 Hi. I'm making you host. Okay. Are you home yet? No, I'm in Belchtown, so I'm going to. Keep driving and mute my microphone stuff. Okay. And hopefully this will stay connected, but you can let everyone in the meeting and I'll join you as soon as I get home. Okay. Okay. I'm missing a folder. Hello. I'm looking for my folder. First, I will. Let Gina in. Waitful. Yeah. It looks like I have a halo. To say that you don't. The men, my husband, my boys, you're right. You're right. I know. Okay. Hello. Hello. Looking for my folder. It's right next to me. Yeah. Alan is driving home. We got stuck behind a plow truck. So he'll be late, but he did pull over and start the meeting. So we're here. Somebody else has just joined. Yeah, it's pretty awful. I just got in myself. I'm supposed to drive to Boston tonight. So. Oh, I don't know if I do that. Yeah. Is everyone know Gina? Yes. You've never been an official member, but you've come to a lot of our things. Right. I can't, I come when I can't, but you're right. I'm not an official member. We have a quorum, but let's wait a couple more minutes. As Julian. And it will you take minutes. Yep. Thank you. There he is. And. So Brit and Shoshana. I don't know what you're looking for, but we won't wait too long. The Julian and for Sarah, I mentioned that Alan's driving home from the. Tree wardens gathering. And he got stuck behind a plow. So he's a little late, but. He'll be here as soon as he can. Julian, do you have the agenda? Just in the regular. Form that you send, but it comes up on my computer. Pretty weird. It comes up in like the tax edit things. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I would present like the normal agenda. If I presented. Ellen or Sarah, can you. Share the agenda. You're muted, Ellen. Sorry. Can I ask that we don't do that all the time? Because then we can't see each other. Okay. Well, you can, you can shrink it down. But all right. Let me call it up myself. All right. So announcements and public comments. Gina, do you have any public comments? Okay. And then make sure you get Gina's last name too. Already there, buddy. All right. Good. All right. So let's do hours while waiting for people to come. Bennett. To. Say three, say four. Okay. Ellen. I'm trying to remember. Did we have. Any plantings in November. Or December. December we did. We have the. Nothing in. Okay. So probably just two. Okay. Julian. Probably six. Sarah. Two. And I probably am up to 10. And gene able. Your hours too. Just for being here. All right. So approval of the December minutes. And approval of the. Minutes that Bennett took from the. Insight visit. I approve the minutes from our last meeting. Second. We don't need seconds, but. Yeah. We try to find it just so I can see. Where'd it go? I had it. I just lost it. There it is. Okay. I will. Mounted on the official. I did already. Okay. Yeah. So good. All right. So it's a, do we approve? Which one are we approving first? Made the. Motion to do the. December minutes first, I think. Lost. I have too many screens open now. I can't find the. Hold on. Where are you guys? Oh, there you are. Okay. So which one first? I'm sorry. December minutes. Okay. They approved. Any corrections or thumbs up? Yeah. Okay. Approved. And the minutes from the site visit January 5th. I'm going to abstain. I wasn't there. Me too. Okay. We did have a quorum. All right. And that's that. And what's next on the agenda? No, I have to find it again. It's why I like someone else sharing it. Oh, it's right in front of me. Okay. Committee reports chairs report. And we'll just go through the stuff. We'll wait on the. Site visit discussion until Alan gets here. Okay. So yeah, there's the mass tree ones and forest association. Statewide conference today. I would have liked to have gone, but I couldn't. Yeah. I'm sorry. And also I found out about it too late to let you guys know about it. I spoke again, I got emails. I traded emails with Mindy Dawn. About the money that she calls the earmarks, which she can just grab some money from the state budget to fund us for things. And she said, we can use that money for. Like hiring people to do the tree inventory. But it's not considered permanent money. It's just that year. If there's extra money, we can use that money. So. We talked about Alan about that, but she needs to hear by. Well, pretty soon by the end of this month. If we want to do that. And then it's voted on in. April at the state house. And she has extra money this year because the state has like some sort of budget deficit. Yeah, she usually has some money available for her. So I'll wait until she comes. I'm an Anna Carter from Stanley street. There's a housing development there. She wants to plant some memorial trees and wants us to provide the trees. I thought she was going to come to the meeting. Maybe she will. She showed up at the site. But we were, we couldn't really talk about that then. So I'll wait till she comes. We did a planting there some years ago and the whole neighborhood was not in the setback. So it was okay. And. Yeah, they all came out and help. They brought us good refreshments. It was a lovely planting day. And then the other thing is this woman Pat from Applewood. Wants us to replace trees. Alan knows about this. They're cutting down. Ash trees along. The drive through Applewood. And that's. I'm not sure if that's public or private. I think it's public. It's public. And I don't know if you're going to hear from Alan about that. So hopefully he'll be here for those. Um, The site visit we did. And the climate for it. Julien, you sent the email to me and Bennett to put it in the newsletter that think about. Yes. Climate. Climate forestry committee's report. And I think I'd be good if we wrote a letter to the editor, based on that. Yeah. flagged down. I also would like to thank Bennett for writing the other letter to the editor that I just saw in the Gazette today. That was written a while ago, right? Yeah, but it was just published, I think today or yesterday. Oh, oh, this is a thank you letter. Yeah. Okay, I hadn't seen that. Okay. Good. Julian, do you want to write the Sure, I'd be open to it. Absolutely. We could work on it together sometime or whatever. Well, I'm going to be gone for two weeks. So, yeah, there's in the Gazette, you can just read the article and yeah, talk about how our committee supports protecting forests, right? Few paragraphs type thing. What's that? A few paragraphs sort of like what Bennett? Yeah, yeah, something short, I'll let it to the editor. I think shorter ones are read more often. Yeah, I would tend to agree. Sounds good. Yeah, good. And we're not going to have time to discuss it as a committee and do it for the whole committee. So just say Julian Hines, you know, vice chair of the Shakespeare Committee. Good. All right, and that's all I have for the chairs report. Julian, do you have something? I know I sort of linked all I had to say in to that because we covered the letter, the idea of the letter and editorial. So I think that is all I was going to write up. OK, Henry, for the for the minutes, the what's the name of the organization that's probably asking us to plant trees on Stanley Street? Yeah, let me see if I can find the email. Real quick, I think it might be the Misty Meadows homeowner. Misty Meadows. That's it. Misty Meadows. Homeowner. Misty Meadows. Neighborhood Association. OK, great. Thank you. And let me see if I can find the other one, too. Oops. Several dying ash trees. OK, I don't see more details. Yeah, OK, I didn't find more information. Are you good? Good. I'm great. Yeah. OK, Sarah and Rain. You have a report, either of you. Yep, the budget is nine thousand three hundred fifty five dollars and twenty nine cents, which reflects no change. Going all the way back to September twenty third or September twenty three twenty twenty three, which is the last time you bought trees. We do have a forty eight dollar encumbrance. I'm not sure what that's for. And neither are the accounting office down at Town Hall. But they're going to look into it for us because we also had a forty eight dollar encumbrance. That rolled over in December twenty twenty two. So I don't know if this is just some old note or something on our account that's been rolling over every year. They make note when our, you know, when the year changes that we have this forty eight dollar encumbrance. But the accounting office is going to look into it and get back to me. So I'll follow up. Good, thank you. OK, do you want to go have more data? Next social media report. Social media. We have had pretty much consistent follower viewership, all that sort of stuff. I posted something on the story for the meeting and that is it. What's Brit reminded me to do full posts for like workdays in that. So if we do end up doing a work day in January, although I think it's going to be covered by snow. So I'll put a full post up for that. OK, so we should ask Alan that. Just going to flag the things to ask Alan about. OK, good, thanks. All right. Plans for January 13th. Should we do a work day? I'm going to be in Mexico, so I'm not going to be there. It seems, yeah, it seems kind of unlikely we'll be able to do much. I mean, I would love to, but honestly, I think December probably would have been the better time seeing that there's an hour for the snow on the ground. Right. So should we cancel? You know, I mean, we could still do pruning, but. Yeah, I don't want to trudge through all the snow and snow banks. OK, so let's cancel that and get that in the newsletter. Well, do you want to post that on. Insta Instagram. Yeah, good. I'll post it on Facebook if I don't get to show it to do it. It was pretty iffy from the beginning, so yeah. And how about ideas for planting through the rest of the year? I know we have on the agenda so far doing the you're putting the trees in the nursery. And there was one more place we were going to plant. I don't remember. It should be in some of our past minutes. I think we have suggestions of places we wanted to. And then I think we even decided on a few. Yeah, well, another Alan question. OK, here he is. Hello, thanks for starting the meeting here. Yeah, we fired you. Get my second Saturday's back every now and then. We decided to cancel this Saturday. Oh, OK. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be some kind of precipitation. I think Saturday. Yeah, and with the snow on the ground and everything. Yeah. Yeah, but we were talking about future planting locations. And we couldn't remember any of that. We talked about except doing the nursery. Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to prepare. Yeah, seems like this always happens. There are there are a number of good locations. I've got a good list of streets. North Prospect is one desperate knee of trees or losing all their sugar maple trees downtown behind CVS kind of then comes out over onto Amity Street. That's a good neighborhood. And I had a good list going of locations. So let's do that next month. We'll we'll talk about that more. OK, anything else on this? So let's back up on Alan. Mindy Dom said she can get airmark money and we need to let her know by the end of the month. And one of the things we can use it for would be to hire people for the tree inventory. So I would need to make her a proposal. I would need to know from you what, you know, what that would entail, how much if we can do that this year. Yeah, I'd have to crunch some numbers. Um, this week, try to get something to you. OK, see what that would cost. OK, so Alan will get me some numbers and I'll make a proposal to her based on that. Yeah. OK. Then Stanley Street. Did you get to look at that? Misty Meadows. Oh, I'm very familiar with it. I'm not sure where, particularly, they want to put the memorial trees. I mean, it's durable. We do set back plantings all the time. Are we trying to replace some of the trees that didn't make it from the initial planting? I'm not sure what the. But the whole request is there. So we'll have to wait until Anacarta comes to the meeting. OK, and then we heard from pets, Svetaka, an Applewood area. Is that public or private, those streets? Well, the town owns it's I'm still a little unclear and I need to have a site visit with her just to find out. So. Apple, the, you know, Applewood. Company, their owns, there's a lot of land owned on both sides of the road by the whole development. It's in the town right away. Essentially, it's from just beyond the sidewalk across the street to the row of trees as that is planted on the kind of opposite side of the road from Applewood. OK. So in the email she sent, it sounds like there are trees that are not in the grass belt, but on the backside of the sidewalk. So I would need to check with. Her to find out which trees she's talking about. OK. But I mean, the only place, the conversation we had last time and I had. Included with the in the email exchange was property manager was that. The only place to plant trees is in the setback there. So the grass belt is insufficient and loaded with utilities. And then a lot of the lawn area just beyond the grass just beyond the sidewalk is also full of utilities. So they they just put it all over the place. So you've got your gas, you have power, and you have a phone and cable and irrigation all on that backside. So doable. There's lots of lawn there. That's all going to be set back. OK, so we'll wait to hear from you, but that's a possible planting for next year also. Yes. OK, good. Then we didn't do the site as yet. Hey, can I jump in, Henry? It's Gina. Of course. What are memorial trees? You all just mentioned memorial trees. Is that when a tree dies and you put in another one? What's no, this is a number of members of their community who died. Oh, OK, sorry. I that sounding like a bit glib, but I didn't know what memorial trees we told them we don't do plaques. We used to, but it's just way too complicated with maintenance and the cost of it and everything else. OK, thank you. You're welcome. Yeah, steps. Say something anytime you have something to say. Yeah. All right. So then the last thing we had for Alan is the site visit. Do you want to discuss the site visit now? Yes. Does the. Committee want to make a recommendation that we will propose removal of those two trees for the tree warden and the planning board for the January 17th tree here. Well, we have to come up with a motion. Let's have a discussion. Then it was there. And you, Ellen and Sarah weren't there, but you can say something if you know the trees. Did you get to look at them at all? I did. I I do know those trees. OK, I was there as well. And yeah, I know. Yeah. OK. So you have something to say about them? No, I have my opinion made up, which is that I would prefer if we could get rid of the ash tree and continue allowing the sugar or the silver maple, excuse me, to continue growing in its place and maybe rearrange the parking lot a little. Bennett, do you have an opinion about that? You're muted. Sorry. Yeah. So if it feels like a familiar predicament to me in that, you know, we've got these two trees, one of which is not in great health and is probably has to go anyway. The other tree, you know, it struck me that when Alan said, you know, we asked what's the health of the tree? Alan said it's an excellent health and it looks like it's an excellent health. And I hate to get rid of that tree at the same time. You know, I feel I guess the predicament that I mentioned is that when we we've we've asked one of the questions, I think that that Julian asked in our visit was to Alan was, well, have you have we investigated different options here and Alan, as I recall, had discussed, you know, are there other options with the I don't know if it's the construction firm or the architect or both. And as I recall, was told, no, there really isn't a great option here that would preserve that tree. And so based on that, you know, I'm I hate it, but I think that that project is one that is, you know, the town is voted on several times. It's an important one. And I don't want to stand in the way of that with the tree. So if I had to vote on it today, I would say we should allow them to remove that tree, which I hate. But I don't know any other way to, you know, barring any information that I don't have. I don't know how we would it sounds like there isn't really an option. So and that's the thing that just says an aside, that's the thing that I don't, you know, like I rely on Alan to say, well, I've talked to the architects and they've shared their ideas and and they say we can't do it without removing that tree. And that's where I get stuck, which isn't to say that. I mean, and I believe that I don't have the insight to or the knowledge to really push back or to say, well, there is another way. So anyway, that's rough stuff. But that's those are my the sum of my thoughts on those two trees. Yeah, I share both of those thoughts. It's also being a scenic road. It seems like they should have tried even harder to protect that tree. I don't know how I would vote on this, but we do have to take a vote and I guess we could not vote. But I think we should give Alan some recommendation. Do you give me a little blurb of the project? So I'm familiar with the trees, but the project is a parking expansion. Happy to, if you want to. Is that OK, Henry? Yes. So. The there's two phases to the project. This is phase one, which is going to be closing down the current entrance to Fort River School. And that's going to become a construction entrance and that kind of the demolition of the existing infrastructure. Essentially from the if you do a straight line from the parking lot past the. It would be the southern wall of the school straight back to the eastern border of the property. So that where the new school is going, that whole area there is going to become it's going to get graded leveled all the current infrastructure removed and they're going to start building the school. So to do that, they have to create a temporary entrance where the exit is right now. So they're going to install wide in the road, which is why the tree would be removed to install the entrance. So all the buses and parents. Non construction equipment vehicles would be entering and exiting from that new expanded exit, existing exit of the school. So that's going to be for two years. Then after the school is built and they demolish the existing school, there's going to be the current entrance to the school will become the entrance for the school buses only. And then the new driveway will become the entrance and exit for parents and other school vehicle traffic. At that point, when they go to build the permanent road, they actually move it even further over towards the ashtray. So they're expanding a road now for temporary entrance. And then when it's all done and the parking lots are realigned, they're going to put in a new entrance exit for parents and non school bus traffic. I see. And is the future entrance two years from now going to impact existing trees? Are we going to have another hearing for that? There are no trees left in the public way along that section of roads, those the only two trees in the public way. There is the line of trees adjacent to so to be just just to the south of the ashtray getting back towards Fort River, that property line by the house. There are some trees there that may have to be pruned or removed if they're in danger of falling, because there's a number of ashtrees in that belt there, which that grass. Um, tree line that. Probably should be cleaned up and worked on before the driveways put in. OK. Alan, when you say widening the road, do you mean Southeast Street or widening the driveway? Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, so it is the driveway, not the road. Thank you. Thank you for correcting me. Question. Just so we're clear as a committee, hypothetically, if, say, we vote to that we recommend preserving the Silver Maple Tree and Alan ends up making that decision, would we then be left in a predicament where that would hold up the school project? Or would that just push the designers to go back to the drawing board and change the way the driveway and parking lot is designed? Because I don't want to go against the school project for this tree, but if we change the driveway and parking lot, that feels like it'd be a neck gain for me. Good question. So this is a joint hearing. So the planning board and the tree warden all you know, vote on whether to allow or not the removal of the trees is often a lot of discussion with the planning board around, you know, options and things to do, possible change. So, you know, that would be, you know, the decision isn't just mine. It's it's it's a joint decision. So it's, you know, could they could the decision result in the designers looking back and saying, gee, can we move this road over? Maybe. I'm not sure. I don't know the whole scope of it. So it's possible. I don't know, but I can't really answer the question. Got it. No problem in it. But it wouldn't put a pin in the entire school project. I don't think so. OK, good, good, good. Great. Thank you. So if one person opposes this tree at the hearing or in writing beforehand, then it goes to the town manager anyway. Correct. OK. So I have one question that is the maple tree in danger only because of the widening of the temporary road or is the permanent road permanent driveway going to affect it as well? Yes. So the temporary road is definitely going to impact it 100 percent, and the permanent road would also end up in you know, we lost on the tree. So it's I think it's going to fall a good portion of it will fall within the construction project of the new permanent driveway. Sorry. But let me look at the plan. Actually, I'm not sure they don't really show the permanent driveway on the plan. They just show the temporary one. So I'm just speaking from what someone has tried to describe to me as the location of the permanent road. Driveway, excuse me. Are there any tree replacements in the public right of way? I don't see any in the plans. Well, how about a proposal, something like I'm not proposing this yet, but thinking we oppose the removal? No, I won't say that. The Shade Tree Committee requests that other possible driveway designs, you know, be formed that would protect that silver maple tree if possible. I would agree with that. Anyone else? I agree with that. I also would say that it's best practices for any new construction to include trees in the public right of way, especially in an area that's a public service like a school and a teaching environment. So whether or not trees get taken down, I think they should be putting street trees in for a new construction. I would like to add just to clarify that the plans that I have in front of me are, you know, they're not really a landscape plan, you know, future landscape plan. It's just it's the layout of the school, the existing school and the proposed new school location and the proposed new driveway. So it doesn't go into landscape design, the new landscape design features. So there may be trees there. I haven't seen it yet. OK, good to know. I still think it's worth saying that now when we have our chance to give feedback. It would also save time, because I know in these municipal big building projects, every time there's a back and forth and they used to take it back to the drawing board, it can add thousands of dollars and months to your plan timeline. So I think just setting the expectation that there should be street trees included, whether or not we're seeing them at this stage is good, because then maybe it just saves a back and forth later down down the road. But thanks for for letting us know, Alan, it's that's not in the plan set for review. OK, the other option we could say is we weren't given enough information about. You know, whether we support the removal of the tree, that's another option we could say. I feel like we should make a recommendation overall. I mean, it's not up to us. It's up to the planning board. But and yeah, and Alan and the town manager, if it goes that way. But I would hesitate to just not put our voice in it at all. OK, I'll go back to my first. Proposal, so I'll propose that we accept the removal of the ash tree because it has emerald ash borer. But we would like other designs to be considered before the removal of the silver maple tree. Of the designs for the driveway, OK. I support that, especially because it's a silver maple and maples in general are struggling in the current climate. Changes, so removing one that's in excellent condition in the public right of way without looking hard at other options. Doesn't seem like the way to go, so I agree. So let's let's amend that then to say we support the removal of the ash, but we'd like other designs for the driveway to be considered before removing a healthy silver maple tree at a time when maples are threatened by climate change and this one is healthy. Yeah, that sounds great. OK, all in favor. I think that's even stronger. Yeah, all in favor. OK, so it's unanimous. That's our recommendation, and it would be great if at least one of us maybe more can attend the hearing on the 15th. It's the 15th, right, Alan? Next Wednesday. Yes. Is that also at five thirty? Five thirty five, I think it was. 15th would be Monday, is it? I'm pretty sure it's the 17th. 17th Wednesday. OK, yeah. Scenic Road. Oh, it's at six. Six thirty five. It's a meeting I sent Henry the link with all the information for the zoom meeting and for the all the designs and plans of the planning department inserted the link where all the documents for the school project is located. So if anybody from the committee wants to dive deeper into the maybe proposed tree planting, you know, landscape plans and see what's going on, you can see it online. Great. You have you said you sent Henry that link? Yeah, I'll forward it to everyone. Great. Thank you. I I can try to be on the meeting on the 17th. I'm I'm pretty sure I can come to that meeting online. So you guys stick up for a tree. Good. All right. Do you need anything else, Alan? If you just want to send that to so it's going to be made towards the to the planning board and the tree warden. I just want to make sure the planning board gets a copy of that as well. Before the 17th. Do you want to write that up and send that? Bennett or, you know, you're muted, though. That's my deal. Sure. What I have currently says we propose we accept the removal of the Astrid due to past problems, but would like other designs to be considered to avoid the removal of healthy silver maple tree at a time when these maple trees are threatened. Is that what's wrong with that? That's right to me. Yeah. OK, great. Thank you. You'll send that to Alan and the planning board. And I think we're done with that until the meeting happens. So this is a this is a point of do I send to I send to both Alan and the planning board at the same time as I have a ghost? Yes. OK, great. And then Sarah and and so you want to introduce yourself and sure, sure. My name is Anna Carter. I live at 15 Tamarack Drive in Amherst in the Misty Meadows Neighborhood Association neighborhood, which consists of about 32 residents, I believe. That might not be totally correct. But we do have annual meetings. We pay taxes. We have that the neighborhood was developed, I think, around 1987. I moved there in 1996. And we have an annual meeting and the taxes that we pay. Pay for we pay taxes on the common land. And we also everyone pays an annual fee, which covers the taxes and insurance and lawn mowing. I forget the year, but I organized a tree planting with the. With the. Tree committee, I'm sorry. What's the name of your group again? The Amherst Amherst Public Sheet. The Amherst Public Sheet. Sorry. No problem. And it was a wonderful experience. You you brought many trees to plant. Yes, can you can you hear me? Yeah, it looks like Henry's breaking up a little, but we can hear you. OK, I saw I thought Henry froze a second ago. Yeah, go ahead with what you're saying. So anyway, we do have elected board members. And we have a president, vice president, secretary and treasurer who handle the very small amount of of work we have to do just to keep the organization going, the association. And a few years back, we had requested that the Shea Tree Committee help us by bringing trees and planting trees along the border of one of our common land. Now, our largest common land, which gets mowed, is across a street from the Kiwanis Park encircled by Stanley Street, which Stanley Street goes from Route nine and circles over to Southeast Street. So there's a fairly large block of mostly bare land that gets mowed. But on the edges, there's some trees and some of the trees that the Shea Tree Committee brought have died. But some of them are are live and doing well. They were quite small to start with. And I think it's about three or four years that they a year ago that they were planted. Anyway, it was a wonderful experience because the Shea Tree Committee said, yes, we'll be happy to bring trees, but we'd like your neighborhood to help plant them. And please, after the planting, we hope that you have a potluck lunch, which ended up being a delightful community building experience. So that was a very good experience, because mainly that that neighborhood, except frequently, you may have heard about the pickleball issue. We've that's pulled us together. And the other issue that pulled us together, that name, all my neighbors and I were when the town wanted to put the public works behind the misty meadows neighborhood. And there was huge amount of objection to that. And so far that that's not happening, we're told. But anyway, it did bond our community together. And I'm very happy for anything that would bond the community together. Now, the reason I'm talking to now is because I agreed to be a representative of the community. We've had two presidents, past presidents who passed away and the family members in the whole neighborhood would like it very much if the Shade Tree Committee could bring again, two trees that we will probably make our own plaques of some sort to acknowledge in a memorial to these two past presidents who served us very well. And we did promise we'll have kind of a celebratory memorial service at the planting of these trees, which you would all be invited to. So that's why I'm speaking to you today at that with that request. And do you have locations? Would it be close to the road or? I'm going to I mean, I don't expect this to happen too soon. And I'm going to go back to the to the group to the neighborhood to ask for specific locations. But what's been indicated to me so far is, again, along the edge of Stanley Street, probably coming from Route 9 before the road bends to head towards Southeast Street. And again, we can look closely. We will let we will identify two spots before you come. And there was a special request. I don't know if we can be particular, but one of the wife of one of our the widow of one of our former presidents has wondered if one of the trees could be a dogwood tree. So I don't know if we can be picky about which tree. But anyway, so we will identify as soon as if you approve it, as soon as you let us know, we will come up with some specific locations, but it will be along the border. Because we have it mowed and having two trees in the middle would be an obstacle to the mower. And I guess people thought they would be more appreciated and and they would be viewed more if they were along the edge next to the road. That's that's as specific as I can be right now. Right. Thank you. Committee members, Alan comments. Like a comment. So, I mean, you know, we're obviously trying to plant large trees. We want things to be large shade trees, provide shade to our roads. And we'd like to plant trees as close to public way as possible so that the trees shade those roads. So if we if we plant something, we could pick one of the locations that where the trees failed to grow. That would probably be fine. Yeah. I mean, I noticed that it would be nice. You know, so if we have the community plants, then it would be the responsibility of the Association to maintain them and keep them watered. The most number of the trees that didn't make it. They suffered from some sort of landscaper disease. It's called in the industry. Lawn mower and string trimmer damage to the trunks. Oh, really? That would be one of the things that we always want to continue to educate the public that lawn mowers and string tremors kill most of our newly planted trees. So are you saying because you inspected the trees that you could see damage because some of them show like disease of some sort? A lot of that decays as a result of trees being the cambium of tree being killed. And then we start seeing fungi growing on the upper branches and things as the tree dies slowly. So. OK, all right. Well, we'll definitely make a note of that to be more careful for our lawn mower. We hire somebody to come and I don't know how much we've spoke to that person to be more careful, but well. Would the Missy Meadow Association be capable of providing water to those trees, you know, two times a week during the summertime and. And, you know, follow up care for two to three years of follow up care. Um, wow, that I can't I can't speak to that. I don't know. There's no water source nearby that I know of. So it would be carrying buckets, I suppose, and let you have a tip as to how we could. I mean, any tips for caregiving would be very good. I just I just want to make a point that if we if the the committee slash town, you know, plants, trees and as memorial trees that you're requesting that you have in place a a maintenance plan to keep those trees alive in the setback. OK, I will bring that back to the neighborhood and ask how committed people are to watering, did you say twice a week during the summertime if it's not raining, if we're not getting, you know, having to rain a week, you're going to want to probably water twice a week. OK, I know that you did bring over a pile of mulch, which we did help and put around all the trees. We organized and did that. And if you can give any more tips for maintenance, that would be appreciated. And I find out if we can get commitment to water trees. May I just add also manual weeding around the trees and just even like tilling up, not with a rototiller, but like with your hands or rake, some of that mulch throughout the summer, maybe two or three times throughout the summer can help at least delineate it for the lawnmower crews to not strike the tree. But the Association was interested in doing that maintenance. I think that would be great. And also you can just like little fences or things like that to go around the trees that can help prevent them that are like two feet tall. So those would be my two suggestions for maintenance, possibly for the Association. My other question was, am I mistaken that the Association collects dues as part of from their from the homeowners or whoever? Yes. OK. So I was just wondering for two reasons, a, if we're going to be putting them in the public way, obviously, I think that would be fair for the town to cover. But if they're going to be set back on the Association's property, I think it would be I think we should at least consider having the Association pay for or at least assist with the purchase of the trees that we plant there. We provide the labor, the the work from the town to come out and give that expertise from Alan and the truck coming out and all that. So if the Association is interested in paying, I think that would be great. We also try to prioritize trees that are within the public way. But do consider set back plantings. And I'd also like it if we try as best as possible to commit to when not commit, but like consider or have some deference to when there is a situation where we do a setback planting, are we providing a tree for someone who could afford that tree? Or are we providing a tree for someone who might otherwise not be able to put a tree there because they can't afford the two three four hundred dollars to put a tree there. So I think that's something that we should also consider when we're doing setback plantings in this situation. So I would that's where I sort of stand on this. All right. What I'd like to add to the information is that this neighborhood is partly it was a joint town of Amherst and Department of Housing and Community Development, the State Department of Housing and Community Development that actually developed Mr. Meadows neighborhood and it's a mixed income. There are I don't several. I mean, four or five, four. I think affordable housing units in the neighborhood as well. So I just wanted to point that out so you can understand that the town of Amherst is partly I guess owns or at least has. I don't I don't know the terminology to use. But anyway, it was it was developed with the town of Amherst. In fact, all of us who have a rider on our mortgages or on our on our deeds have to pay back a certain percentage of discounts that we may have gotten. We have to pay it back to the town if we sell the homes. So there is it is not your ordinary. It's not a private. No, I understand. But they do have like the the Association has a bank account in a balance that it could theoretically if it chose to contribute to this project that would then allow the town to spend that money to plant trees. Well, I could go back to the treasurer, but it's sometimes it gets very close. So it's not like we're. Yeah, no, I understand. Yeah, I mean, our annual fee is has gone up to one hundred and twenty five dollars annually, but we are responsible for everything in our property, including everything. It's not like a normal condo kind of situation where the landscaping is covered or the snow plowing is covered, or if your heat breaks, we have to pay for everything about it in our for our particular land and so on. If I can say something, I think since it's only two trees, we could we could afford to do it. I think more important is the maintenance and watering of the trees. And then, you know, the location, so I think you get back to us with the location. I mean, I'm not speaking. I'm speaking for myself, but I think the committee would. And maybe we can combine it with along the other side of Stanley Street, you know, by the park and make that one of our plantings. Thank you, Henry. I. I am actually afraid that if I go back and say four or five hundred dollars per tree, that the neighborhood would vote not to do it at all. So I can't I can't speak for them until I go back. But I I would yeah, I that's my my take on what would happen if I took that information back. So I appreciate your comment, Henry, about maybe you can afford it. So the discussion of this item. All right, so what should we do? Should we just wait to hear back from you about and for Alan to look at the location? I'm also when when you think it's a good planting time and and when by what time do you need to know the location? Well, sooner or the better. But I don't know which, you know, if we do that planting, we could just do it as a, you know, a couple of people from the committee could go and help you plant and Alan would drop off the mulch and trees or we would do it as part of your planting and then it would have to depend on when that's going to be. So. Also, I like Alan's idea to replace the dead trees with the new trees. So I will find out which ones the neighborhood wants to have replaced. But I'm pretty sure they will go along with that as well, because we don't really like the dead trees there. Would that mean the removal of the dead trees? We would get help with that or? So the most trees were all in the setback. So the agreement we had with the Association was that you know, town would help maintain the trees for the first three years. Then after that, they're your trees. You're free to do with them as you please. So any times the Association wants to take out those dead trees, they can they can take them out. So I don't think we have any landscapers. Do you think like the thought of me going out with my shovel and digging up the trees, would that be too hard for me or for any of us? I doubt it. Like there's probably not much root left that probably just fall over if you pull down. All right, we can give it a try. OK. And the other thing is we don't plant exactly on that same spot. You can leave the roots in just. I see if we just a saw and cut them down. Yeah. OK. All right. Well, thank you. So get back to us. We'll meet again next month and there's still plenty of time before any planting plans are going to happen. So I'm also just out of curiosity. Do we generally write up like a maintenance agreement with these type of things? Or do we have any precedent around that? Or is it more of just a simple like, hey, could you please do blah, blah, blah? Because I'm not suggesting that this would happen. I think you guys generally do a good job with your maintenance. But sometimes we have situations where a volunteer would agree to do something or whatever. And then that gets pushed back to the town public works to do. Well, I don't think the town of public works takes any notice of of how we maintain that spot, to tell you the truth. Yeah, I noticed every time I drive by. So I'm not talking about you. I thought you were talking about I am DPW. So all right. So you notice. Yeah. You notice. All right. Well, you said you thought we were doing OK, maintaining, except for those dead trees. Correct. OK, thank you. But Julian, you bring up an idea that maybe the committee should have a guide, not a guideline, but just advice on planting and keeping and maintaining trees. I think that's a great idea, because I don't think we talked about. I mean, I wasn't that clear on that we had to water twice a week or anything like that. So we will I will definitely bring that to the neighborhood as criteria. But any instruction would be very helpful. And maybe somebody will step up and say, oh, I'd love to, you know, head up that committee. So I wrote up a little flyer that we used as a handout for one of our Arbor Day distributions that had some tree care maintenance on it. So we could use that as a starting point if we did want to develop some sort of memo or handout for people receiving setback plantings. And since it's come up, I'll just offer another opinion about priority plantings for, you know, giving for people who request trees or setback plantings. I think because we're a town committee, serving the entire town is a good way to kind of frame it. And I like your sentiment, like I understand your rationale, Julian, about wanting to prioritize low income communities. But other than on a case by case basis of the committee valuing or even potentially proposing or prioritizing projects in social justice, environmental justice neighborhoods, I think we should keep it open and free to anybody in the town. I mean, there's we're not going to go through the process of like requiring people to submit W twos or income checks or anything like that. So it's an honor system anyway. And we're a town committee that serves the whole town. So I think just letting it if it's a service we offer, we offer it to everyone and we can prioritize doing plantings and projects in environmental justice neighborhoods, but I don't think having any sort of qualification makes sense for a town committee like us. OK, I think we need to move on. Thank you, Anna, for coming. Thank you very much. We really appreciate the the tree committee. Thank you. If you want to come back to our next meeting with more information and send me or through the even the tree committee web email information on the locations, maybe stake them out and I could go look at them or Julian. All right, we'll do and I will. Do you have the date for your next meeting next month? It's always the second Tuesday of the month. All right, I'll put it on my calendar to attend. Thank you. Is it always at the time five thirty? Yes. All right. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. Nice to meet you. All right, shall we move on? Arbor Day plans, I wrote on the agenda, something big like maybe we should be thinking of something creative to do this Arbor Day and since it's January, I figure we have a few months to come up with something. So we don't have to discuss it now unless someone has an idea. But I'm going to keep that on the agenda and I'd really like us to do a little more next month, next year, next this year. Any comment or should we move on? But just we did talk about last time, last week, we did discuss briefly ideas for speakers, talk about trees and do another kind of lunch hour speaker event. So and I have written down somewhere there was a recommendation of somebody. Yeah, I forget to find his name. Doug Ptolemy was recommended. Do you have contact information for that person? I could probably find it. OK, I'll send you contact information of him. Good. All right. Town tree inventory. So again, if you send me information, I'll try to get your mark money to help that get moving. OK. Is there a formal application process for the remark money or how exactly is it received? Let me see if I can get her email. There it is. She says you need to think about submitting a request to me for an amount and in that describe the purpose and share why this is important and or why what it needed is meeting. OK, awesome. Great. That's simpler than I thought. That's a pretty cool program. OK, so next UMass interns. It's not here, so I don't think we can do anything with that. Mary Maple Table. Analyzing the library loan. I think Britt was doing that. And Ellen, when you were going to do a tag on it, so. We'll table that. It's getting. Getting to be an old item, but. Urban Forest Management Plan. No update. No update. OK. Can we get an update soon? It's a new year, so I hope to dive into it. Hopefully this month. Good OK. Environmental justice neighborhood planting. Sophie is disappeared. We don't I tried finding a contact for her and I couldn't. We didn't have her last name, so. Maybe Britt knows how to reach her. Not sure. We'll table that. Website update, Bennett, anything on that? Bennett, I presume he's here taking notes. Maybe you're still muted. I'm double muted. Sorry. The answer is no. OK, I think what really needs to happen is the request. A tree page needs to be updated and have the thing we just wrote up about individual tree requests put on it. So rather than change the whole website, maybe you can just do that at some point. Yes. Yep, thank you. Some movement on that. But we put something about maintenance in that so people understand they're taking on something as well. I think that's a great idea. We have we don't have maintenance instructions, but I think we do have. I have to pull it up, but. Maybe a link to something that could teach people about it, et cetera. That way we're not like folks, know what they're asking for, so to speak, and what comes along with it. And I can help with some of that language. I have a document somewhere from that Arbor Day flyer that I can use to start with and develop some maintenance points. That's awesome. Well, if you can work on that and Ellen, if you can find something you said you had in your files and send that either to Bennett or the whole group. It's just the tree request policy that we did. Do you have that Bennett or do you need it? I have it. OK, thank you. Oh, it just says owners are responsible for future watering and care of any planted trees. Donations to help fund the purchase of new trees are appreciated, but not required. Sounds good. So actually the misty meadows thing would qualify under that. Yeah, yeah, that's great. We do have the sentence, the committee prioritizes large shade trees and environmental justice zones whenever feasible. Yeah. OK, great. Great. All right. State level initiatives, nothing new to report. Significant tree ordinance. Is there anything? Probably not. No. And last is the solar bylaw group. Only update is I sent along the draft bylaw to everyone. You're welcome to read it over. I encourage it. It is certainly not as protective of forest as I think some folks in the community would have like to see. But I know that it certainly is there. It's on the table. It's being considered. And with the new council, I believe it's going to be considered within some of the next coming meetings. It's in the works in the council committee. So getting yourself educated on that, understanding what and where exactly the proposals and issues and zones and that sort of stuff is, I think, is really helpful for anyone who's curious. Great. Good. Anything else? Any other comments? Gina, anything to say? No. Thank you for joining us. I hope it was interesting. And Bennett, if you can get those minutes as soon as possible to me, that'd be great. Thank you, everyone. All right. Thanks, everybody. Have a great night. Thank you. Thank you. It's nice being here. Thanks. Thank you.