Bangor Tree Board approves minutes, updates on EAB treatment and spring planting

[0:00] Speaker A (unidentified): To be honest, well, and then I was like, oh wait a minute, they're all asterisks. [0:03] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah, I'm good. In hindsight, maybe we should have done all the outreach stuff around the dots beforehand, but we're on such a tight schedule that I kind of was like, I'm going, we gotta go. [0:18] Gregory Edwards: It's good, yeah, it's happening. Somebody said they have blue dots. Have you done? [0:24] Speaker B (unidentified): They're blue, yeah, we're doing them with different colors for each group. Yeah, so it's like group one, two, and three. Group one, we 're doing some backlog, but we did those 85 trees last year, and that was group one. So like we're backlogging a bunch of group one this year, and then pink is. [0:45] Gregory Edwards: Group two, and then you're alone. Green will be free live. Yay, welcome to a regularly scheduled. Scheduled meeting of the tree board meeting. Tree board, my name is Greg Edwards. Go. Around and introduce ourselves. Karen, Mary's daughter, Dominica Rizzo, Sophie Cameron. Benjamin Aruno, city of Angora. Fortunate. Cool, let's start off with approving last. Last meetings minutes, the January 1st. It's just no moves. Sure, everyone in favor once. Sarah shows up from eco EOC, we'll have her speak. She's gonna step out of be somewhere. At five, but until she's here, unless she's hiding, I'm hiding. Okay, yay, the video is not working today, but I can hear you. Okay, Sarah, do you want to have the floor to talk about. [1:57] Speaker E (unidentified): Anything you want to talk about? Yeah, sure, thank you, and thanks, yeah, I have to a meeting after right away, but thanks for letting me join today. I think first and foremost, I know I'm excited, hopefully Sophie and Ben are, and everyone here is excited for the public forum that we're hosting on April 30th. We'll be inviting community members, and they've been invited, and Sophie and Greg have done a wonderful job spreading the news all over Bangor, but we'll be having a discussion on to lead them. Through the process of developing a vision statement for the urban forestry management plan. Ben's also bringing some maps. So there'll be a little activity where people can put a sticker on there where they'd like a tree or where they'd like some tree work done potentially. And then we'll be bringing it all together at the end to kind of see what different groups have come up with to develop a vision statement. So I'm excited for it. Hopefully you are too. And then also we'll be sitting at the first farmer's market of the year on that Sunday, day may 3rd so again and at both activities we'll be promoting the survey trying to get more responses out there trying to meet different people and also at the farmers market we'll be just talking about the project overall and engaging people on it so i think those are the two big items that i'm excited and looking forward to i have my analysts working on the operations plan and synthesizing all of the data that Ben sent over, and then also working on the template for the management plan. And [3:50] Speaker F (unidentified): How's the response so far to the survey? [3:54] Speaker E (unidentified): So we checked yesterday and there were 102 responses, which I think is six or seven more responses than we had the previous month. Sarah, there was 114 when I checked today. Really? Excellent. So it's working. Because Sophie made a big push yesterday to put out social media content. So it shows it works. Glad to hear it. [4:22] Speaker B (unidentified): We got a bunch of flyers posted on the community connector. So that has helped too, I think, because captive audience. David, who is in the room, but you can't see him on the video. Also, put flyers around here. You did your Bangor Beautiful push. [4:44] Gregory Edwards: I do more. Yeah. [4:47] Speaker B (unidentified): Betsy Lundy is going to do a post for Downtown Bangor Partnership. And then I think I haven't been able to get in touch. I think Jenny was out of office, so I haven't been able to get in touch with Parks and Rec yet. Yet, but they're gonna make, I believe, a Facebook event and have Downtown Bangor Partnership as a co-host. And Betsy has said that's a really good way to get people to show up to things on their side of stuff. [5:13] Speaker F (unidentified): And we can just go ahead and pass it on. I'm thinking about Penobscot Climate Action, could put it out to their email list. Now, some of them are outside of Bangor, but many of them are in Bangor. [5:24] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah, and Greg, Sarah said you mentioned [5:28] Gregory Edwards: and little communities which is a group that meets once a month. Okay, I think it's organized for the city. It is. Yeah, are there any the main point of contact for that and create [5:39] Speaker B (unidentified): Okay. Okay, I will shoot her an email with all the information too. So she can share that. [5:46] Speaker F (unidentified): Great. I wonder like through public health. I mean trees are public health. Yeah. [5:51] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah, so we reached out to Penquist, Bangor Housing. Those were the two we decided to target last push. This push, we did them again. I certainly will reach out to Liverpool Community. Sorry, what is the full title? Yeah, it's the Bangor Liverpool Communities. Okay, Bangor Liverpool Communities. And then you said public health. Okay, yeah, Jennifer Gunderson health. [6:17] Speaker F (unidentified): And actually, like we had a presentation at our climate action meeting from the sustainability person at Northern Light Health and trees and health. They might do something through Northern Light Health with their staff, for example. Totally. [6:37] Speaker B (unidentified): And also I imagine people after seeing banger beautiful stuff, folks seem to share things on their own personal social media and it gets picked up by others. So I think it gets spread really well that way as well. Agreed. Cool. [6:58] Speaker E (unidentified): Thank you everyone for your collaborations. Really great. [7:04] Gregory Edwards: Sarah, do you have anything else? [7:06] Speaker E (unidentified): I think that's it for now. Any questions from you or I'll just listen in. [7:12] Gregory Edwards: Yeah, any questions before we move on? Okay, forestry division numbers. These [7:24] Speaker G (unidentified): numbers cover first quarter of calendar year six. Since January, we've completed 38 sequel fix requests. This quarter we really focused on preventive pruning. Despite just having two staff on that preventive pruning, one of those staff being our downtown custodian, balance the workload with him downtown and then pulling him to help with our one HEO one that we have on the crew. They were able to get 23 miles of city streets pruned and touch and prune 900 trees plus or minus and it looks really good. Yeah, to the to the untrained eye leaf off, you can't really tell, but that included roadside clearance for vehicles, 14 feet over the roadways, 80 over the sidewalk, and making sure that corridors are clear. More complicated hazard trees and hazard limbs were documented and I have a list ongoing once we have enough time to get up in the bucket truck to do that more intensive tree by tree work. This season, I mentioned in January, we were working on dead tree removals. Those are trees, no sign of life, there's no bringing them back, no bark on them whatsoever. And then moving on into what Sophia and the other interns back in 2024 classified as poor trees,, one or two branches still alive, so they didn't qualify as being dead. 23 of those were removed by our contractor since January. On the high side, planting. Gravel beds are finally built and filled over at Finson Nursery. We were able to get in a shipment yesterday from our nursery supplier. We have 45 very big trees. They're so much bigger [9:46] Speaker B (unidentified): than we thought they'd be. Do they fit? They all fit. They're perfect. They look really good. [9:55] Speaker G (unidentified): I think probably 40 of those 45 fit in one of the nursery beds and then like five or so on the other one. How much did that order cost, roughly? [10:09] Gregory Edwards: $5,000-ish. Yeah. [10:13] Speaker B (unidentified): And it's kind of funny because we've also got previously delivered from the non-bare root stock that we got on discount. And you can tell the quality. But they look really good. They seem really happy. I was over there this morning. Nothing, you know, they all of their, they came bound up, so all of their branches have dropped out, and it looks like a little mini forest. It's really, but yeah, and nothing came with any sort of red flags, so we didn't have any insects or insect presence or anything like that, and they're bare roots, so we didn't have to worry about soil pests. So neat. [11:00] Speaker G (unidentified): Staffing, yeah, so some good news for the forestry division. We are in the final two interviews next week for both an arborist one and then through union approval for the first time, I think since 2014, we in forestry division have an arborist two position. So that arborist two position acts as a crew lead when in the field, interacting with the public at a supervisory capacity, overseeing the work of the arborist one and the heavy equipment operator, and they also of function if I am absent with guidance given by myself, that way the responsibility is just not on myself trying to make, you know, small little calls out in the field, having to leave the office and address issues in the field. So that responsibility was approved, and we're going to interviews next. We're looking [12:14] Gregory Edwards: for both of them. Yeah. Cool. All the pruning we've done and having candidates, [12:23] Speaker G (unidentified): those have been the two [12:25] Gregory Edwards: big issues we've had, like 15 years I've been on the tree board, is we haven't had enough people and we haven't been able to do any of the pruning and the pruning has been very notable. All the fresh cuts, it's been really cool. [12:40] Speaker B (unidentified): And it looks really nice. It's going to look really nice when the leaves drop too. [12:43] Gregory Edwards: There was one time, it was during sap season, and we got like a cold frost and a freshly cut tree had like tripping down frozen sap coming from it. It looked really fun. Okay, moving on to urban forestry management plan public workshop. Sarah already touched on this, but we've got the dates and time on here. It's Thursday, April 30th. It's gonna be over at Parks and rec. Share it, promote it. Yeah, any other updates on it? And it was a nice that through [13:21] Speaker F (unidentified): the city's alert, whatever. Yeah, they got that notice, so that was very nice. Yeah, just [13:29] Speaker H (unidentified): a quick question, was this space already taken? Why at the Parks and rec? We thought Parks and rec [13:35] Speaker B (unidentified): would be a little bit more conducive to like active participation. We didn't want to do just like another presentation, we talk at you, ask questions kind of deal. We wanted it to be a little bit more collaborative, hands-on, doing stuff. And you know, Parks and rec has sort of more like several table settings. What we're probably gonna end up, what we are gonna end up doing, well, it depends on how many people come. We're gonna do like breakout groups, so like smaller groups with one facilitator to like kind of walk people through the process. And it was just a little bit more conducive to that, less formal. [14:10] Speaker G (unidentified): Kids are welcome. I'm printing out a whole bunch of coloring books. There's going to be stickers there, sketch pads, all sorts of stuff. Okay. [14:25] Gregory Edwards: Moving along. Or through division projects, timber harvesting. Timber harvesting. [14:32] Speaker G (unidentified): So this goes with the property known as the Roland Perry City Forest, and then also another property that we own in Winterport, Pit, Planting Pit, go by various names throughout the city. We are in the process of meeting with contractors for timber harvesting. The timber harvesting will be in alignment with previously approved management plans for each property. So we're in the realm of three contractors now that we've reached out to bid to get that timber harvesting done. [15:14] Speaker B (unidentified): This is not just the red pine. No,, no. This is like a variety of things that were prescribed in these forest management plans. [15:23] Speaker G (unidentified): And these are going to be very bite-sized harvests. We've crunched the numbers. If you look at diesel fuel right now, it's $6 a gallon. That's a factor in that. And then a lot of the prescriptions for these properties are not commercially viable. And I don't think they were designed to be commercially viable about the only property that is commercially viable and it's in a state program for commercial production of timber is a planting pit in winterport that's a larger property larger harvest methodology and things of that nature so that has the potential to generate very small very small income for the city which would just offset costs yeah and when i say very small probably less than five thousand dollars for a [16:32] Speaker F (unidentified): harvest so this harvest is for the health of the stand and for fire prevention yeah and so i [16:40] Speaker B (unidentified): will also say that the Roland Prairie Forest in its creation was a demonstration forest so there'll be a huge like public outreach education component around that we're gonna do walk-in talks we're gonna do talks with whoever is selected to harvest in there just to like sort of get more public engagement since Bangor is you know one of the original timber bed you know everything move down the Penobscot River. It's a large part of like the area's heritage. We think it's really important to sort of get people reconnected with that part. [17:15] Speaker G (unidentified): And just like Roland, if we do a timber harvest, there will be informational signs indicating what was done there and then the year it was done. So you can kind of see that natural progression after the stand was harvested. [17:27] Speaker F (unidentified): students definitely see where they widened along the road through the forest yeah and that's that prescribed fire break and but have they done the whole section yeah i didn't think of [17:41] Speaker G (unidentified): so from the trip drive gate to the ramp yeah it's all part of that yeah cool eab be injections so i'm sure everybody's been around town seeing blue and pink dots on several trees we have high hopes of injecting those trees this year we can we can manage it from a staffing standpoint breaking it out into two different groups so that's why you see the two different dots. Those specifics I will allude to for Leah. [18:30] Speaker B (unidentified): So essentially the product that's being the active ingredient is mm actin benzoate, and a lot of research has shown that it can be effective up to three years. We get eyeballs on these trees, I would say maybe not in depth more than twice a year, but like weekly we see them. So we feel pretty confident in our ability to continue to monitor them. So that if we're not meeting that three year mark, it seems like there's some decline around two years, two and a half years, we can kind of pivot. But with the assumption that we'll be able to get three years of protection from emerald ash borer, we've essentially broken out all of the trees that qualify for treatment, ash trees that qualify for treatment, into three groups. We started on the western side of Bangor because our nearest infestation is Hermann, which is the western boundary of the city, so we, those are the blue dots, that's group one. And then moving across from west to east, pink is group two. Next year we will paint all of the group three trees, which will be green. So those different colors are just for Ben and I as we're going around completing these treatments to know kind of what we're looking at and quickly identify which trees are to be treated and which trees aren't. Like I said before the meeting started, we are doing a little bit of a backlog. We didn't get approval to do this many trees until after we had already treated the 85 that we did last year in group one. So there's about a little under 200 hundred trees that are in group one that did not get treated last year that we will be rolling into this year to treat. But then from here on out they will be assigned into that three-year schedule, so they'll get treated with, they'll just only have two years between treatments the first [20:21] Speaker H (unidentified): time. I'm sorry, did you say one and two were going to be done? Well, one, some of one has some [20:28] Speaker B (unidentified): of one has already been done. Two is included in this year. Yeah, so that we stay on schedule. Yeah. [20:33] Gregory Edwards: Yeah. Yeah. What's the total number? [20:36] Speaker B (unidentified): For just this year? [20:38] Gregory Edwards: For the three groups, eventually. Or have you not decided the third group? [20:41] Speaker B (unidentified): We haven't decided the third group yet because we want to see what things look like next year. Like I said in a previous meeting, this is so ever-changing. One year someone might decide that one of the trees we picked needs to come down without letting us know, and we find it, and it's just a stump. So it's like things change year to year so frequently that we are deciding kind of as we go, but as long as all of those trees stay upright, they will be treated across that nine year period that we talked about before. [21:12] Speaker G (unidentified): So how many are in group one and two? Group one and two. [21:15] Speaker B (unidentified): So there were 85 treated last year. I wanna say we're at like 550 something for this year. I would have to look back at the number, but it's- Split between the- Yep, but it's a lot. Yeah. [21:32] Speaker G (unidentified): And just to go back on something that was brought up last meeting, I'm now a fully state licensed master pesticide applicator and Sophia is a state licensed pesticide operator. So all of this is being kept in-house, very rigorously going to lock out our schedule for a couple of weeks and I'm going to have a sore back from coming in and over and drilling [22:01] Speaker B (unidentified): in all these trees and inject it'll be a lot of work but it 'll pay off i mean we were thinking about the numbers and just how much is licensing the forest test management it's licensed [22:13] Speaker G (unidentified): through so this is all through the state board of pesticide control. In order to do that you need to pass your core pesticide exam and then you need to pass your outdoor ornamental because these are outdoor ornamental trees and then in addition to that you have to sit for a board written exam and then a board verbal exam down in Augusta. This wouldn't be in the category of forest management? No because they are within the right of ways and an additional certification I have is right of way vegetation management. [23:00] Speaker F (unidentified): So I assume during winter months you can't tell if there's [23:06] Speaker B (unidentified): been any movement in the infestation. One of the things I was at the Maine Invasive Species Network conference a couple weeks ago one of the conversations I had was around woodpecker bonding and also when we were down in Portland for the New England Society of American Foresters conference like a week before that. A lot of times when there is an infestation nearby, you will have woodpeckers anticipating that a tree that is, you know, because they have species recognition of trees too, they'll anticipate that there's possibly insect activity in one tree or another. I have seen some progressed blonding. I checked out any branches that fell off and looked up as far as I could. I don't see any boreholes and we obviously don't wanna start skinning trees left and right. So I think we're gonna wait and see what we see once the temperature rises. Specifically around July, the adults emerge and that's when we're really gonna know. But we'll see what leaf out brings because if we have suddenly a drastic decline in canopy of a lot of these trees, [24:18] Speaker F (unidentified): trees, that'll be pretty telltale sign. And didn't you have some test trees out? [24:24] Speaker G (unidentified): We did. So due to the drought, that was 2024, that they were girdled. They died very quickly, probably within a month after girdling. There was no decline. We had zero rain for probably three weeks after that was done. So unfortunately, those trees, there was no sign other than native ambrosia beetle and then native elm bark beetle, different characteristics in the insect galleries and then the hexagons. [25:09] Speaker B (unidentified): I will also say the Maine Forest Service is gonna put out those purple traps again. So that'll help us. And they'll keep us posted about that. There's a few places in Bangkok. Yeah, I think there was one over at Kondusk Egg. There was one in Fairmount and then there was one somewhere else but I can't remember off the top of my head. And those have a pheromone in it that mimics that of a stressed ash tree which attracts the insect to it and then they're sticky so they get stuck. [25:39] Speaker F (unidentified): So we had checked with some licensed pesticide applicator for our privately owned ash tree and I talked to maybe three or four and they each had a [25:50] Speaker B (unidentified): different idea about when to inject the we were talking about that today as well technically as long as the tree is translocating so it has leaves on it and it's bringing water and nutrients up from its roots into the branches that's how the that's how the chemical is spread throughout the tree to effectively protect it however i think there is also a lot of merit to aligning whatever you're going to treat, whether it's EAB, whether it's whatever, with the life cycle of the pest so that you're most effective. Like I said, adults emerge around July. So ideally, we want to try and kill all of the larvae while it's still in the tree so that they don't travel. But that being said, it will inevitably travel. So it's kind of a you can try your best. It's good to do it between mid-May to mid-June to sort of catch them while they're still in the larval stage. So it's leaned out but still in the early stages. Yeah,. Doing anything is great. More [27:05] Gregory Edwards: questions on EAB? We'll move on. [27:10] Speaker G (unidentified): Cool. Bangor beautiful spring [27:13] Gregory Edwards: spring free planting. So I handed out this map last. Prices from springs. I tried really hard to find some alternatives because I realized, as I heard, red maple doesn't do as well in the situations that we're in. But they're just hard. There were no options other than bare root, sorry, burlap and bagged for some of the bigger like more heat and salt tolerant trees or to just do all oaks. I didn't want to do a single variety of things. So unless anyone can find like, I don't know, a magic special tree that would survive there that we can get like affordably and the right size. [28:13] Speaker B (unidentified): The magic special tree is probably. [28:18] Gregory Edwards: I mean, well, they did have other species of oaks. Like right now I'm just doing red oaks and we could do some of the other varieties, but they're still all gonna be oaks. So if something comes in and attacks oaks, I assume it's not really gonna make a difference. [28:30] Speaker G (unidentified): No, yeah. We are on the downward and probably the trough for brown-tailed loch, but that's still gonna come back again. Yeah. [28:40] Gregory Edwards: Yeah, this is we're balancing speaking diversity is always the best guiding principle, and I did so I included a memo on the back. That talks. This is what you can give to the city council for accepting the donation. And this is the picture I talked about it last time that wild sea project shared of a red maple in. In, I mean, it's still a monoculture, but in a little stand of the low grow fragrance sumac. And that's, so that's what my hope is to have growing below. We could look at doing some other species to increase the diversity there, but we're at least purchasing the sumac to go down below. And this does well, although from this picture, like there's definitely some permeable surface in this picture, cause there's papers. Makers. And that mulch island is probably a little wider than what these trees will have on Main Street. And also, Main Street just, it's two lanes of traffic getting all plowed into a, like, two, three-foot esplanade. [29:47] Speaker B (unidentified): And it has not, it has some sort of plow protection situation. [29:56] Gregory Edwards: I mean, there's got to be something, I don't know what. If it was just like slab of the like granite curbing like four feet and just fucked up. Because I've seen this in like Winterport, the DOT they had to like do multiple levels of sidewalk granite curbing. So you'd have the initial granite curb and then you'd have another like little dam to try to block some of that snowplow. That might be something that could be tried. And because it's not It's not acting as the actual curb, it doesn't need to be put in the permanent fashion. What date is this? Do you have a date for it? I don't. I was thinking May 15th, which I think is a Friday. [30:42] Speaker B (unidentified): It would be cool to do it during Harbor Week, but that's a little bit late. [30:46] Gregory Edwards: That's the third week in May, so that would just be one week past. So we could still do it. [30:51] Speaker B (unidentified): That would be fun, yeah, because we're doing a tree planting at one of the schools, and then we're giving away, I don't know if we worked out the exact specifics of this yet, but we're doing the tree giveaway and the compost [31:04] Gregory Edwards: giveaway and all of that, yes, third full week of May, which is the fourth Friday [31:12] Speaker B (unidentified): May 22nd, but that could be a fun little, yeah, event to roll into Arbor Week, no [31:20] Gregory Edwards: I'm three in the morning, so if that day works for you guys, what was the date again, make Friday May 22nd, and we'd probably do 10 to 12, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., and all of these 16 trees are number seven, so they're not like overly huge, but they are much bigger than in pots, yes, number seven, yeah, so they're not like the number 10 or 15, which are [31:52] Speaker B (unidentified): bigger, do you, do you need a place to store them, no, sprags will hold on to them until we pick them up [31:58] Gregory Edwards: that day or the day before, the logo are number one pots, okay, yeah, so that's, that's the plan, any questions, how's the fundraising going, it's quite struggling, the total is 4 400, So I think we'll do trees, we'll try to get them adopted at $2.75 a tree to $300 a tree, which is a little higher than we normally do. But it's consistent with what we've done in the past. We've done $100 trees last year because they were just this big. So we'll start fundraising for that soon. yeah any questions, yes so they become city trees, so they are taken care of by the forestry department, we do give them a healthy amount of watering and a watering diaper that helps them through the first year, but yeah, they do become essentially newly planted city trees [33:26] Speaker G (unidentified): They get added on to our watering roof. So when we do spring planting, we have in my division, I supervise the downtown landscaper. So Marsha, who waters and maintains all the ornamental flower boxes. I then transition her a couple days a week, go into different areas that we've planted doing water and things like that and this [33:57] Speaker F (unidentified): canada serviceberry, is that the same as what's planted down along the banger waterfront, there's some right along there near where the big pier goes out, oh across from gunman right behind banger saving, the whole banger savings bank complex, that part of the waterfront, i have never noticed that service, very june berries, i call june berries, i picked and ate some last early summer, mid-summer, they were loaded too high [34:29] Gregory Edwards: up to get very many, but I managed to get a few. They, I mean, they are, they are service berries. These are their specific cultivar. Are they shrub form? They are shrub form because it's hard, at least it's hard from Sprague's to get single stem. Yeah. We found them in the past, but we had to go down to Blue Hill to get them, and they only had so many. So I have asked for single stem, but they [35:01] Speaker B (unidentified): have you been working with Maine Audubon for free acquisition stuff? We did last, we did [35:09] Gregory Edwards: last year. That's where all the fall trees came from. Okay, their nursery is small, so like [35:14] Speaker B (unidentified): they're in, they're like, they're like three-foot trees. Yeah, they were talking about sycamores. [35:20] Gregory Edwards: Yes, they also have like black gum and some other really good party. Yeah, natives that would work well. They're just too small for this application. I wanted, oh totally. Yeah. i think [35:36] Speaker B (unidentified): they're just good at sourcing specific things if you ask but i don't know that 's like the most affordable option as opposed to just buying local yeah i mean the other thing [35:46] Gregory Edwards: we could look at doing is like nesting them in the boxes that you've got so that we had, we could order like the specific varieties and have them to plant in those. Yeah, I mean, [36:00] Speaker B (unidentified): conceptually that's the idea of the community tree nursery, right, is that we have this big network of nurseries across the whole state so that like if we, I mean obviously trees always cost money, so it's not like we get free trees from Maine Audubon, but conceptually down the road we could figure out a way to talk to them and include like things that you guys need for bank or beautiful just for stocking them so that you have them for the future. Yeah, and so what we [36:26] Gregory Edwards: could do is just make this a donation like six months in advance. Sure. Yeah, we ordered them in the winter and then, yeah, they're still donated to the city, but we have a longer term thinking. Okay, and it would probably bring the cost down because those trees are 100 bucks a piece as [36:43] Speaker B (unidentified): opposed to 300 a piece. Yeah, and they're bare roots, so they're a lot easier to plant. [36:49] Gregory Edwards: Yes, that too. Cool. Yeah, any more questions? [37:00] Speaker B (unidentified): It looks great. I'm really excited. And that'll actually work out really nicely because like I said, we're planting the first half of Main Street. So then when we go to water, Marsha just has to shoot straight down. [37:16] Gregory Edwards: yeah and there's she can i know she fills up at the harbor master building so it'd be really efficient for her. Yeah, totally. That'd be a nice way to enter Bangor. Yeah, okay, Otis Street. [37:37] Speaker G (unidentified): So this particular section of my past pictures, Otis Street is a residential street that's adjacent to Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center, the new Northern Light Pharmacy I think, right there on the corner of Otis and State Street. Yes, and these trees are a showcase of grape tree wrong place 2024 person contractors went through and pruned this section of lines appropriately due to the voltages in those lines last year during leaf season they did not look great. I imagine that the response to that very heavy filming they received in 2024 there's a number of over extended branches that are that are present. Some of those branches I believe were probably 50 feet off the base that's where the three are reaching out into that private parking area that parking complex and then also reaching out across the street. So what I'm more or less bringing these up for it is there is a potential based on their health a number of those trees could be coming down at the end of summer if they don't look good. The other alternative if they do look decent is put them on a pruning cycle where we do what's called kind of like a crown reduction and what that does is you bring everything back and for layman's terms you turn it into essentially like a full-life bonsai tree. Just trim everything back to a more manageable size. These are all little leaf lindens that respond okay to that. They will sprout at the cuts and fill in any void whatsoever. Linden of the prolific stump-sprouter and basil-sprouter around the base trees. trees. When you prune them pretty heavy you can already see since 2024 there is some massive young growth coming out vertically of those that just bringing this up to keep you all on your loop and just a picture of great tree, wrong place. I think in total we were looking not two trees typically but I think on that section there's four you know [40:45] Speaker F (unidentified): if you were to plant a new tree in this location with the wires overhead what [40:54] Speaker G (unidentified): kinds of things would you find there something short flowering service fairy crab apples we have a whole arsenal of I think probably 15 or 20 different species trying to steer away from crab apples because that's also a higher component of what the city has. Crab apples are great the birds love them they flower abundantly but we just we already have a lot of them [41:28] Speaker B (unidentified): Then pointed out that sprouting through the middle and some of the other points point that we talked about while we were out there looking at them is that we can reduce the crown, but you know Versin is going to have to come through every x amount of years and do this again and again and again to these trees. So I think that was just us trying to get your thoughts on, you know, they're healthy enough, they don't necessarily have to come down because they're not hazardous, but just is it, you know, worth leaving them there continually get battered this [42:09] Speaker G (unidentified): person if they're staying true to their line forming for bangle where they're on a five-year proving cycle exactly the same as the city, so every five years they go back to the same line sections and do their spacing for me. So but this one from that top line it's it's 10 feet side to side and then I think 15 feet up and down that primary [42:38] Speaker F (unidentified): Well if they just pruned this last year that kind of growth 2024, so it's going pretty fast. Yeah, they grow incredibly [42:48] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah, so they'd be very high maintenance trees would [43:02] Gregory Edwards: it make sense to consider well except with clustering plantings considering some replace like some successional planting to put [43:11] Speaker B (unidentified): in there so that yeah, so we are doing State Street in the fall and I had that thought of since it's right there possibly trying to sneak some other things in between them, yeah, to succeed them essentially come down, but yeah, I think that sounds good to me [43:33] Speaker G (unidentified): And there may or may not be space in the esplanade there to accommodate a replacement tree before the removal, but that's just something we haven't. [43:45] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah, we have to have a look at where the utilities are, yeah. [43:49] Gregory Edwards: There's no sidewalk on that side, so there is more space. [43:52] Speaker B (unidentified): I don't think there's a sidewalk on either side, is there? [43:54] Gregory Edwards: There is on the other side and I was going to ask, there's a whole line of trees on the other side is on this the way the far side of the northern like fence, are those bitty trees they're [44:04] Speaker B (unidentified): not, yeah, I don't actually, they kind of look, they were planted at some point but they kind of don't look intentionally planted, right, like I think they just, I mean there's a bunch of red [44:16] Gregory Edwards: pine and then there's like a few scattered like, oh yes, and then just some really random like [44:21] Speaker A (unidentified): Yeah. As they do. [44:24] Gregory Edwards: Those could have grown up. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for keeping us up to date. We don't have any removal requests. So that's everything. [44:40] Speaker G (unidentified): Any new business? [44:42] Gregory Edwards: New stuff? You guys have anything you want to share? Do you want to come up? I [44:48] Speaker A (unidentified): think that Overstreet area belonged to the Prentiss family. I want to say that. time the wing mansion was there and sean being apprenticed his mom was marie wing married general apprentice i [45:06] Gregory Edwards: always wondered about that because you've got the big Northern Light parking lot there and you have some really modern apartment buildings, but obviously that was not ever like that, so I've always wondered what was in that area and [45:21] Speaker F (unidentified): yeah, back to the red pine question. So when is some harvesting likely to happen with the red pine? You were going to proactively? Yes. [45:35] Speaker G (unidentified): For that, the only proactive harvesting we have on the schedule is in that larger property down in Winterport. That's not a real public facing property. We're going to be doing, despite it being all the way out in Winterport, in the middle that were tons of invasive species in understory, can't imagine why, as I imagine it was Bangor Hill that was brought in, Bangor city-owned property, so we have to do invasive species management justice in the city and then treat that six acres. Oh no, that's like 20 something. Okay, yeah. [46:18] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah. Yes, six acres is the other one. Yeah, there's like 20-some acres of red pine plantation out there because it used to be a gravel pit. So they brought the fill in, filled the gravel pit, [46:27] Gregory Edwards: planted red pine on top of it. And it also filled in with invasive species over the whole 20 acres. [46:33] Speaker G (unidentified): Yeah. Cool. That was planted, I believe, in 1992. So they're smaller and there was no intermediate operations done, no spacing, things of that nature. [46:46] Speaker B (unidentified): A lot of them are damaged and really, actually, it was so interesting to me. He pointed out that they're all kind of, their tops broke off around the same point and it was the '97 ice storm. Ice storm. [46:59] Speaker G (unidentified): Yeah, interesting things about softwoods, you can count the branch whorls where all the branches are and that's one year's growth and if you did the math that top all the way down brings you to 1997. [47:11] Gregory Edwards: So it's like they planted them and then they got beat up as far as red pine mitigation [47:19] Speaker G (unidentified): in the city single tree removals here and there now to begin with true hazard trees are true dead very poor trees on a single tree watched [47:34] Gregory Edwards: a new hampshire forestry workshop on red pine because they 've had it first yeah and they did mention a pesticide that would kill them but it's like a neonicotinoid which we don't want to have anyone use but they also said that like under was it under 20 like under negative 20 would kill them [47:59] Speaker B (unidentified): It would limit their population. It wouldn't eradicate them. [48:04] Speaker G (unidentified): Because there is still, I believe, red pine scale in Edmonston, New Brunswick, just on the other side of Mattawaska. So that's four hours north of here. [48:15] Gregory Edwards: Definitely good. Okay. Well, it's not. I was kind of hoping. [48:20] Speaker B (unidentified): I mean, so like my mother-in-law planted a bunch of teeny tiny red pines, and she can reach around the full crown of them so she's going to try the horticultural oil thing but that's not like a viable option. No for us. Yeah it's just the invasive species which is why we try to do biodiversity. [48:46] Gregory Edwards: Maybe not in orange trees. Yes,. [48:50] Speaker A (unidentified): It's my question is the area near the high school on hold for a while? That is [48:56] Speaker G (unidentified): is on hold for a bit like i said we're focusing now on single trees due to the cost of everything if we are going to move forward with any larger scale harvesting on any public property we're going to open it up as a public forum and tour and things of that nature we do have plans and as forestry division, to complete some of the tree work in Prentiss Woods. So, blow down, clean up, and of course, woody debris. [49:32] Speaker A (unidentified): I see about that, about the modern culture red pine area. Yep. [49:41] Speaker G (unidentified): Stuff in there, maybe a tree or two, if that very storm damaged trees on the outskirts sort of right adjacent type of trails but not from the super major going on i had a concern [49:55] Speaker A (unidentified): possible fire danger the bangor now has a fire pit in there after school we were not told about it i know i would be walking at french woods and i could smell smoke one day and we made our way to the fire pit and there was a fire and nobody was there [50:15] Speaker G (unidentified): there that on high school property [50:21] Speaker A (unidentified): you're near the tennis courts down the hill so they go they put in a pavilion in there and then this fire kit and i throw to the superintendent of schools the summer come coming you don't there's no one to monitor it [50:47] Speaker H (unidentified): all right do you think yeah we've got time okay at a previous meeting I brought up this thoughts about if we are concerned with creating areas to plant more trees in neighborhoods and I guess the response at that moment was that this talk between department of public works director and I Jefferson Davis I think was maybe at the meeting and I just would like I know it's not going to happen immediately but I like to have an update on that every so often because I think it's really important that we try to change things to kind of really Esplanade's where we maybe took them away and or whatever other planting areas yeah we had a very productive [51:34] Speaker G (unidentified): Interactive meeting with engineering this week speaking about some of the tree damage that goes on with infrastructure projects, so and that all centered around the Main Avenue sidewalk that's going in, trees that I identified that would more than likely be okay to stay. One of them was damaged and there was no really going around it to meet media requirements. They got into the surface roots in order to create that grade for the sidewalk and just they were limited in the right of way space, so they couldn't buffer away from the tree, but we have a new engineer and she seems pretty keen on working in tandem with us to better off that, and then there is talks in including a financial, these are all talks. This is just keeping you all up to speed. It's not policy yet of offsetting removals that engineering does for a project and then funding either planting somewhere else that forestry division does or having engineering plant trees somewhere else, so based on those removals because that is a city ordinance when you remove a tree the tree gets replanted, so and engineering has been pretty decent. I know there's some larger projects that have happened in the past two years that definitely took a lot of trees, but they were great tree wrong place, and that's where we look at yes, there may be room to the untrained eye to put trees on Otis Street, but we could be planting them directly on top of sewer mains, water lines, water valves, and things of that nature. So we check maps, trying to avoid having these beautiful trees removed 30 years down the road when we do. [53:45] Speaker B (unidentified): And I think the most productive part of that conversation is that going forward, they are going to include ben and landing around these things because in the past that was like not standard and it should be standard because it affects us. Well it makes a lot of work for us [54:03] Speaker F (unidentified): if they don't include us. The proposed new land use, the land development code, land use development code, am i saying that right, ordinance, yeah, i know at least for some developments there's requirements about buffers, you know, plantings and them being native plantings. [54:25] Speaker B (unidentified): So Anya's been great with that stuff. [54:28] Speaker G (unidentified): And we have been working with Anya and Anne in that realm as far as keeping in touch, sending her suggested planting lists. [54:37] Speaker B (unidentified): I think in general, a really big push for us recently has been to really set the standard of being collaborative with other departments to avoid issues, which is sometimes less convenient than everyone just going and doing their own thing, but it was the term you used, a municipal a municipal machine, but I think it generates a better product where you know our residents [55:07] Speaker H (unidentified): are happier. Well and no I just I think it makes it makes sense when you think that working along with each other or at least being in touch with each other about our season yeah [55:22] Speaker F (unidentified): but if this I'll believe it when I see it but if this bank or mall change comes about out because they're talking about digging up a lot of that parking lot and planting so that would be great on the ground floor that but these new codes I guess would really help with that to give them some guidelines about what to do but wouldn't that be wonderful yeah [55:49] Gregory Edwards: well we've got three minutes left speak now or forever hold your peace [55:57] Speaker B (unidentified): I did have something to say about the nursery. Oh, we also got our shed. That was really exciting. Ben's going to work on getting our well comp going, so we'll have water and electricity there, which will be huge. [56:11] Gregory Edwards: What were the beds called again? Are they Iowa beds? [56:14] Speaker F (unidentified): The Lurie gravel beds. [56:17] Speaker G (unidentified): Yeah. I'll send everybody pictures. [56:20] Speaker B (unidentified): It's so cute. Like, so cute. on a field trip sometime yeah there are new signs yeah it's awesome i'm sure we'll do a social media post at a purpose we've been kind of monopolizing the social media recently and speaking of [56:40] Speaker H (unidentified): water access it would be nice to have water access downtown for people who water their gardens i know [56:46] Speaker G (unidentified): we have that we're meeting friday and downtown bangor downtown last great thank you do you have thank [57:03] Speaker F (unidentified): you [57:15] Speaker H (unidentified): very much and thank you for coming