Based on the context provided and the dialogue within the transcript, here is the formatted version with speaker names identified. **Note on Speakers:** * **Marge** is the Acting Chair (filling in for Nick Cantola). * **Lauren Coda** is the City Forester. * **Susan Olson** is the Council Liaison (identifying herself as previously Susan Willenbring). * **Mike Zarella, Dallas Pearson, and Kathy Schreifels** are Board Members. * **Deb Muller** is the Master Gardener Liaison. *** [0:00] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Across the street there. Okay, we're in here. Okay, let's go. Call this meeting to order. Um, let's start with the Pledge of Allegiance please. [0:15] **Group:** [Recites Pledge of Allegiance] [0:20] **Marge (Acting Chair):** All right. Okay, thanks everybody. I'm filling in for Nick Cantola, our chair, who can't be here with us tonight, but let's do a roll call. Mike Bender? [0:28] **Mike Bender:** Here. [0:29] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Dallas Pearson? [0:30] **Dallas Pearson:** Present. [0:31] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Mike Zarella? [0:32] **Mike Zarella:** Yes. [0:33] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Kathy Schreifels? [0:34] **Kathy Schreifels:** Here. [0:35] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay. And in the audience, we have Deb Muller, and she's our liaison to Washington County Master Gardeners. And thank you—what's your last name? Susan? [0:45] **Susan Olson:** Olson. It's Willingbring right now, Willingbring. [0:48] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay, thank you for joining us. Are you our new um liaison to the council? Excellent, thank you. Nice to meet you. And then of course we have Lauren Coda, City Forester. So thanks everybody for being here on this hot evening. We have a long agenda, but we're going to try and get it done in an hour, so not too many side conversations please. Um, we'll start with the approval of the minutes from our last meeting in March. Has everyone had a chance to read it? Any questions, discussion? If not, how fast can you speed read? If not, I need a motion to approve. [1:24] **Dallas Pearson:** I move to approve as presented. [1:26] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay thanks, Dallas. Second? [1:28] **Mike Zarella:** Seconded. [1:29] **Marge (Acting Chair):** All in favor? [1:31] **Group:** Aye. [1:33] **Marge (Acting Chair):** I suppose I need to vote. Any nays? Okay, all approved. Thank you. [1:37] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** And Marge, if I could say something—so of course there was a change on our last meeting. We made a change of the previous minutes; there was a date that was wrong and those just got finally updated as well. So the last meeting's minutes, or the previous two meetings ago minutes now, should be posted finally. The video was, I think, always up, but the minutes weren't posted. We needed to make that change and it finally got done. [2:00] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay, and it was approved before? [2:02] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, we approved it right. Yep. [2:04] **Marge (Acting Chair):** All right. Um, very good. All right, thanks for that update. All right, we'll move to our Arbor Day Festival—in other words, our tree giveaway, but I like the Arbor Day Festival wording, so I'm glad to see that’s what we're calling it. Um, what went well and is there anything that should be changed? So, any comments about that? [2:18] **Mike Zarella:** The only thing I saw was that I don't think a lot of the people realized how big a trees they were getting. I've heard several comments that people thought they were getting just teeny tiny ones. And I noticed a lot—or there was a few of us—had problems getting those trees in some people's cars because of what they were getting. So I wonder if there's a way we can let people know what size to expect. Other than that, I think it went excellent. [2:40] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** So they were a little bit taller than I—they weren't all that, but some of them were a little bit taller than I had expected. And we didn't get those tall ones until the week of the giveaway. I had people call and say, "you know, I'd like to know how big these trees are to figure out what kind of car I need to bring." And I was telling people that they're five to seven feet tall, and some of them were almost 10 feet tall. [2:59] **Mike Zarella:** Yeah, but some people showed up in some pretty—I mean, the people who called you were the smart ones, right? [3:04] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, but there were some that were taller than I expected. [3:06] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Well, it's a good problem to have to have bigger trees than we thought, rather than those little teeny ones from the Watershed District. [3:13] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Um, okay. So I guess, uh, I don't know if we could put something on, you know, on the sign-up. And it's—it's—they're always taller than they say they are on the form, too. So it's tough to actually figure out how tall they are ahead of time, but I have a rough idea usually. But this year I was taken aback by one or two species that were taller than I expected. And then the Mayor—the only thing the Mayor mentioned to me, I talked to him specifically about two lines or one line coming in, and he specifically mentioned, "I think we should stay with one line." [3:50] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay. [3:51] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** So we'll just—I'll try to—I'm a little leery about having tablets because I love the hard copy in case something screws up with the electronic devices. Maybe I can try to order some better earphones. The ones my crew uses were a little complicated for you guys and you couldn't hear anything else once you had them on. So I'll be thinking about how to—I mean, we really only need two lines when people start backing up on 15th, and it didn't happen very often, but when it does happen, you need to be able to communicate across traffic, and it's still a problem. So I don't know, we gotta keep working on that. [4:15] **Mike Zarella:** I have one question about the size. And I know, I think Mike [Bender] you and I had a couple that were sticking out the side windows. Do we have orange tape or something? I mean, isn't it the law that if it's beyond three feet outside your vehicle they should be taped? [4:26] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, three feet beyond your taillights. I think you need 18 inches long side. Oh, 18? Yeah. Which is okay. There was—I remember one that was probably beyond that. I don't know if we ever keep that on site, some tape for those ones hanging out the back so we can tape them to the window kind of thing. Well, just like an orange flag on the back end. I have red flagging; I can certainly—we should probably have that. [4:45] **Marge (Acting Chair):** The other thing I would like to say from the Master Gardeners—and maybe you'll have a comment, Deb—but um, we know you bring a lot of literature and a lot of people don't take that literature. If it's windy or wet, it's just going to get ruined anyway. So I think other than maybe Emerald Ash or if we have one or two brochures, I wouldn't bring—you know, it's not worth bringing all that extra literature along. What do you think, Deb? [4:58] **Deb Muller:** Um, right. It hasn't happened recently, the weather has not cooperated for beautiful mornings, but um, that was—just say one thing less for you to haul, I guess. [5:06] **Mike Zarella:** I would add to that, too, is I like hard copies too to work with because you never know what—but we always, I think I've only been to one of these that the weather was actually nice. So I guess what I wanted, especially when it's windy, is there some just way we might be able to protect the sheets better? Because a couple times we almost lost them in the wind and then when they get wet, it's hard to mark them. So I don't know if there's just something we might be able to do to cover them up in a way in case of inclement weather. [5:35] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** And I'll have them organized better next year so we only have the pertinent information we need in there, and that pertinent information is next to each other instead of on the other side. And I can laminate them; we can check them off with a Sharpie. So I mean, that'll—that'll increase the weight of them and help in case it's raining or getting wet. But we'll still need like paperweights because the wind will still blow them laminated sheets away, too. [5:58] **Mike Zarella:** Staple them all together then they're really heavy. [6:00] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Laminated clipboard? Could we use plastic sleeves or is that going to be just allowing rain to get in the top? You know, they're recyclable and you can reuse them over and over. [6:08] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, we could use plastic sleeves, you know, and a wax pencil instead of a Sharpie. I don't know. [6:12] **Mike Zarella:** Like, I didn't know—that was what I was more thinking of is just kind of a sleeve of some sort. Doesn't have to be laminated, just something that you know, just helps a little bit. [6:20] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, the reason I'm thinking of sleeves is I just gave Lisa probably a couple hundred that I salvaged from another job. They were going in the dumpster and I dug them out. But I think Lauren, if you do uh slim down the sheet, that'll solve a lot of the problem. Because we're sitting there going, uh, you know, and to read it... [6:32] **Marge (Acting Chair):** How many no-shows were there? [6:34] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Oh, I did not look at that before the meeting here tonight, but if I remember correctly, I think there was like 28 no-shows this year. So it was kind of high, unusually high. [6:43] **Marge (Acting Chair):** So is there a reminder that goes out? I don't remember. [6:45] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** There is, yep. For people to pick up their trees. [6:52] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay. All right, anything else on the Arbor Day Festival? Nice trees. Hopefully everybody's watering them—those watering bags. Yeah, thank you. Dry out there, water them trees. And thank you for offering the water bags this year. My Linden is—or um, what did I get? Choi—I can't remember, I'm having a mental block. My tree is doing well with the water bag, so thank you. All right, let's move to the spring planting um on 40th. What went well, what should be changed? I know a lot of volunteers didn't show up, but it seemed to go very well anyway and we were done on time and early I think, even with fewer volunteers. [7:26] **Mike Zarella:** So I do know how many didn't come, it was quite a few. They were mostly from Tartan—that group. What was the group, Mike [Bender]? [7:34] **Mike Bender:** National Honor Society. [7:35] **Mike Zarella:** Yeah. Okay. So but a couple dozen, right? Or oh yeah, yeah, that we were missing. But it still went really well, well organized from the city's part with the staff. Thank you. [7:41] **Marge (Acting Chair):** It was the ceremony was very nice too, with the Mayor, excellent to acknowledge the Jane Klein Memorial planting. So I honestly couldn't think of anything we could do better. Anyone else? Good idea for improvements for next year? [7:53] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** I asked Mike to give a list of the kids with their grade or like their school. I wonder if we should have maybe a sign-up sheet too, and then we wouldn't need to go through and cross off or see who didn't take their name tag. Because some of them didn't even have name tags—I mean, they came and they just never took it. [8:05] **Marge (Acting Chair):** They came and they weren't even signed up? [8:07] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Oh, okay. So we had extras. [8:08] **Mike Zarella:** We had a few extra people. Oh, interesting. Okay. [8:11] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Because I don't—were the Kleins signed up? The Klein family? I don't think they were. [8:15] **Mike Zarella:** I don't think they were either. So they came to—well, for the memorial and then they worked, right? Yes, and they worked on my team. So they weren't registered officially, no. [8:21] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Oh, okay. Well, so that's just the last-minute walk-in. Excellent that we can have those, but yeah, we should have a sign-up sheet, I guess, for someone who just shows up at the last minute like that. [8:29] **Mike Zarella:** And Lauren and I, we talked a little bit about that at the Sunboro planting that just happened—is having a sign-up sheet or something where people can sign in, mostly from a volunteer reliability kind of thing, to know who was there on-site in case there was an issue or something that we should have something. Maybe a form from the city. You know, many other organizations I volunteer with, you have to sign in and it's kind of a waiver that you sign when you show up. [8:52] **Marge (Acting Chair):** And who could we work with—somebody in city on the staff here—to get that? [8:55] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, I've contacted City Hall about that before and it's never really materialized. But I can—I can bring it up again. [9:01] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay, if nothing else, just a sign-up sheet where they can put their name, sign up, and then by signing in, they have read the "I acknowledge I read the release" or something. [9:09] **Mike Zarella:** It would be easier to know how many people you had, too, if everybody... right, right, exactly. Because that was my question after that one, of knowing that we had so many kids we were counting on and didn't show, and then we still got the job done. It would be nice to know how many we actually had there so we could plan in the future for the right number of trees that we've got going in. [9:24] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Right, almost like how many people per tree or something that we can calculate ahead of time. "We need this many volunteers if we're planning this many trees." Those kids worked pretty hard. Is there anything we can do to help with that form? Does that fall in your line? [9:36] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** I don't think so. I think I'll just contact City Hall about that and see what they say. [9:40] **Marge (Acting Chair):** I mean, is there like a legal department? [9:42] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** We do have a legal department that maybe you should advise us. I'll bring it up to my supervisor and he can bring it to his supervisor and we'll see where it goes. [9:48] **Marge (Acting Chair):** All right. It just seems from a liability standpoint that we would want to have something like that. I mean, it's pretty standard for volunteer events. [9:55] **Mike Zarella:** Anything else on the spring planting? Oh, I did have one more thing, Lauren. At—because of the Sunboro planting and you're doing that nice instruction ahead of time with everyone there—at the Sunboro planting, Lauren did a group instruction for everybody, kind of just talking through how we're going to plant the tree and then we had a demo. Instead of at the 40th planting, I think the staff did their own demos all the way along, but it was kind of good to just, I think, have a group go through it verbally and then watch it. Because a lot of the trees apparently on the 40th are—I don't know how many—but were planted too deep. And so then that just means the staff has to go back and pull them up, and that's just a—it's a good technique we all should learn better. So I thought that would be a good thing to do in the future—just take five minutes to go through that as a big group, even though we all want to get shovels and get going. [10:38] **Marge (Acting Chair):** All right, let's go on to new business. New commissioner application. Do we have two openings technically because of Stan coming off the board and then no Kathy, or will there be two openings? [10:50] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yes. Well, and according to the bylaws, I mean, it says we can have up to 13 or 14 or something. So yeah, I mean, right. And I've already talked to City Hall about advertising it. I did get one application from Jacqueline Johnson. I haven't had time to meet with her yet to see if she's eligible and push her to City Hall yet, but I have contacted her. She was very pleasant on the phone. She was looking forward to having an interview with myself and my supervisor. So I'll be trying to do that in the upcoming week or weeks here, and by the time we have our next meeting, I should have gotten it to city council. If that's the case, we might have a new member next meeting. [11:23] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay, well the reason I ask is I have someone who's tentatively interested, and then we have our new tree squad with the Master Gardeners, and this is one of the opportunities that we mentioned that they could do if you're interested. And so I could put a note out to—there's 21 people on that mailing list that are tree lovers. [11:38] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, okay. As long as—that'll be fine. Yeah, you can have a second one too. [11:43] **Marge (Acting Chair):** And Jacqueline looks like she would be a good ad. I read her application in her packet and I thought, yeah, she'd be great. Graphic designer, loving trees. Spring planting event renamed—I think we all probably know that, right? [11:55] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, I just threw that in there because I didn't remember who wasn't at the spring planting and I just wanted to make it official so all the tree board knew that the city council did name it the Jane Klein Memorial Spring Planting Event in honor of Jane Klein. [12:09] **Marge (Acting Chair):** That's wonderful. She used to be chair of the tree board for many years. Awesome, thank you. That's nice. All right, Tree City award. I think this is the Growth Award section, right? [12:20] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yes, yep. [12:21] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay, so I can speak to that. So as you all know, there's a grant that was given by the DNR—or approved by the DNR—for $100,000 to remove ash trees for emerald ash borer. And one of the questions they asked of the city was if they are a Tree City USA, which we are and have been for 28 years, but if we've received any Growth Awards. And that just kind of triggered the question about, well, what are the Growth Awards and is this something that we should consider? So I went online and looked up the Growth Awards and—and by the way, the consultant who was hired by the city to write the emerald ash borer management plan update also recommends that we look at these Growth Awards, that it's a nice thing to do for the community. It shows due diligence that we're working always to get better and improve, and there happens to be like 85 or more opportunities for us. It's an application that looks like it comes out in September. I can't see the application right now, but there's many, many ways to get 10 points, which is the minimum that you need to get a Growth Award. And it looks like we would be eligible this year simply from having one or maybe more new members, as well as having the updated emerald ash borer plan. And there's a lot of new and fun ideas that we could look at to enhance our board for sure and to help Lauren and the staff. So I'd like to propose and just have a call for volunteers—I will volunteer to look at that application before September, whenever it's available online, and work on that. So I was hoping that one of you would be interested to work with me on that. I just think it would be a nice way—let's try it. It looks like we easily qualify this year and see if it's something that, you know, it's an application. I don't know if there's a cost, I'm guessing there might be some nominal fee. [14:15] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** I don't think there is a cost at all. In my annual Tree City USA application, there's never been any cost to apply. So I don't think there is for the Growth Award either. [14:26] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Oh good, okay. That's good. I just assumed there would be an administrative— [14:30] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** And I'm not—I'm not positive on the coordination if we can turn those applications in separate or if we have to turn them in together. It's an online portal that we use. [14:38] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay, we can work together right. So I do have and um I printed out it's a pretty long PDF file of all of these like 85... there's a few sentences about each category. For example: tree inventory, story measuring trees, training—it's all the way from HR to volunteer community planting events, Arbor Day enhancement... oh my gosh, there's just so many. I listed about 10 or 12 that I thought we could work on as a group. One of the things that I think—I've been on this board for a while—is that I want to make sure that we're not making more work for Lauren, but we're helping as a board and that, you know, we're bringing value to the job that he does with his staff. And so um I would like for us to kind of own some things that we could do to help and um I I don't know how you all feel about it but I'm open to comments and suggestions. But this just seems like a kind of like for this year a no-brainer to try to apply and get that award and see how it goes. Experimental trial. [15:38] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, and when they send me the email—which I'm not sure when, but Marge says September—they always send me an email telling us to get on your portal and start applying. So I'll—I'll send a reminder out to everybody then and we can start working on it together. [15:52] **Marge (Acting Chair):** That would be... is anyone interested? [15:54] **Mike Zarella:** I would help you if you need it. [15:55] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay thanks, Mike. I appreciate it. Anyone else want to work on this? I can—how can I send a link or maybe in our minutes we can put the link to this Growth Award? I'll send it over to who does the minutes—not Lisa... [16:08] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Lisa does. Oh, she does. [16:10] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay, I'll send her the link because it's a PDF, you know, it's pretty lengthy with 85 or 87 paragraphs. But that would be good. And I did check for the application because I wanted to see how complicated it was and it's not online right now so there's no way to move forward at this point. But um thanks, Mike. I appreciate it. And we'll get started and everyone can take a look at these ideas and see what you have thoughts about some things that we could do to bring value. [16:34] **Glenn (Board Member):** I could lend a hand too. [16:36] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay, thanks Glenn. Okay we can get together maybe later before the board meeting to talk about this or whatever. Once you see the suggestions in there—and there's so many—and they tell you how many points everything is worth. So it's pretty much a math deal—10 points, what can we do to get 10 points minimum? Okay, that's the Tree City USA Growth Award. All right, moving on. Oh, with our work plan—so Council would like us to create a work plan like the other commissions, right? [17:03] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yes, yep. [17:04] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Do you want to talk about that? [17:05] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Sure. So I just—I threw down some ideas on some stuff that I eventually want to work on. The Tree Trek program, for instance. We got it out there—it took us like three years to actually get the work done and get it out there—and I've never been super happy with it. We've never had time to get back to it. Some of the stakes are in crooked; my crew and I haven't had time to push them back out there and get them done well. I don't even know... so we put it on an Avenza app, I don't even know if that's still working or not because we haven't had a decent GIS program in a couple years now. We're still trying to hire new GIS people; we have a contract GIS company right now. So this doesn't all have to happen next year, but these are some of the Tree Trek things that I would like to start working on. I don't know if they even still have a pamphlet for it at the Discovery Center. There's a lot of things to look at for the Tree Trek program just to make sure it's nice. [17:58] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Something too that I thought we as a board could help with—when this first came out there was a naturalist or somebody out there who was giving one or more tours. Maybe Deb, you know? But anyway, yeah, I think she's gone according to Laura that I called out there recently. I wrote up for the Tree Care Advisor program at the University—I wrote out how to create a Tree Trek, the process, so that we can be replicating that around the state. And she was kind enough—Laura was kind enough—to send me a map, or you know, the brochure that was created at the time. But I don't know... I was just out there last weekend and I didn't see any, you know, available, and it's not on that kiosk out front anymore like it was. So it would be good kind of to reset and just check on it, and that's something of course that we could do as a team and/or individuals to go out there and do that. [18:43] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** So if anybody wants to help get that started, I think that would be a great opportunity again for us to bring value. We just need to ground-truth that. I know when it first came out there were a couple of trees that were on the mapping program that weren't actually in the Tree Trek itself—we didn't have stakes. So I mean, it needs to be ground-truthed like that. There's some errors with it. [18:59] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Right, a little quality control check. Yes. Um, going a couple years in... is anybody interested to work on that? You know, the trek itself goes from one side of the park to the other. So the brochure, which I have a copy of somewhere... you know, you could start on the West end or you could start on the East end, and I think there's some in the middle and they broke it into sections so you don't have to walk like that whole area. You could still look at some trees on one end or the other. But that would be another opportunity I think for us, and it doesn't have to happen now. Should we be putting it on next year's work plan? It's all a discussion. Eventually I might get the time to deal with it myself. [19:40] **Mike Zarella:** Well I do a lot of walking in that park, so I'd be willing to help out. [19:43] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Awesome, Mike. Well let's—why don't we add it to the work plan? I mean, the work plan doesn't mean it has to get done, right? It's a goal. [19:50] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** There are things that we're trying to do, exactly. [19:51] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay so I want to just clarify what our expectations are. If we write it on here, do we have to do it? [19:56] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Okay, we're going to work towards it. [19:58] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay so quality control check on the Tree Trek. And Mike, thank you. And I'll be glad to work with you too, as long as we've got some directions. [20:11] **Mike Zarella:** Yeah, let's connect on that and I'll show you what's out there. And then um I just know I can't walk that whole park—that's a long way for me, my hip will go out. [20:19] **Marge (Acting Chair):** But okay, so that's for sure going to be added to the work plan. The forest garden was another one that came up. I went to the Shade Tree Short Course—I talked to you guys about that at our last meeting—and this is a new trend. Actually, Chris, our former forester, I think was a little ahead of the game having a forest garden with edible fruits in there. Um, and some trees with apple trees and other things that are edible. So it was called a forest garden, and that is the name of it. But it seems like maybe again we've lost some momentum on that that we could be labeling—and we should be labeling—if we're inviting people to eat things out of that garden. It should be labeled. So that's another opportunity to kind of resurrect the plan. Lauren has sent me some of the historic history. I did not have this because I was new to the board at the time, but to actually go through some of these quadrants—I don't know what he called them, actually sections or segments of that garden. Very complicated, there's just a lot of plant material in there. But I think that's another opportunity that we could go back and try and enhance and invite people into that space. Right now it looks a little bit like a tote road almost, if you guys know where that is. And I've had people ask me, "is that okay to be walking up in there?" when I've been doing some pruning last year or the year before. "Oh, is that all right if I go up in there?" Yeah, please! But how do we get them to understand that? [21:42] **Deb Muller:** Welcome to the forest garden! Yes, yes. [21:44] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Right. Well, and we did talk about getting signage, you know, professional signage, but I just don't think there was budget money for that. [21:51] **Deb Muller:** Oh, thank you. The sign... yes, if you notice it, yes. It is quite nice; my husband made it. [22:00] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Anyway, yeah, so signage would be great. Definitely labeling. And there's a volunteer—what's the name of that man who works out there? Paul somebody? [22:08] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Oh, he needs to be—if anyone knows him personally, say thank you. Apparently he does hours and hours of volunteering out there and waters trees by hand. Very, very strong volunteer. So if you know him, engage him and thank him. I order fruit trees every year for him to plant; he plants fruit trees in all of our parks. So visit the parks and you might find some fruit hanging on trees you can eat. [22:28] **Mike Zarella:** Awesome. I did just meet him at—was he at the 40th planting? I think across the street and I kind of invited him to the tree board, but he said he can't make the schedule work for our meeting. Otherwise I think he would have been an awesome addition to our team. [22:42] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay, moving on to the Shadow Planting Grant. So this came up with the DNR and the consultant for the emerald ash borer management plan—they recommend Shadow Planting. And that's putting a new tree next to a treated ash tree or a nearby treated ash tree. So the goal is to eventually get out of that chemical treatment business. So you plant a young tree nearby, let that grow a couple, two, three years—I don't know how long—before then you would take the ash out and then not have that investment every year of the budget line item for treating ash. You know, it takes some time of course for those young trees to grow. But there is—apparently we had a meeting with the DNR in May, maybe, and she said there was grant money coming again for some more projects and this would be one that the consultant recommended and I think would be a good one to propose for next year. So we treat about 80 trees, chemically treat them with emamectin benzoate every year. And the shadow planting—I mean we obviously get homeowners' permission if we did try to get a shadow planting grant—and shadow plant, we would be doing it on these boulevard trees, asking the residents if we could plant another tree in their boulevard because eventually we want to stop chemically treating our remaining ash. [23:55] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Right. And by the way, the DNR connection called them "buddy trees," which is kind of a nice name too. Grow up the big one and then eventually stop and remove. So that would be an opportunity. I don't know, Lauren—how do you hear about when that money is available? I heard the legislature had a big funding now for things like this, but when—how do you know when that happens? [24:16] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Just go to the DNR website and look once in a while is what I do. [24:20] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay, so that would be another opportunity for us to bring value—is to check that site once in a while as tree board members, so that Lauren's not having to go out there. And if anybody sees that pop up, there we go. Apply for some money to do that. All right, and then the last thing on our work plan would be kind of our normal rhythm of having the Arbor Day Festival, the spring planting... and do we want to add a bullet "C" for Buckthorn removal? [24:44] **Mike Zarella:** Yes, and that somehow got missed. [24:46] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Those are ongoing activities that we've done every year. So I've got one, two, three, four tasks on the work plan, and it looks like that would be a good list. Maybe a stretch goal to get all those done next year. [24:58] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, and we don't have to accomplish everything. We can just even just have it on the list so we can be working towards it. [25:02] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay. And we can roll them into the next year. [25:05] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** That's right. Okay. Lauren, do you want to talk about the tree selection? [25:08] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Sure. I just—my goal here was... this was the first year I sent you guys the PDF of what Bailey offers when they sent it to me. Typically, just in late August, I go through that and I look for Minnesota natives that jump out at me and then I'll present them to you, usually in our September meeting. So I just wanted to get an idea from you guys if there was anything that you saw on the list that you wanted me to work on getting this year. I tend to look at only Minnesota natives—is what I do. Once in a while we throw in an oddball here and there, like from fruit trees for instance, you know, they're cultivars. [25:48] **Mike Zarella:** Well I was thinking about Sugar Maples, and for a bigger one, the Fall Fiesta, because that gets the best fall color. But if you're looking for smaller Sugar Maples, I would do Apollo—that's kind of... they list it as a street tree because it doesn't get so huge. [26:01] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** And so in general, I just shy away from Maples because the Asian Longhorned Beetle is coming and they're going to kill all the Maples. And people plant a lot of Maples—they've always planted a lot of Maples—and our Maple count is as high as our Ash count. So I try to stay away from Maples. If you want a Maple, we can certainly—we haven't done Maple since I've been here—so we can certainly give away a Maple if you want. [26:22] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Well it's not native, but would you think about like a Prunus mackii, Amur Chokecherry? Or a Japanese Tree Lilac? [26:30] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** The only thing about Japanese Tree Lilacs is they are invasive, but just like Amur Maples, you just don't want to plant them next to a native area. In mowed grass they're fine because you mow over the new trees all the time and they die. And yeah, if we do give out a Japanese Tree Lilac, I'm going to order extra for me because I need them in the parking lot here because all our Lindens are starting to look pretty ratty out there. [26:50] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Well if you were to look at them, I would look at Snowdance, because when that first came out it was supposed to be seedless. It isn't listed as seedless now, so I'm guessing maybe it reverted back to it. The other tree that I was thinking of, Lauren, was the River Birch, Betula nigra. I'm a big fan of River Birch; they hold up well. They do much better than Paper Birch on the Bronze Birch Borer. [27:14] **Mike Zarella:** Yeah. And then I saw there were cherry trees. I know we've had trouble now getting fruit trees in the last few years, but there were quite a few cherries on there. So edible cherries you're talking about? I guess if we're going to have a fruit, we should have an edible, I think. You know, and I know that's in demand by the citizens, so... [27:32] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, all right. Or an apple, of course. Or what's the other one—that pear tree that's out at Bethke Park... not Bethke Park, the other one by the Nature Center on Hadley there? Eberly Park! Yes. Where—I can't recall—I've ordered a couple different pears over the last years and I can't remember exactly what I ordered. When I was working the farmers markets year before last, there were a couple ladies that were like, "you need to get more of those pear trees—we used to harvest them all but now somebody's getting to it before they are." So it was a successful planting, apparently. So yeah, I mean, Eberly Park, there are—there's some Contender Peaches up there. [28:09] **Mike Zarella:** Well maybe it's a Contender Peach I'm thinking... I don't know if it's Bartlett pears, I don't remember. [28:13] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** It might be the Contender Peach now that I'm thinking of, because that name rings a bell versus Bartlett. [28:18] **Mike Zarella:** Yeah, anyway, it might be a peach. Would you consider a Horse Chestnut? [28:22] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** I would, yep. But I would use the European one because it's supposed to be fruitless. Because otherwise, Horse Chestnuts are not a thing that you want in the city. They got dangerous weapons—they're going to hurt people when they fall. They got spines on them, and if people throw them at each other... kids... okay. It's kind of like Sweetgum was the same way. Oh, dangerous. Okay. Well, are those some good ideas kind of get started there? [28:44] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Fabulous ideas, yep. That'll get me started. Okay, all right. Buckthorn removal event. Did we have any ideas for a location this year? [28:53] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** I have not come up with one yet. That's why I wanted to throw it to you guys. And I mean we have until October, so we can certainly talk about it again in September. But I will—typically what I do is during the summer while I'm out and about, I start looking. So I wanted to throw it out to you guys first to see if you had any areas you guys saw out there that you wanted to work on buckthorn. But throughout this summer I'll be looking for an area. [29:16] **Mike Zarella:** Does it have to be by a park? I mean, because we have the lunch at the gathering point. [29:20] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** It's nice to have a pavilion, but because of the Arbor Day Festival, we have plenty of tents now because I've been buying a couple of tents every year just so we can keep everybody protected. And we did the spring planting without a pavilion this year for the first year. But generally, right, we stick to a park that has a pavilion so we can eat lunch. [29:38] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Right. Yeah, I was thinking about when I went in 40th by that Gretchen Lane into the nature preserve—I'd never gone in that way before—and it seemed like there was a lot of buckthorn. And there's a path, Mike [Zarella], I think that you said you take from... is it 40th in to the north? [29:56] **Mike Zarella:** I haven't been on that path in a while; I'm coming in more by the tennis courts at Joe's Garden Trail you're talking about. [30:00] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Yeah, but then I was thinking about that when I was walking in like, oh, there's a lot of buckthorn in here. But then where do we meet? The logistics of it, right? [30:08] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, but I mean that—we can always walk from the parking lot. That's the extent. [30:12] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Well, Eberly Park might be closer. I don't know, we did one at Eberly Park some years ago. [30:17] **Mike Zarella:** Is there anything down like by Tanners Lake? [30:20] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** I don't—I don't know. I guess let's take some nature walks this summer and check out some areas. And if so, September is not too late if we come back with some suggestions for you. [30:29] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Okay, perfect. All right, so let's—as you're out and about, take a look and see if you can come up with some ideas. Good to know we don't need to have a pavilion. [30:38] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah, like I say, I will eventually come up with a spot; I just wanted to see if you guys had any ideas you want me to work on. [30:43] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay. All right. The Emerald Ash Borer Removal Ordinance. Can you comment on that and kind of explain the background? [30:50] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** This is—there's... we have it written in our tree ordinance that we can force homeowners to remove Emerald Ash Borer trees. I haven't had to do it yet. I have to throw it at City Council and let them make that decision, but we don't have any written policy on it. Right now my policy on it is: if a neighbor complains that there's a dangerous dead EAB tree over their property, then I'm going to look at it, see if I think it's a hazard. If I have to, I'll hire a TRAQ-certified tree risk assessment specialist to tell me that it's a hazard, and then I'm going to throw it at City Council. But there's no written policy. So I'm just throwing this out there to see if we should discuss—and I wish Nick [Cantola] was here, he's in the industry—to see if we should discuss if we think we should be coming up with a written policy and throwing it at the City Council to maybe have it at a workshop or something. Eventually, it's becoming serious now; there's ash trees dying everywhere in Oakdale and there's going to be property—I get calls about it all the time—there's going to be property line disputes. The current statistics that I've heard are within six years of an ash dying from Emerald Ash Borer, 80% of them are tipping over. So it's going to be neighbor conflicts here in a hurry, and I want to be prepared. [31:58] **Susan Olson (Council Liaison):** I guess for any policy such as that, I would recommend at least one step being the visit with not just the neighbor, but the resident who owns the lot where the tree is on and explain the situation. And that if you don't take it down, we have options to force removal. Make sure that the resident knows about what's going to happen. [32:17] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yep, I will do that before I throw it to City Council. And it hasn't had to happen yet, but yeah... [32:22] **Susan Olson (Council Liaison):** I just—you hadn't put that in the steps you were mentioning, I just want to make sure it was there. [32:26] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yep. Is there any other trees besides Ash that this ever happens with, that there's a dead or dying tree? Oh, there's three trees in our ordinance that we can force removal: that's Oak Wilt, Dutch Elm Disease, and Emerald Ash Borer infestations. There's nothing in general about trees that threaten the possibility of damage to a neighbor's house or their own house. [32:46] **Marge (Acting Chair):** A hazard tree? There are a lot of dead trees out there this year that I've seen. [32:50] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yeah. Um, that's not in our tree ordinance at all on hazard conditions. It's mainly on protecting the forest from dying further. [32:58] **Marge (Acting Chair):** How do we even get started on this? I mean, what's the first step of taking this to the next step? I don't even know. [33:04] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Good question. I don't know the answer either. [33:07] **Susan Olson (Council Liaison):** Maybe we should be talking about what it is and get some direction from Council if we should be working on it. [33:12] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Okay, perfect. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. I wouldn't know where to start. So the general consensus is: if your ash tree has lost 25% or more of its leaf area, it's not worth treating anymore. But you can—if you start treating a tree like that, it'll survive, it's just going to look ugly for a while. So it all depends on how much this tree is important to you—how much it shades your house, how much it shades the swing that you love or that your child planted. If they reach 50% leaf loss, you know, they're really ugly and it takes a long time to grow big limbs back, like 25, 30, 40, 50 years. So if there's no leaves on one side, there aren't going to be leaves on that side for 10, 15, 20 years. So it's going to be ugly that long; it's just not worth it. And in general they say you can treat an ash tree for Emerald Ash Borer for 20 years, roughly, for the price of removal. So if you have a tree you want to save, it's worth treating. And even if you treat it five years, it buys the time to plan for that removal that's going to cost you $1,500, $2,000, $3,000 depending on the tree. So sometimes it's worth it to spend $150 every two years on treating the tree so that you can buy some time to save money for the removal. [34:18] **Marge (Acting Chair):** If you don't treat it for the rest of its life, it will die. [34:21] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Yep. Yep. And the percentage is pretty good right for like you say 20 years or more? I don't know how long they have data for because I don't know how long the problem—you know, when it originated—if we know how long you can continue to treat. But I thought it was like in the 90% or something success rate for treating a tree. [34:39] **Mike Zarella:** So but yeah, it's got to be worth—the value has to be there, I guess, for the individual. [34:44] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** And there are homeowner treatment methods. For instance, Imidacloprid—it's a neonicotinoid, so it's a bee killer. Ash trees in general aren't bee pollinated, but if there's a flower garden underneath... so the Imidacloprid homeowner treatment, you mix it with water and you pour it on the ground around your tree and the tree roots take it up. But I wouldn't do that in a flower garden below your ash tree because it's going to kill bees. The one that Rainbow does for us requires a restricted-use pesticide license, so you have to hire a professional for that, and that is the most effective as far as I know. Emamectin Benzoate injection into the trunk—you can do it every two years and a large tree costs about $150 every two years. [35:28] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay. All right, well let's move on. Thank you for any feedback you can provide us from Council on an ordinance or the policy. The updated EAB plan, which was part of the grant that the DNR is providing to Oakdale—that is done and a copy is in your packet. You're welcome to take a look at it. There's nothing urgent, I would say, it's all very important. But maybe if we could bring this back again in September if anyone has any comments. We went through it at least three times with the consultant, making changes, making more changes, and I feel like this is a good final draft ready to go to you guys and then eventually to Council. This would be a document that would be available to the public for anyone to see what Oakdale is doing about ash trees and the Emerald Ash Borer. So I guess that's an action item for everybody—to just take a look at it, read through it as good bedtime reading, and come back in September with any suggestions that you have. Okay, let's see—anything else? I guess we're at Board Member updates, Council Liaison updates. Are there any board member updates that you want to bring forward tonight? All quiet. Council update really quick? [36:40] **Susan Olson (Council Liaison):** Thank you. I don't have any updates other than we just started working on the budget. So it's every workshop now, we're working on the budget. By the way, I'll introduce myself—Susan Olson, previously Susan Willenbring as of a week and a half ago. I'm happy to bring anything to the Council if you have any ideas like we already discussed, or if you have any questions. And I do apologize, first time that I missed the Arbor Day Giveaway, but we had to go pay our vendors for the wedding, so I couldn't make it. Next year, though! [37:12] **Marge (Acting Chair):** All right, well congratulations! Yes, and welcome aboard and glad to have you represent the Council. [37:18] **Susan Olson (Council Liaison):** Thank you. Any questions for me or anything else you want me to bring back? [37:21] **Marge (Acting Chair):** No. Okay, thanks for continuing support. I think, you know, it's nice that we have a tree board and a City Forester—not all cities have this anymore. So I think we in Oakdale, obviously our name says it all: Oak-dale. Agreed, it's all about the trees—or a lot of it is. So anyway, thank you. [37:41] **Deb Muller:** Thank you. [37:42] **Marge (Acting Chair):** All right. And then Deb, is there anything you want to bring forward from Master Gardeners? [37:46] **Deb Muller:** All right, okay. [37:47] **Mike Zarella:** Can I just ask—so you haven't put up any kind of a sign-up sheet for buckthorn? [37:51] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** No. [37:52] **Mike Zarella:** Okay. [37:53] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Okay for buckthorn event. And yeah, now that we're back on buckthorn, I had one... yeah, two dates, date/time... if we can back up to buckthorn removal event. And I was just looking at the calendar and I was thinking the later the better—21st or 28th? Does anybody have any opinions on that? We have to work around another thing I forgot to put on here—we have to work around MEA weekend. Does anybody know what MEA weekend is? I don't have my phone with me right now. Anyway, I just wanted people to start thinking about a date. We can look at it again in September. [38:28] **Mike Zarella:** October 21st. [38:30] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** 21st is MEA weekend, yep. [38:32] **Mike Zarella:** Okay, so then it's either the 28th at the very end of October, or a week before the 28th. [38:37] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Well that's the 21st... the 14th? Is the 28th not a little too late? Is it still—well usually it could be... we could have a Halloween snowstorm or something, right? It could be cold. [38:49] **Mike Zarella:** Is everybody looking at closer to the 14th then? Is that kind of what people are thinking? I just thought that was more typical for buckthorn events. [38:57] **Lauren Coda (City Forester):** Let's look at the 14th then and then yeah, it might be warmer, too—nicer weather. [39:03] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay, perfect. 14th. Okay, I'm glad I thought I remembered that. Pencil it in on your calendars everybody, at least for now—October 14th. This week, Summerfest! Big event, and the parade is at five on Thursday. Well, six—it's lineup that starts at five. Sorry, that's what I think of—roads are closed. All right, okay. I think we're pretty close to on time. Nice, how did that happen? All right, um, I think I need a motion to adjourn. Thanks everyone, happy summer, stay cool. [39:41] **Dallas Pearson:** I'll move. [39:43] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Okay, thanks. I take it Kathy is a second? [39:46] **Kathy Schreifels:** Seconded. [39:48] **Marge (Acting Chair):** All in favor? [39:49] **Group:** Aye. [39:50] **Marge (Acting Chair):** Meeting adjourned.