought to the attention of the full committee so that we have a clearer picture of, you know, what the public is feeling about a particular tree. Right. So if, you know, if we know that there are 30 people who across all of us have sent in letters that might change the way the committee is thinking compared to if we think there are two letters that have come in, right? So I'm not sure if this is possible, but in the future, could we have it and I would be happy to do this where if we get any public comments that are explicitly public comments, we forward them to all the committee members. Yeah. I think something like that would be great. And just in, in, you know, this conversation that's happening now, it occurs to me, you know, what if we put a Google form on the website where if people have a comment to make about a specific tree, including a tree hearing, then it goes into there. And then that's something that the full committee is, is made aware of when a comment comes in. But then of course, also making sure that yes, maybe we forward anything that we get as a committee or maybe as individuals on the committee for everyone. I checked the committee email at least twice a day and would be more than happy to compile any comments we get in advance of a tree hearing via email in a Google Doc and share it with all of you. I think that would be helpful. Yeah. I always, I always share generally, I always check before the meeting, and both mine and the committees and send in what I have. And then some people write to Alan and Paul directly. Alan usually responds and tells us, but Paul, yeah, we don't really know what happened. Right. Great. Okay. And then the second is that I think, I think we as a committee need to think about our strategy for getting out the word about tree meetings and hearings. And I know that we're already working on that. But if there's a big, a big hearing or something that we know is going to be big in the community, maybe thinking about the newspapers, you know, I think, I think yes, like more public participation can make things challenging from, you know, for the people who are making decisions, but I think it's really necessary. You know, I just heard so many people with the Mary Maple say like, I didn't know, I didn't know this was happening. I didn't know that the tree was coming down. I didn't know there had been, you know, however many opportunities to engage on this. And so, you know, in some ways, yes, that's on them. But if we can do a better job of making sure that we're getting the word out, I think that would be. I mean, at least for me, there was a lot more publicity after we made our decision. Right. Exactly. After the decisions were made, then beforehand. And I think I share your frustration that beforehand is the better time to do that. Yes. And then my third point, and I'm sorry, I'm taking up so much time on this. My third point or my third issue that I would, you know, want to raise to the committee is, you know, in, in these, these projects, like the, the Town Common Project, it feels like the planning of these projects happens without any representation for the trees in the planning phase. And so then what happens is it becomes the project and the trees get pitted against each other. You know, if we don't cut down these trees, then this project doesn't move forward. Right. And so I know I'm sure there would be some resistance to this from various entities in, in the town government. Right. But, but is there a way for the committee, whether it's just the tree committee or the tree and climate committee or whatever committees to be more engaged in the planning phases of projects that have a significant impact on our town environment. So I would just raise that perhaps as something we come back to later, you know, but so we don't, we don't end up again with these projects that move forward without any environmental considerations, then being pitted against, you know, it's what it's one or the other, because the decisions have already been made or the projects have already been designed. Yeah, these are great ideas. I do want to say that we've come a long way in that regard and we still have a long way to go. When I first joined the committee, the things were already finalized before anything came to us. And now some of the planning where a lot of those places reach out at least to Alan and we hear about it much sooner. But still, it's often too late. So I'm not sure how to go beyond that. But yeah, that is definitely a goal of us. And why don't we put that on the agenda for a future meeting. I think we could spend a chunk of time on that. Great. I'd like to add, can I add something to that too? Yes, of course. Sure. Okay. So I would say that we have come a long way. As far as town projects go and trees that impact public shaped trees, I am much, I am made aware of these projects, you know, much earlier on in the process now. So if a developer is doing a project, they will contact me well in advance usually and say, you know, this is what I want to do. These might be the impacts on the trees. You know, what can we do? And, you know, can we, do you think we could take down these trees or we could do this over here? And now I'll have to be very frank up front with them because they're at the very beginning stages. And I would say, no, I don't think that can, that can happen. You should try to figure out a different way of doing it. And depending upon their project, they may or may not do that. As far as town projects go, generally speaking, I am involved at the very beginning and I bring that information to the committee. So with Mary Maple, you know, we did have like multiple opportunities to look at projects that were planned for the North Common. The initial, you know, design that was done by the consultants on the committee had input on and had a ability to say, no, we don't think, you know, we want to cut down, you know, all the trees or a lot of trees. There's an opportunity there for the committee to, and the public, because it was a public process. But again, we don't, people don't pay attention to the, the shady committee agenda unless they're really concerned. And then, you know, as far as the design that was done now for the common that moving forward, you know, the trees were the environment was the driving factor for the design that we ended up with was how can we preserve the most tree canopy on the common and North Common. And that's what we ended up with. And I'm not necessarily speaking about that project, you know, I think, you know, what I'm thinking forward to is the, all of these, all of the sidewalk money, right, that's come in and, you know, future development projects, how can we just make sure that, you know, those interests are represented early on. It sounds like, yeah, great progress has been made, but, but are there ways for us to institutionalize that input in earlier phases? I think that would be, I think that would be good. I agree. Thank you for those comments. It's great. All right, last, last agenda item and then we can retire. Solar bylaw group, do you have anything, Julian? No updates there. I think I haven't had a meeting in a little while. Okay. Any other comments by the committee or any public who are not here? No? All right, let's adjourn the meeting then. Thank you all. We'll meet again in January. I wish everyone a healthy, tree full new year and yeah, we'll be in touch. Happy holidays. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.