Tree Board

DRAFT Montpelier Tree Board Minutes May 1, 2014 5:35-6:35 pm Montpelier City Hall In attendance: John Snell, Sarah Hoffmeier, John Akielaszek, and volunteers Stephanie Olsen, Ellen Doyle, Ken Libertoff and Bob Troester; Geoff Beyer (attended but had to leave early) Old Business: • Minutes of the April 2014 meeting were approved. • John Snell will maintain the e-mail lists for all volunteers; if you need to get a message out to these folks, John will handle it. This will ensure the privacy of those who don’t want their e-mail addresses widely distributed. • Stephanie reported the grant writing went well and both applications were submitted. • A meeting with the Montpelier Alive group has been postponed because of the departure of the Executive Director of that group, Phayvanh Luekhamhan. • A liaison from the City Council to the Tree Board has yet to be determined. John Snell will follow up with the Mayor and City Manager. • A suggestion was made to feed the beavers next winter so as to prevent the extreme damage they caused this past winter. To be discussed. New Business • The riverbank planting workday is set for Arbor Day, May 2nd . Meet behind the High School along the bike path. Stephanie anticipates we will have a lot of volunteers. Some will clear invasives, others will plant and others will fence trees against beaver attack. Watch out for poison ivy. Other workgroups will be at North Branch Park and Mill Pond Park. • Green Up Day is Saturday, May 3rd. We will clean garbage out of the grates for downtown trees, apply compost and gypsum pellets and possibly do minor pruning. Meet at State and Main at 11 am. The tree in front of the Quirky Pet may need some adjustment relative to its guard. • John Snell and Jeff removed all the irrigation tubing. Weeding mats to be removed by Geoff and Stephanie’s crews, possibly taking them to the stump dump. • John A reported on Ash Tree tagging in Hubbard Park (27) and downtown (4) which he did last Friday and Saturday. On Arbor Day he will meet (in the morning and afternoon) with two classes of 2nd graders from the Union Elementary School to talk about ash trees and the emerald ash borer. This is in conjunction with the ECO program being run by Amy Butler of the North Branch Nature Center. DRAFT • John Snell and John A will conduct tree walks downtown on May 8th and May 13th from 5 – 6 pm. Meet at the City Hall if you wish to join us. • We discussed the terrible butchering of the crabapple tree near the Veterans Memorial at the entrance to the High School. Stephanie indicated that it took about four hours to try to undo some of the damage done by these folks and their chainsaw. John to follow up about this unfortunate incident. • We discussed the recent Montreal Gazette articles on EAB and the TreeAzin treatments planned for some of the trees. We decided that the use of pesticides such as TreeAzin would require further research. • It was decided that future workdays, after this weekend, would involve determining which of the current nursery trees to plant and determining where to plant them. John Snell will scout out new planting locations and Stephanie will send out an e-mail with future potential workdays when more volunteers are available. Stephanie also mentioned that Eli Rosenberg’s 7th grade Main Street Middle School class will be doing field work on invasive plants. • Discussion regarding watering plans for the downtown trees was postponed until the next meeting. • John Snell will send out some information on future upcoming meetings regarding the Carr Lot, now known as the One Taylor Redevelopment Project. Community participation events to discuss aspects of this project will be held on May 6th and 21st as well as June 10th and July 16th. Meeting adjourned around 6:35 Next meeting: Thursday, June 5th, 5:30-6:30, at City Hall