Tree Board

Montpelier Tree Board Minutes March 6, 2014 5:30-6:30 pm Montpelier City Hall In attendance: John Snell, Sarah Hoffmeier, Jeff Schumann, John Akielaszek, Geoff Beyer, and volunteer Stephanie Olsen Old Business: Minutes of February 2014 meeting were approved. New Business: • Geoff and Stephanie gave an update the Canopy and Mini-Canopy grants paperwork. The plan is to use the Mini-Canopy grant for tree plantings on Arbor Day and use the larger Canopy grant funds to further our Montpelier tree inventory. The deadline for submission of the grant requests is April 11, 2014. This will be an Agenda item for the April meeting scheduled for April 3rd. • As planned in the February meeting, we had a discussion regarding the nursery and how to utilize it. It was acknowledged that the size of the nursery was more than we could effectively handle. It was decided that how the nursery is used depends on our tree needs, both for normal year-to-year downtown plantings as well as future needs such as replacing dying ash trees. We need to determine our downtown tree planting needs for this year. Jeff indicated that he will put together a plan for the nursery for this year. John S. and Jeff will meet with Dave Wilcox (Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation) and Elise Schadler (UVM Extension, Urban and Community Forest Program) when they visit the nursery on March 11th. Future trips to the City of Rutland Nursery and the City of Burlington nursery are planned to learn from these well-run operations. It was also agreed that we should begin some clean-up of the nursery and John S. indicated that he would look into where we can recycle irrigation tubing. Stephanie indicated that fabric caked with sod may be of some use in the control of gout weed. • We also discussed activities for Earth Day, Arbor Day and Green-up Day. These are 4/22, 5/2 and 5/3, respectively, this year. Activities involving children is a priority as is getting Montpelier High Schoolers involved. Concepts discussed included removing knotweed along the Winooski River bank and planting white cedar as well as removing honeysuckle along the bike path and planting bushes and trees. To this end it was decided to place an order for trees and shrubs with Sarah, Geoff and Jeff determining what should be ordered. The list was created at the end of the meeting and Sarah agreed to follow through with the order submitted to the Winooski Natural Resource Conservation District. • John gave an update on EAB awareness activities he had been involved with in February. Alex Canapa gave a presentation at the Unitarian Church on 2/15 about the invasive species endangering trees including the Asian Longhorned Beetle, the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB), and the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid. John had  given a short presentation there on how Montpelier was preparing for the arrival of EAB. Cara Robechek, Chair of the Montpelier Parks Commission, was in attendance and asked John to discuss what could be done preparing for EAB insofar as the Montpelier Parks were concerned. John attended the Parks Commission meeting on 2/20 and had a good discussion with the Commissioners and Geoff regarding steps to take. These included tagging ash trees in the Parks to increase public awareness, a commitment from Geoff and staff to inventory the North Branch Park for ash trees, and Lyn Munno volunteering to get involved in the education effort (Kids, Trees and Beetles) directed at Montpelier school children. John also gave a presentation on the Planning for EAB: Stories from around the State Webinar conducted by the UVM Extension – Urban and Community Forest Program on 2/19. • Geoff reported that the Across the Fence film crew plans to film in Montpelier on 3/21 with a rain date of 3/28. They will interview Geoff and John about Montpelier's efforts related to the emerald ash borer. Filming locations will be the City Hall, the nursery and the lower Statehouse trail. Jeff suggested that any ash trees visible from the Statehouse cafeteria should be tagged and information provided in the cafeteria as to the EAB threat to our ash trees. • Reminder: Pruning workshop dates: John Snell’s on 3/15/14 1:00 – 3:00 pm at the Co-Op Dave Wilcox’s on 3/22/14 10:00 am -12:30 pm at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library Geoff’s on 3/25/14 4:00 – 6:00 pm at the Co-Op • A work day to tag trees will need to happen before the arrival of the Across the Fence film crew. John will obtain the tree tags from Caitlin Cusack and notify Tree Board members and volunteers of the work day to accomplish the tagging. • We have lost our City Council connection as Andy Hooper was not re-elected. John Snell will discuss Andy’s replacement with Mayor Hollar. • Using his laptop, John demonstrated the MS Access database he has created for the downtown tree planting sites. The system will allow several photos to be linked to each location. Geoff has utilized the field form and would like to do a bit more field checking before the form is ready for use. Once the form is finalized, John can ensure that the data fields in the database match the form. Geoff indicated that MS Access could be put on the Parks laptop. John noted that the MS Access database is fairly small and that the average photo takes up twice the memory as the entire database at this point. It is envisioned that the database will reside on a flash drive (with a backup of course) and that drive could be transferred to anyone needing to update the database. Meeting adjourned around 6:35 (followed by ongoing discussion regarding the WNRCD tree order) Next meeting: Thursday, April 3rd, 5:30-6:30, at City Hall