Zionsville Tree Board

Minutes PZAZ th Date: 20 October 2021 Present: Tom Casalini, Mervyn Cohen, Greta Sanderson, Roger Collins, and Amy lacy Greta Sanderson called the meeting to order at 8:00am The minutes from the meeting of 21 July 2021 were approved. I. Update on initiatives and committee responsibilities a. Ordinances and preservation-Mervyn . No new report b. Events (tree-planting day, Z’Greenfest) No new report c. Tree City designation: Lance No new report d. Outreach-Greta No new report e. Beautification-Tom: Lots of issues exist in the Town that need to be dealt with. Paving of the old PNC parking lot has been approved II. Discussion on action items following tree board training with Carrie Tauscher, State Urban Forestry Coordinator, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry a. Urban Tree Canopy (UTC) Assessment – This should be an important topic for the committee. The gold standard for performing this is LiDor mapping which uses laser scanning from a helicopter. It is very expensive. As an alternative the canopy mapping can be well done using Google maps. Roger reported that the parks department has the necessary software to do this. They are planning to look at the canopy in the Town parks. He will coordinate with them to see if the project can be expanded beyond the Town parks. b. Tree designation for businesses or homes that meet a list of standards It appears that the list in the ordinance contains approved trees. The committee recommended that the list of approved trees be removed from the official ordinance and just provided as a supplemental document. It will be much easier to change in this format. The committee also recommends that a list of prohibited trees be added to the ordinance. c. Expand board members Nancy Tikijian has resigned from the committee. Mervyn Cohen reported that he would not seek re-appointment next year. Amy has received applications from 5 new people and one person who expressed interest last year will be contacted again. At least 4 new members will be added to the committee The meeting adjourned at 8:45am The next meeting will be at on 17th November 2021 Mervyn Cohen