Bangor Tree Board reviews Emerald Ash Borer plan, fall planting proposal

[0:39] Gregory Edwards: Welcome everyone. This is the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Bangor Tree Board. [0:51] Dominick Anthony Rizzo: I'm Dominic Rizzo. I'm a committee member and resident of Bangor. [0:55] Karen S. Marysdaughter: Karen Marridge-Donner, I'm a committee member. Benjamin Arruda, City of Bangor forestry manager. [1:02] Sophia Cameron: Sophia Cameron, I am the forestry intern with the City of Vancouver. C Smith, assistant [1:08] Karen S. Marysdaughter: city director of the course director. [1:14] Gregory Edwards: We have lots to talk about, so we'll start with approval of the meeting minutes. I would accept a motion to approve. The move, all in favor. So we'll look at the second step, we'll say unanimously. As they approved for you to be given by the numbers that she don't have on the back side. [1:42] Sophia Cameron: Another one of us it's not going is that the one that I've got. So [1:52] Annette Dodd: second. [1:58] Karen S. Marysdaughter: Quarter of 2,025 was very busy for forestry division. A lot of things happened in the spring at that time, after we closed our previous meeting in April, I was getting ready for spring planting. That is also the time during the spring draft for union members at public works, at which time you can change division membership. Membership, so we made some changes in division membership. We lost an employee and then gained another employee, and then unfortunately there was just some attendance issues with that replacement employee. We also lost the licensed arborist as we spoke about in April that fully got their licensure, pesticide certificates, things of that nature. And springtime is also a very busy season for forestry division, as you all may know. We take care of all the downtown plantings, so we install 25 self-watering planters and then 25 watering boxes or planter boxes downtown, and then do over 60 I believe Bridge boxes, the little flower window boxes, so that took us out of our usual schedule due to lack of staffing, and we also deliver and put out some of the mulch for the big dig. So April was very busy for us, so we did miss the window for planting, and then due to budgets and budget issues within the division and late postings from finance department, I found out I was actually over budget on a lot of items, so I could not purchase stock, but this is a new year, so looking at doing fall planting. Sophie, I tasked, I asked her with doing the inspections of all of our previous planted stock that we had done both spring and fall of 2,024, and what we saw was a pretty good indication that spring of last year we ran into that drought. We did some water, and I was able to pull Marsha off downtown watering and water. Water some of the trees that we had recently installed, but we had a pretty high number of mortality of recently spring planted just due to that drought directly after in the spring time. So what we focused on was service requests completion and getting things done for paving Division. Forestry Division is responsible for making sure that trees are cleared above the roads and sidewalks to an appropriate height before they get paved and prepped for paving. So we did that list. We were able to get 37 C-Click fix requests closed in the second quarter. That's small things and big things included. Included. We did preventative pruning, which is inclusive of paving, fruit, and brown-tailed moth pruning. Principal trees, we were able to prune 113 trees during that time. We were also able to engage with a new tree service contractor who was able to remove some of the trees that have been stagnated on previous lists some dated back to 2022. Six trees were removed by the contractor, eight were removed by the forestry division employees. Some of the other tasks we did were cleanup work in the city forest and a couple of large projects for the golf course in that time. One of the things you may all see going around that unfortunately we have some say in but also it comes down to what their determination is versin power and in some of their removals, some residents are upset and I can certainly see that some of the streets that they choose to do a couple removals on don't have very many trees left, but these are all scenarios where they do meet the removal guidelines. They're large norway maple trees that are split rotten and now shaped like a menorah around high voltage power lines, so person deemed that they needed to come down. Unfortunately the communication was not, excuse me, was not great with burson power, so they were removed without my knowledge, so I had upset residents contact me wondering why these trees were removed but I've since spoken with the line foreman for this section and they will be communicating better when they can, but they are moving fast and going through all the different [7:44] Dominick Anthony Rizzo: grids within bangor currently. So question, if they remove a tree, is it their obligation to replace [7:53] Karen S. Marysdaughter: A tree maybe more fitting in that local or in that area. I don't, I believe it falls within us because it's our city property, but they maintain the right of ways, and I would assume the cost of removal would outweigh the cost of replanting. And to be honest, I know at least one of these, it can't get replanted. The esplanade is too small. There's been a sidewalk that's been added. I want to say it's on the upper end of Grove Street, almost near the end, south, the north end. So Arbor Day 2025, we were able to plant a higg and cherry at 14th Street School. That was very well received. The students asked great questions. We had a little over 30 kindergarten students. Everybody was studying trees during that time. There was some good reception there for the students, and the tree is doing good, and it's in the ground. It's a separate item, but it's, I can quickly update Finson Road Nursery. That's progressing very nicely. I just got back from vacation and found out the fencing contractor is putting in the fence so the poles are all in, the tension lines are all in. Public Works Forestry Division has cleared the electrical right-of-way or the electricity into the site. A pole contractor has drilled and set electrical poles, and the next step, I think, within the next week or two, is to have the service drop put in from the street to Vincent Nursery. [9:55] Daniel A. Shaw: Is this going to include greenhouse space, or it's all open air? Currently it's all open air. [10:03] Karen S. Marysdaughter: And then as we progress, I would love to put in the greenhouse space to start smaller stock and go from there. And the biggest thing, we have a well that has been drilled. It's 270 feet, and it produces a lot of water. The water is coming out of the cover. That's how much water we have there. So that's good. Spring planting, I did mention that first off, no spring planting done on espinards or on public property. We did plant 14 trees during that project at the golf course as a screen, so, and those were all donated trees that you may gave to us, so resident tree removal requests. We have no outstanding request at this time. So, and there again, Spring Projects 2025, it's just broken out there, so. [11:07] Gregory Edwards: It's a busy quarter. Yep. Well, can I make up for the trees in the fall? [11:13] Annette Dodd: Mm-hmm. Awesome. All right. [11:17] Gregory Edwards: Let's see, urban forestry management plan sounds like all those came, all those submissions [11:23] Karen S. Marysdaughter: have come in and yes with one selected we have narrowed down and chosen one. We do have a list if you all would like to look at the pros and cons of each, and I can also share with you if you don't already know that it's readily available on the city website. The other submissions I did give them a hard notification of roughly the second week of July, so if you would like to discuss it further we can do another session. Can you just say [Daniel A. Shaw: yeah EOC] environmental group they're out of Des Moines, Iowa, so they were chosen. We had a very productive follow-up meeting with them. They answered questions very well. Despite being in Iowa, they will be having quite a few in-person meetings and then are very open to virtual meetings as well. [12:35] Sophia Cameron: So they were also very well within the budget. So if we want to, you know, we have that chunk of money set aside for specifically this. So that means that we can kind of ask for more. We think we need more from them. [12:51] Karen S. Marysdaughter: We were awarded 75,000 through the IRA grant. Grant Eocene came in at 53,960. We have been in touch with the Forest Service and those funds, excess funds, are not strictly earmarked for management plan, so we're working through the finer details to see whether those funds could be allocated to different resources management and then based on their recommendations possibly, you know, purchasing [13:29] Daniel A. Shaw: planting stock for the new nursery. So well you, it's my recollection is that you had things that were a bottom line you wanted them to do. You had some additional things that depending on the budget might ask them to do, so were they, how many of those things fit into that budget? I think they [13:47] Karen S. Marysdaughter: They pretty much covered everything, I let me look at our notes here. I think they pretty much it on everything, but as they were more open to as we progress in the meetings, adding things in. For instance, in their bid they didn't mention climate change. change, but that's something we would like to see be included, and they were very receptive to, yeah, we can, we can add in a section on climate change. And all out of all of them, I think these and one other bidder were open to myself having, you know, input on how the plan is and then being very receptive and respectful tree board members input and members of the public. So and it's all mostly on the ground prescription versus some of the other companies would use some remote sensing, you know, lidar Drones air elementary to write a plan and have staff outside of the core group writing the plan, you know, just have a writing team write the plan. So it was very far removed for some of those. It's more focused and tailored, and that timeline for them to begin, timeline for them to begin, they I believe it was [15:35] Sophia Cameron: as soon as it goes through the finance committee, which I think is the 21st. Yeah, I believe those here. So once that goes through approval, it's they said that we would have our kickoff meeting [15:48] Karen S. Marysdaughter: I mean, we didn't let them know officially yet, but yeah. And then they were also pretty short on a timeline. I think it was what, a year, 15 months, 15 or something. Yeah, and that plan also included an operational plan to guide myself and the department or division, as well as a management plan to look at the big pictures. [16:19] Gregory Edwards: So do you know how much, how much in terms of public feedback, what they designed for that [16:30] Karen S. Marysdaughter: Like a public meeting? Yes, yep, I believe they have either two public meetings. So one initial kickoff and then I believe a follow-up meeting as they are writing the plan. Okay. [16:53] Gregory Edwards: And I don't think you need us to because you're get all the, yeah, oh yeah, no, and it's it's all [17:07] Karen S. Marysdaughter: publicly available. All the bid tabs they are on the finance website, but I can also forward you the bid tabs individually, or if you wanted to send the procon sheet, that would be nice. [17:19] Gregory Edwards: That would give us an understanding of what was in the proposals. [17:30] Karen S. Marysdaughter: Do you like us to give a thumbs up so that at least you know, when you go to finance committee, you're like, Oh, yeah, I mean, don't don't feel pressured to say yay or nay. Now I've given you very little information. [17:46] Sophia Cameron: They're very well respected. They've done a lot of plans for similarly sized cities. I think he's the director, but Dr. Howard is a very well respected Midwestern University professor, along with being involved in this project, and I checked in on a lot of his research that he has done specifically for urban forestry and it seems very sound and well guided. Good, okay, that brings us to Sophia. All of you were here for my last presentation, no one is new, correct? Okay, I shared it with you so that should hopefully work. [Annette Dodd: I was going] to do like a 45 minute long thing, But since you have all heard kind of the broad strokes of this before I might skip through a little bit in order to, you know, save us all a little bit of time. So this is mostly going to be kind of a presentation of what the final drafted final draft. This is a living document so it's going to be edited as time goes on. I would really encourage you all to kind of review it at your leisure, because there's a lot in here. there however I'm not going to explain to you guys what EAB is again looking I'm sure everyone is familiar at this point I'm probably not going to spend a ton of time going back over the inventory but we are going to talk kind of about what the final recommendations of all of this is just so you are all aware and we would like to kind of extend the time of this so that y'all can offer questions insight things that you would like to see included things that you think would improve it things that you think could be admitted just so that way when we take it to the infrastructure committee for final approval it has kind of all of your guys's stamp of approval and again like Ben said with the urban forest management plan situation if that requires that we meet again after you've read through this whole thing let us know and we can do that as long as it's before the 21st well great so this obviously was my master's project and ben was a major help in it aaron was a major help in it before he left and then i also had a lot of advisement from Dr. Jessica Leahy who does a lot of work with kind of citizen-facing forestry stuff and how you go through the sociology of having an urban forest. She also kind of wrote the main book on how to have a wood bank, which was super helpful as part of this. Dr. Adam Degna, who is the director of the School of Forest Resources at the University of Maine Orem now, but has been their economics professor for many years and then Dr William Livingston who is the in-house expert on pests tree pests so this is the screenshot of the updated quarantine map for Emerald Ash Borer from the Maine Forest Service you can see that the new additions in 2025 a lot of them are in areas where there was already populations of emerald ash borer known populations but we do Have these satellite jumps, one specifically here in Belfast and one on Mount Desert Island. Both of those, I believe, were found this spring. And you can also see that from this is Herman, and from what would that time be, but it has jumped into Stetson as well, so it has crossed the town line there. We still have no confirmed cases in Bangor as of yet. We are actively, we've been doing this past spring since we've had a lot of movement on the project, we have been speaking to the media a lot, which I think has generated a lot of attention, and we've had really good feedback from that for the most part, and people specifically in town have seemed very engaged, which has been great, because the more eyes we have on this, the better. One of the questions that I got a lot through this whole process was, why are we worrying now? I think there's often this thought process that you need to wait until you see emerald ash borer within an area to start acting. This is from a study from Smithley et al in 2008 where they essentially were looking at how long it would take for emerald ash borer to travel from an epicenter that they identified. So over the course of the year, you could see 40 thinning of the canopy, which was their metric, which essentially is the point at which you start to notice a tree is an active decline, when they have lost 40 of their canopy. They found that within a year it was 12 miles from the epicenter, and within three years it was 32 miles from the epicenter. So that's about a 10 mile increase per year of infestation, and some of that is short-range dispersal, because they can fly up to a couple miles from the tree that they're on if need be, but they only really do that if they've run out of food on that tree, so that typically is after many years of infestation. This dispersal is more from human interactions, so that's where we have the wood quarantines and trying to keep things more contained. But just that being said, we do know it is in Herman. I don't know where specifically in Herman, but from the center of Herman to downtown Bangor is less than seven miles, and it has been there since 2023, correct? So at this point, while we haven't identified it in Bangor, because it is slow to progress until all at once you have a bunch of dead trees, it is pretty safe to assume that it is somewhere in the city, especially given that we've had now two summers since it was identified there, and we had this I-95 corridor here where there's tons of recreation and tons of people burning firewood [24:42] Daniel A. Shaw: Do you have a question? Are you gonna address the or describe the wood quarantine? Oh yes, yeah. [24:48] Sophia Cameron: Yeah, I can go, how do I go back a slide, so the wood quarantine specifically. This map is a good version of it. The active quarantine zone is these hash marks here. The idea of that is that no wood should move out of these areas into any of the non hash marked areas. That being said, that doesn't mean the wood can't come from areas that aren't in the quarantine zone into this, because the idea is this is where the insect may be and this is where we definitely know the insect at this point is not and so obviously when you have this big jump what you're seeing here is someone from either further New England or elsewhere brought some sort of wood product or from Southern Maine and then went to Belfast which is a high recreation high tourism area or to mount Desert Island which is a high recreation high tourism area so I'm wondering how it works [25:48] Daniel A. Shaw: because we got firewood delivered from a new person this spring and he'd never heard of the emerald ash borer where do you know what town it came from it was right in this local area I asked him that because I said there's you know they don't want it's traveling any distance but he had literally never heard of emerald ash borer I was very concerned yeah so there are best [26:07] Sophia Cameron: management practices in place within these quarantine zones which we are happy to share that resource with you all via email should you want it and I think when we finally post this final project after it's been approved to the website that will be accompanied by several main forest service resources as well just because I think those are incredibly useful especially when it comes to quarantine but there are rules around like if you harvest it in October because the insect is dormant through the winter. If you harvest it in the late fall and move it and then use it before the spring when there's emergence, then you can, then that's fine. And there's debarking processes. And if you can grind it, then use it for biomass, then that's okay. Just anything that's ensuring that the insect either is killed inside of the wood or it doesn't move out of the area, then that is all. Okay the idea is like we don't want to have a firewood log sitting outside your house that then suddenly explodes with adults in the return but I mean if it came from Penobscot County if you look at this as long as it didn't come from one of these two towns [27:22] Daniel A. Shaw: It was from Penobscot County, yeah, and most of Penobscot County is not yet in quarantine, so [27:29] Sophia Cameron: So that raises your chances a little bit less likely. Any other questions on this? So risk posed by emerald ash borer, I believe I talked about this at the last meeting as well. Through this research process, I found that there is actually a study on how brittle this wood becomes, and it's about 10% more brittle than like normal deadwood. A lot of that is because of the galleries and it really screws up the structural integrity. And then additionally, the top of that tree gets really dry really fast. So what you have is situations like this where you can see this is the dirt road. This is a rural area. We're not in a rural area in downtown Bangor where we have a lot of our really big ash trees. So just by chance, without anything happening, you'll have a tree that falls on a car, falls on a person or a branch that falls on the road. And then Ben gets called back from vacation early because you have emergency situations. So all that being said, knowing that it's in Herman, and knowing the risk that it poses to public safety, public health, and damaged private property, acting now is not unreasonable. I will review this pretty heavily in my last presentation as well. We did complete the urban and street tree inventory, which we're calling the Custi. Just for abbreviation's sake, we walked literally every street in the city, which was enlightening and awesome, and we got point-by-point data of every publicly owned tree. Again, that doesn't include any privately owned trees, and it doesn't include any trees in the forested areas, however, this summer, that was what me and Ben were doing all day, We are going through the process of doing a more traditional forest inventory of Prentice, Brown, Essex, and I think we're using the inventory data from Dave Irving, who was our consulting forester for this Roland Perry City Forest. So we're going to have that data, and that will give pretty good estimates on the percentages of ash that we have. Additionally, we with that we are walking the trails in all of those places and making note of any ash trees that are kind of within falling distance of those trails that are over eight inches, so things that would become hazardous pretty quickly, and that way parks and rec are aware of them looking forward. And with that we had sort of tree by tree data on whether or not they were over house, whether or not they were over utility lines, in over sidewalks, over roadways, things like that, and it also meant that we could identify trees that were good candidates for treatment just based on how full their canopy was, whether or not they had structural defects. And I'm saying that because it's important moving forward when we talk about how we made these decisions. Total number of active urban trees is 8,574 and the total number of active urban ash is 1854, so that's about 20 of the urban canopy, which is a very large portion, especially when you notice that the other 22 percent is Norway maples, which as Ben just said we have had a lot of trouble with. Many of those are over mature, many of those were planted incorrectly in the incorrect place, many of them Norway maples are prone to things like ice damage and wind throw, and they just don't hold up when they get older. Additionally, they're an invasive plant species in the state. So we were in Essex Woods today, and there's this one section that I call the Norway maple forest because all the Norway maple saplings have out-competed all of the red maples or other hardwoods. So having a high percentage of them is okay for now, but the recommendation is that we step away from that, obviously. They're also prone to another invasive beetle species that is not found in Maine yet, but was in Massachusetts several years ago. That's a little bit more manageable because it's easier to notice it sooner, but just something to keep in mind that we already know that there's an invasive insect species that does favor northern eagles in the New England region. And then if you notice, everything else is below 10% of the population. So this is a very non-biodiverse urban canopy that we have here. And if you were to slash that 20 of it, what are we left with? And it's invasive tree species and not much else. So all that being said, that sounds very grim. It is awesome that we have this data because it means that we can make some really tailored decisions for this specific problem, which was great planning on Ben and Aaron's part. So our recommended management strategies again, this also isn't new to you all, treating them. And when I say treating, I mean chemical treatment, injecting them with a product called emamectin benzoate that has been found to be incredibly effective in preventing emelash, well, preventing and treating emelash. Or if you inject it into an already infested tree, it will kill the infestation and the tree can't recover. You just have to catch it early enough. Additionally, we identified through that inventory trees that were already considered somewhat hazardous and would become more hazardous in the future, trees that weren't necessarily planted in the right place, trees that were looming over people's houses or growing up through power lines, and we identified those as trees that can't be treated and then so should be planned for removal ahead of this infestation or as soon as we detect emerald ash borer in the area, getting started on that so that when those trees become infested they aren't posing these major hazards and I'll show you some examples of that in a moment. Additionally, replacement, so we want to replace any removed Ash trees with new trees to maintain future canopy coverage with an emphasis on increasing that species diversity as well as taking things like climate change into consideration and making sure things are planted in the right place. We also want to increase future canopy by planting more trees that are removed every year, which is ambitious but doable, especially with the nursery situation, and then like I said, improving species diversity and climate resilience. Continuing to monitor is a really big deal. One of the tenants of integrated pest management is to continue to look after the things that you're treating with insecticide to make sure that they're responding well and it's working, and then additionally continuing with that really strong public education and outreach component of this that we've already been sort of working on as we've gone through this process so our treatment strategy like I said we are using an mm actin benzoate product Ben was recently licensed as a pesticide applicator and you're working on your master's license now so for this year we did contract with a license or a master pesticide applicator ron woman who is lives in the area and he was there to supervise as he and ben did injections this year hopefully by next year ben will be fully licensed and then we won't need to assume that extra cost of a contracted pesticide applicator. Essentially what this process is, you drill a hole into the base of the trunk here, and then you use, it's a pneumatic injector. So it's calibrated to inject the specific amount that you want to use, and it gets injected into the tree through these little things called arbor plugs, which kind of targets it into that vascular tissue that the insect feeds on, and then it's translocated within the tree through that vascular tissue so that if there are larvae feeding in the trunk, they eat that tissue and they die. die. Additionally it does, if applied at the correct rate, reach the canopy, and the adults are leaf eaters, and so then it's kind of a two-pronged attack system where you have the larvae inside the tree dying from what they're eating, and the adults outside the tree dying from what they're eating, and it, like I said, it can work as either a preventative treatment or a retroactive treatment if you do identify animal dashboard. The thing that we're doing with this, because this lasts for three years, once you inject it once, is we are starting from the west side of Bangor, which is closest to Hermann, where we know there's an active infestation. And I'll talk a little bit more about this at the end, but we have injected these 85 trees in green this year, so that those trees are now good to go for the next three years. So should anything have already jumped over or jump over within the next little while, they'll be protected. And then the following year, next year in the spring, we will do the ones in yellow, and then the next year we'll do the ones in orange. And this is a cost saving method if we treated all of these at once. It would be a very large lump sum every 3 years, and this way we're spreading out the cost across a greater time period. And we intend to do that because the killing front of the insect is typically 7 to 10 years long. And when I say killing front, I mean like the insect passes ahead and eats all of the food and there's nothing left for any insects behind it. So the idea is they can't necessarily jump back. So we intend to continue this and continue to do this for three cycles, so that would be a total of nine years, and then reassess at the end of that nine year period to determine if it's safe to stop treating or if we should add on another cycle just to make sure that it doesn't stay in the area. Required removal strategy, like I said, these are those images of trees that are not eligible for treatment at this time. The major things that I want to point out here is, A, this is pretty obvious. This is like leaning towards a children's playground. On the other side of this tree, which I didn't get a good picture of, it this whole side is ripped out from a branch that fell off. It's never going to grow straight. It has this weak point in the middle of it, you can't really see it, but from the zero turn mower from the folks that mow the parks, there's some damage at the base. You can see it a little bit better here. This tree is leaning towards this uninsulated top power line, which could be a major fire hazard if dead branches start falling on it. You see there are exposed roots here that are getting hit by a lawnmower. There's damage at the base. There's some very light blonding here that could indicate some sort of health issue. And then you'll also notice that it is, the term lion's tail? What is the, yeah. So it doesn't have any lower branches. It's all weighted to one side and kind of just has this one little puff ball at the top. Additionally, this tree is, I think this one was 18 inches in diameter, which if that falls on a car is a pretty big deal. So the way we identified these trees was again we had all that information from the inventory and we put it through this crazy looking flow chart that I won't spend a ton of time on, but essentially that allowed us to assess the risk that each tree posed, specifically ash trees. And so you would have this is group one up here, and those are trees that should be removed as soon as possible, as soon as we identify emerald dashboard in the area. Removal group two could wait a year or two. Removal group three could wait a couple more years and four a couple more. And this is spread out across because of each of these groups across a four-year period anticipated depending on kind of staffing disciplines moving forward. Replacement strategy. I've shown you all this figure before. We get a lot of ecosystem system services from our urban trees that people don't necessarily think to evaluate and I thought through this project it would be incredibly important to add value to them so I'll show you that in a moment but this is things like dealing with an urban heat island effect which occurs because you have these tall buildings that are tracking heat below it additionally we have tons of paved services in the city which attract and retain heat so trees can sort of mitigate that you get reduced rates of heart disease reduced obesity levels reduce stress levels that lead to fewer cardiac situations because you have more people recreating because it's nicer to be outside when there are more trees filters air pollution increases property values they manage storm water in a big way and then additionally just all the other sort of ecosystem wildlife habitat scenarios that you have from urban trees another thing that was not on this that I found really interesting Because I'm from the city of Philadelphia and there was a study out of the city of Philadelphia where they found that the more trees you have in and along the streets the fewer car accidents and the less crime overall and that was that was pretty strongly supported by their research so there's a lot of things that we get from this that are important and so when we're moving through this process while we do have to remove trees we need to make sure that we are also adding in more just so we can meet that goal of increasing our urban canopy additionally though we want to make sure that we're planting the right tree in the right place and so that we don't get things that look like this and Ben has been really good about putting together a list for citizens that want tree replacements that make sure that they're appropriately sized so hopefully in the future we won't have Versant doing this to trees. So in order to evaluate all of these things I did a cost-benefit analysis. This also included going through the process of figuring out estimated costs of treatment and estimated costs of removals. So this is going to be a bunch of numbers. It will be summarized at the end so bear with me. So we selected those 250 treatment trees, and again we treated 85 of those this year. The discounted benefit that those trees provide, based on a study by Kovacs at all, that essentially assigned values to trees based on x, y, or z, the total for all of those trees was 461 000, and this is over that nine year treatment cycle that I mentioned. That's discounted by five percent over that time period because money spent today is worth more than money spent later, so it just gives a better estimate of what that cost would be. So per tree the benefit that is provided is 1 846. The discounted cost of treating those trees using the product that we used, and this is even a little bit inflated because we found some new research after i made this presentation that lowered that injection rate, so that was 26 864 dollars, and across that nine-year treatment cycle, or 107 dollars per tree. The cost of removing them, and this was assumed to just be within house labor and not using a contractor, which would not necessarily be the case, so again this number is probably lower than it would be realistically, was one thousand one hundred and fifty eight thousand dollars, or 634 per tree. So you can obviously see already this cost far outweighs this cost, and then additionally it was 384 per tree to replace every single one of those, and only just replace it, not increase by adding extra trees as well. So the summary of this is it costs less to treat these trees over nine years than it costs to remove and replace them. If these trees are chemically treated, then we also get to prefer preserve this $1,846 benefit that they provide, and then additionally if we treat them you avoid the cost of possible property damage and public safety risk if you do nothing, and you avoid the increased cost of removal if you take them down after they're infested, because again those trees become very brittle, and at that point you do have to hire a contractor to take them down. So in this way this makes a lot of sense, and we've already started with treating these trees, so we also identified those 436 required removal trees across the city. These are trees that can't be treated, so we didn't calculate their benefit, simply because they can't be preserved in the urban canopy. But we did want to calculate sort of an estimated budget of what it would cost to take those tree down, trees down. And again, since we have that tree by tree data of whether or not something was over an uninsulated top line, or if something was over someone's house. We knew which trees would need to be removed by a contractor and which ones could be removed by Ben's team, so it would be one thousand two hundred and twenty one dollars to per tree to remove the contractor trees, and then 572 dollars to remove them in-house. So the thing that I want to highlight here is again, removing these trees is an optional, and by taking them down now, you would avoid the cost of property damage and public safety if you don't do anything with them, and then you also avoid that increased cost. Additionally though, it's noticeable that it is half the cost to have all of this done in-house, so that's just something to think about moving [45:03] Daniel A. Shaw: forward in terms of investing resources into, but that, so that accounts for 250 trees being treated, 436 moved now, but you still got up to that other 1800. Yeah,, so this is the big thing [45:20] Sophia Cameron: that we would like your guys's input on. We ran the numbers, so the benefits of these trees, which it was, yeah, over a thousand, one thousand something, 400, I had that summary thing and I took it out for the other presentation, I never put back in, it's seven, over seven million dollars across a 10-year period. We used a 10-year period for this one because again, that's that killing threat, so we were looking at like what benefits would these provide across that time period that we're going to lose them. So yeah, over $7 million or over $6,000 per tree. The cost of treating them would be $36,000 or $31 per tree across that 10 year period. Again, that could adjust if we want to work them into that nine year treatment cycle. And then it would be $582,000 or $498 per tree to remove them. And again, this was determined to be based on just removing, moving them in-house. I believe, yes. So that cost would increase if we were needing to hire contractors to do this. And then additionally, replacing them would be $327 per tree. So the summary of that is, obviously, if you want to preserve this $7 million benefit, you don't want to spend $500,000 taking them down. And it makes a lot more sense to spend $31 dollars per tree to then preserve that six thousand dollar benefit. Is that 31 dollars per year per tree? Yes, so essentially this was discounted across 10 years, but it was the original price was calculated across the 10 years, summed and then divided by the number of trees, so it's per trees across a 10-year period. And that's in-house treatment? Yes, yeah, with the assumption again this number is reduced, so that would probably be even less money. This is 2.5 mils. [47:23] Karen S. Marysdaughter: Now how much time does it take to treat a tree, one tree? Depending on the diameter would take probably [47:31] Daniel A. Shaw: probably less than 10 minutes, 10 to 20 minutes. How many trees is this now for the math of the 436 and the cooler could be? This is 1168. Okay, thank you. So thank you, sorry, 1200 trees. [47:46] Sophia Cameron: That slide didn't make it back into this, I had to shorten it and then lengthen it again. Well [47:51] Daniel A. Shaw: that certainly seems like a no-brainer, but the question is where the 36 000 is going to come [47:56] Sophia Cameron: promise, that's the question. Yeah, that's what we need input on here, and I'll we'll go through my final recommendations, which kind of involves that. The other part of this is monitoring. Ben did make some trap trees sort of over near the Herman border. Did you end up taking those down yet? Okay, they're along the Herman border. The idea of this is when you stress out an ash tree it produces pheromones that attract the adult borers, so if you engineer a stressed tree they'll fly to the top of it and you give it a year or two and then you can cut them down and look at the upper canopy and see if the insect has arrived there, and that way you can confirm that they're in the area and that they are flying in this direction. Additionally, I'm sure you've seen them, the main forest service has put up purple prism traps kind of dispersed across the city, same concept. They have that pheromone chemically engineered and put into these traps and they're sticky on the outside so the insects will fly to them land on them and then they take those down and periodically do a count to see if they can find any. Additionally we do have that private ash tree reporting feature that is live on cclickfix. We do intend to add a mo dashboard sighting feature, but for the time being we are accepting calls if people are seeing them, the same way that you would any other kind of work order situation. And then the other part of this is like continuing to have people out on, you know, a fairly regular basis looking after The trees that we have treated, because we've invested that money in them, and we want to make sure that they're doing well and not getting harmed. I think a big part of this is going to be engaging with the community and trying to promote some stewardship through that. I think the amount of positive feedback we've gotten so far has been really promising. Obviously there are some people that don't like the positioning of a tree or don't like things in a certain space and don't necessarily know that it's publicly owned, so I think just sort of talking to the public more about why it's important to keep these trees well and healthy and make sure that they're cared for into the future is really important as well [50:12] Daniel A. Shaw: But remind me, I know we talked about this before, but any biological controls? Yes. Yeah, at this time [50:19] Sophia Cameron: I don't believe they're releasing any in urban areas. We have thought about that as an option for the City Forest because it meets the acreage criteria for the Maine Forest Service release of a emerald ash borer parasite. I'm forgetting the species, it's a small wasp and it parasitizes the larvae. We have talked about that but not necessarily pulled the trigger on it because I do believe you need to have an identification within a certain mileage of the release site, so that may be something to look into in the future, but and you can't control where those parasites go after you at least them, so it's very possible they would then go and hop our urban trees as well, so that's something to consider. Public outreach and education, Ben has been really good about staying in touch with the Banger School Department, specifically the high school, and getting some high school science students involved with this effort, which was great because they go back home and talk to their parents about it and talk to their friends about it and all this other stuff, and we had a couple of kids really engaged with it and I think we want to continue that into the future. We've given talks to local organizations, Ben and I presented to the Rotary Club at Bangor to talk about this. We've also had a couple articles in the Bangor Daily News, we've been on News Center, we've been on WABI, we've been on Spectrum, all just kind of beating the drum and letting people know what's going on. Additionally, we've been in touch Not super recently, but I'm hoping for the end of the summer to be back in touch with local Penobscot basket makers. There is potential that they could use some of our green ash wood to make baskets, and we obviously want to give them the right of first refusal to that because of the cultural importance of this and also their knowledge around forest stewardship is pretty indispensable. So we want to make sure they're very much involved, and through that we've worked with the Ash Protection Collaboration across Wabanaki out of the University of Maine, and they have been super helpful in a lot of ways. Additional considerations, and this is part of where we want a lot of your input, would use and disposal. Like I mentioned, wood banks are an option. We just have to make sure we're following those quarantine regulations, which would mean that we're figuring out a way to somehow make sure that people aren't moving that ash wood out of Bangor, or make sure that we're seasoning it for an appropriate amount of time so that by the time it is moved out of Bangor, because inevitably someone will do that accidentally or otherwise, that the borer isn't a threat to the area that it's moved to. We also want to explore what to do about folks privately owned ash trees that pose a risk to their homes, to other people's homes. I think a lot of that is in that public outreach and education component. I think another part of that is folks kind of talking to their neighbors and figuring out a plan for their neighborhood, and you know, yeah, just continuing to make this a topic of conversation, exploring additional partnerships. I know someone at the Main Forest Service had mentioned talking to person about getting some of these trees that are hazardous because they're under the power lines like just fully removed by them to save us that cost because that's in their best interest as well. And then additionally continuing to kind of foster cooperation across all of Bangor's departments, Parks and Rec is obviously going to play a major role in this, city planners office, school department, because we have a couple of treatment trees on their school grounds. So just making sure that everyone is talking to each other. So recommendation summary, this is a lot, but I'm, I'm going to run through it. This is also everything that I've talked about is in this plan. So if you need to refer back to anything at any time and you want to email me and ask questions, I'm happy to do that as well. So we want to treat those 250 selected treatment trees. And again, I didn't get a chance to revise this, but with two and a half milliliters per inch diameter of emamectin benzoate starting in the spring of 2025 and continuing for nine years on that three year rotation. We also want to remove those 436 required removal trees in order of the most hazardous at least hazardous across a 4 to 5 year period. There is wiggle room on that, obviously, because it's going to move across the city on a year by year basis. So there is some flexibility there, depending on staffing and how quickly they can come down. Continuing to monitor and assess the remaining ash trees and that should be performed over the next one to two years to determine when emerald ash borer arrives in Bangor and also determine if there are any more eligible that could be added to the treatment tree list. Replant lost ash. Encourage Bangor citizens to follow state regulated wood quarantines and explore options for ashwood use and then keep the public well informed regarding emerald ash borer management strategies. Number three is where we would really like your input financially and from an economic perspective it makes a lot of sense to treat a lot more trees that's what other cities have found and that's my official recommendation within this plan. That being said, determining where those funds come from is going to be a big deal and I think also making sure that the City Council is aware of how important it is to try and protect as many of these trees for as long as possible. It's a big deal. One of the concepts I often find that people don't necessarily process is that this is not a permanent treatment situation. This is not forever. This is not in perpetuity. The idea is that you're treating them for the period of time that the insect is in the area, whether the storm allow it to pass over and then reassess and see where you're at. And I think that's the part that is often lost in translation here, so just something to keep in mind. And then updates as of now, as of June 18th, 85 of those trees have been injected, and these were the total costs of them. Again, these are inflated from what they will probably be next year because the number of trees will be like four or less, because I think we're treating 81 next year and 80 the following. And additionally, we did have a contractor helping us, and so he charged his rate on top of the product. Whereas with Ben, we were simply just calculating the product cost. So it was $1,886.10 out of the parks and recs budget, $808 out of the golf course budget, $330.60 out of the school department budget, and $2,341.50 out of the public works budget, for a total of five thousand three hundred and seventy four dollars and twenty cents this year to treat those trees. And again, that can vary year to year because we are basing this pricing on the size of the tree, so the larger the tree, the more product you have to use, the more expensive it is. These trees have been monitored in the following weeks for any adverse health effects. We haven't seen any. We've gotten a lot of rain, which means everything has gone swimmingly. And then we're continuing to monitor for EAV in the city and encouraging the public to reach out if they have any reports of potentially infested trees. So tell your friends to look at their ash trees, please. Yeah, so thanks, Ben. Thanks to Aaron. Thanks to everyone who was on my committee and the other interns that helped me out last summer, as well as all the folks at the Maine Forest Service and ACWA. But yeah, are there any questions? I know you're kind of asking as we went along. [58:14] Daniel A. Shaw: It's a lot, it's like drinking out of fires. Well, not so much questions. Is the private trees, I think, are really big concern. I also just, your last few comments, I assume there's some data from areas where one locality has treated and the ones around them have not. It's sort of like covid, you know what happens in terms of that, the storm passes, but they're neighboring towns, I've presumably the insects have eaten all the food in those towns and then they're gone too and they just lost all their trees in this scenario theory I don't know that there has [58:56] Sophia Cameron: been anything out of the Midwest yet on what kind of the long term because so this was a complicated situation because we've had one introduction in the Midwest and that was in 2002. There was a following independent introduction into the mid-Atlantic region of the East Coast several years later I believe it was like 2008-2009. Those two infestations are staggered then, so we, the Midwest has theoretically had the killing front pass over it, but that hit them so quickly and with no advance notice that they didn't have time to react. By the time they were reacting, their trees were already dying, because they, that's how they knew that it was happening, was the trees were already dead. So there's not a ton of long-term proactive treatment research out of the Midwest. There is in kind of research controlled settings, but not in the scenario that you just laid out where like it's one town did something and other towns didn't. There is more of that on the East Coast, because there was a little bit of a heads up when the Midwest got it first, and then it spread more slowly up the eastern seaboard, and we are in a very fortunate position that we are the northernmost state on the East Coast, and so we are the last ones to get it. So a lot of this comes from the experience of those further south from us, and I talked a lot of folks from New Hampshire and their equivalent of the Forest Service down there, and the stuff that they did, and what worked and what didn't. So what I am trying to get at is that a lot of this has not been done before. Treating proactively has not been done before, to my knowledge, and if it has been, it is not necessarily published in the usual sources. So I can look into that, absolutely, because I'm curious to know as well, but from my research through this whole process, that was not a scenario I necessarily came across so this is i don't want to call it a grand experiment because hopefully it goes really well and it isn't that experimental because it's based on a lot of other research that has happened but it's it 's a big deal in the forestry community if this works i [1:01:27] Gregory Edwards: have questions on the difference between the 250 that we're definitely treating, which are 108 per tree, and the rest, the [1:01:37] Sophia Cameron: 1100 that are 31 dollars, is that just an economy scale thing? That, yes. Yeah, essentially. And then additionally that adds an extra year onto it, because we didn't know how they would necessarily be worked into that nine-year treatment cycle. If we wanted to add on a fourth year and make it a, what would that be, like a 10-year treatment cycle or something, so those costs are subject to change as well. And then additionally, sorry, a lot of those trees, this is all dependent on diameter, a lot of those trees the 250 that we elected to treat, are those like big canopy trees that are like, you go to Hayford Park and you see the massive ones there? A lot of these other ones are on the smaller set, so that also changes the cost. And if that would [1:02:25] Gregory Edwards: be the table set on 49 that has already the rest in between, it looks like it's only like an extra 4500 the first year to treat those extra 1100, which seems a little, it seems hard to imagine just because there's so many trees, they're spread out. Yeah, you have to go to each other. So is that [1:02:46] Sophia Cameron: including costs, I mean time, each one of those estimates in the time that it would take to inject, which I estimated to be 10 to 20 minutes, right? And that is all based on in-house costs, estimated in-house costs, so Ben and hopefully other crew members participating in that. Again, if we had to hire a contractor to meet that volume, that would increase this cost. All of that being said, the proposal is not that we treat all 1100 of those, because obviously there's going to be circumstantial situations where some of those, even though they didn't get flagged as hazardous, are still not planted in the right place, but they're really good form, but like they're not going to stay there long term kind of thing. So that this would be a process of like going back through the inventory, going back through the inspection process, and identifying just a larger number. And then again, as we move through time, keeping an eye on them, making sure things don't happen to them, right? [1:03:49] Gregory Edwards: Yeah, and like this number looks great on paper, but I know from experience there's nobody working at the forestry department. Yeah, I mean there are people working there. Well, like you know, in the nineties we have like, you know, 20 or 30 people there, and Roland Perry and like a whole forestry crew. And now it's like it's really hard to have the staff time to send someone out there to do this. Yeah, and that's what it looks great on paper. [1:04:14] Sophia Cameron: Yes, absolutely. And is it funded currently out of the 250 trees will be funded out of bench Ben's budget. That was already kind of determined, and that was why we wanted to start injecting this year, and why there's not necessarily a rush, because it is a good time to start. But we wanted to set a precedent that this is something that is in this budget, and this is something that will be spent money on year to year in terms of future funding. Obviously things are about to tighten up from the forest service and from nrcs and the usual grant funding sources. So that is a situation we need to think about which I'm not well-versed in how all of that works. So I'll defer to them. I mean, every year you go in front of State Council. Have they City Council, then they are this presentation in an abbreviated version was given to them at the last infrastructure committee. And I've spoken to them about it before that as well, and this was sort of just an idea, and we haven't gone through the full process yet. They were all actually they were receptive, I would say. There was one council member who wasn't at the last meeting, so I guess not everyone is super aware, but they all have copies of the plan and have been asked to review it. [1:05:44] Gregory Edwards: Has the 2026 budget process gone through and ended yes so if we were looking at trying to add in the rest of these trees it would be a 2027 budget correct and like I mean the other scary number on here is what happens when they actually do die which they will and that was the other part [1:06:08] Sophia Cameron: Of this that we couldn't include in this because we don't have that data because that would require required going through and figuring out how to get hospital bills that have redacted HIPAA information and how to get car insurance claim information and how to get versant damages and for me or power line damages information from other cities to get even a very rough estimate of how much that would cost but the assumption is that would be less than whatever this yeah 31 per tree dollar cost is Or whatever this $107 per tree cost is so yeah that would I don't want to make it sound more stressful than it is but that would be a very high cost to public health and also public perception yeah suddenly a bunch of trees are dead yeah we haven't taken and we're not actively removing or planting as of yet, but not in this not for this project. Obviously there's regular, you know, when they know stuff. [1:07:17] Gregory Edwards: So I would assume that we all want to save as many of the ashes. It's like it's just from facts. It makes sense. So the real question is, like, how do we do that? Because we've been pushing for four or three to have more staff forever and we get a few more people and then they drop off like it's it's an it's an ongoing battle but this is like a clear thing that if we were to somehow fix that problem get somebody full-time who's mastered herbicide pesticide certified that can be their job like treating these and dealing with the other invasives that we'll be dealing with because that should also probably be part of the forestry service is dealing with invasives yeah and getting that into the 2026 2077 budget as like a staff person hired to do that yeah I think that [1:08:12] Sophia Cameron: would be wise and or investing in the already existing arborist positions so that those people want to stay yes and who's in charge of making that budget is that who then or who does it's [1:08:30] Karen S. Marysdaughter: a combined effort we sit down every division sits down with the director and usually winter time and goes over wants needs desires for next fiscal year to bring forward for or Finance Committee and then those items are brought forward 2026 we did not have final numbers for treatment removal Etc prior to that meeting so I don't have anything earmarked for [1:09:00] Annette Dodd: that but so [1:09:05] Gregory Edwards: I guess I don't know who would answer this question if we if this I mean we give the City Council Chambers and it goes to City Council, and they give the thumbs up to this the recommendation is to treat the 1,100 extra trees, and that is in here. So, you know, hopefully once because we're very low on the total, we don't actually have any decision. our we just give recommendations once it gets up to the city council level and you know city manager's been here for more than a couple months and you've got a new public works director like hopefully they will take this thing that they voted to do and make it happen somehow yeah [1:09:50] Sophia Cameron: I think the thing that is absent from this and it was mainly because they didn't necessarily want to overstep because I don't necessarily know how this system works is the suggestion that staffing be increased I think right now is that like a two sentence situation of you should increase staff the logistics of how that happens could be added into this [1:10:12] Gregory Edwards: time infrastructure it could be an urban forestry management plan yes that was what I was hoping to get out of that plan yes here's how many people we should have and a half dozen arborists [1:10:26] Karen S. Marysdaughter: on the staff as opposed to yes one arborist yeah and that was the other fruitful thing i came out with speaking with eocene about their plan they will have the ability to look at city of bangor our number of assets or a number of trees square mileage and then say hey so and so city and in the midwest who has the same number of city streets city trees has this many forestry division employees right and then they get this much yeah so yeah they will be able to provide some insight as to correct Suggested staffing, right? That would be nice, because I know other [1:11:07] Gregory Edwards: departments in the city, like they're always like, we're owners, understaffing is like, oh yeah, but there are departments that have gotten to full staffing, so it's, I think we could do that. Oh, [1:11:19] Karen S. Marysdaughter: Oh, yeah, and Public Works is no different. We get full. We lose a few. We get full. We lose a few. We have five interviews next week for interviews for general heavy equipment operators. [1:11:33] Annette Dodd: So certainly it's certainly possible. [1:11:40] Gregory Edwards: I think that answers all my questions. We're also, we're gonna be way over time. We already are. Sorry. As long as people know when they're finding it, you can leave whatever you want. We're not [1:11:54] Daniel A. Shaw: well, there's so many, so many questions. Yeah, very quickly, in terms of that, the C-Click fix, the private, privately owned Ashby inventory, are you getting any response? I mean, I went and did mine, but I'm getting a response to that. I'll be pretty blunt. No. Yeah, [1:12:11] Karen S. Marysdaughter: got to think too, in probably a year that it has been. Yeah, so there, people obviously are not [1:12:19] Sophia Cameron: getting the word on that yeah and i think there is definitely opportunity to do more like face-to-face conversation as opposed to trying to disseminate that information through various online sources [1:12:36] Daniel A. Shaw: resources or media sources. Yeah, but that seems like a project students, maybe high school students or college students, a door-to-door, or you know, a door hanger thing, or some way that the word could get out. Yeah, in neighborhoods, even if those teams could identify estuaries and say, you have an asterisk, because a lot of people probably don't even know you have an asterisk in your yard, and here's what's coming. Yeah, but I, yeah, I think I'm very concerned about that, because threats to public safety are just as big from a privately owned tree as from a publicly owned. Yeah, absolutely. [1:13:17] Sophia Cameron: And additionally, the benefits of those trees provider, yeah, equally as important as the ones that are publicly owned. So the other thing to explore further in the future because we've got the nursery kind of getting off the ground right now, so that's going to help a lot with increasing the volume of trees planted every year for publicly owned areas is Lewiston. And I encourage you, it's in the plan, but I encourage you all to read up on it too. They have this program called a tree bait, so it's the idea that like if you buy your own tree you can submit to the city that you have purchased this tree and they have a certain amount of money available to like give you back x amount for the purchase of that tree and it just encourages people to kind of add to their own little private property can be and there's lots of other programs across the united states that do similar things but again i think that's more of like a two to three year out concept around that or could be included in the urban forest management plan certainly [1:14:20] Gregory Edwards: seems like educational information that we could get out totally if someone has an ash tree they should know there's a state list where they like just yeah or even if we just listed the people in the county on the city website so that those people got yeah were directed yeah you're talking about [1:14:38] Karen S. Marysdaughter: contractors yes okay yeah i agree with that as well yep because when we were heavy in brown tail i prepared a list and i got phone calls all the time exactly and that list was sent you make your decision these are the people that have said yes i'll treat the ground chair with free for [1:14:54] Sophia Cameron: brown too yeah so that's also something else i could work on to try and get that into this before [1:14:59] Annette Dodd: I [1:15:02] Dominick Anthony Rizzo: know I believe in the past you have done social media, but if you have one something that's shareable that actually has a link or phone numbers, I mean a lot of they're differently for Facebook pages that we can share them too and if people have questions just to contact you or whomever else yeah if you could do a really good posting that's really that's easy to share then yeah I know in our neighborhood I could move on now like a yard [1:15:41] Sophia Cameron: Sign next to some of the in parks next to some of the ash trees. Yeah, so we did when we treated a lot of the like very publicly viewable, specifically Hayford Park. We did put out a sign. I'm basically saying we're treating this ashtray from the dashboard. We hope that you will participate in the stewardship of this tree by preventing damage or like letting us know if something happens. Here's our number, and then here's the main forest website for more information on the dashboard. So we didn't do that. People like to take down. Pretty quickly, so that yeah I think after like five days. [1:16:19] Karen S. Marysdaughter: Yes, the ash trees and the blue dots the ones that yes, yeah, blue or orange ran out of okay. [1:16:30] Daniel A. Shaw: Sorry. Thank you. Thank you. [1:16:34] Gregory Edwards: All right, we are over. Yes, there was another thing that I wanted to, which Annette has already seen, and she was a very beautiful committee. I wanted to present the idea of the fall tree planting, which I've come up with a plan. I sent it to them and just gave it out to the tree committee. Sorry that's a no you're so fine. [1:16:59] Daniel A. Shaw: Thank you so much. [1:17:01] Gregory Edwards: Yes, I was. We already have the fencing nursery project. We didn't do the brown town. We'll skip that. Yes, that is. And we don't have any resident levels. No. So banger people have been doing about twelve to twenty trees per season, and we want to do fifteen, which I didn't correct on here, but I corrected in pen around the broadway York Street section of broadway and i suppose proposing 15 a bunch squeezed into the median in the center we'll need to do dig safe there and i don't know some of these will probably not fit just because i know they just did the whole intersection traffic lighting stuff so there's probably underground utilities so some of these might may not fit and then i was also talking with anya the city planner about doing black gum instead of the red maples because they are more salt tolerant and they are a more diverse species we've already planted a bunch of red maples [1:18:18] Karen S. Marysdaughter: for black gum I'm trying to remember that was one of the ones that survived the worst after planting i don't know an official percentage that survived but not too many of them [1:18:33] Sophia Cameron: did too good oh so we're concerned about drought tolerance okay into the future [1:18:41] Karen S. Marysdaughter: i have to look at the data to see whether they were planted in the spring or the fall and i [1:18:48] Sophia Cameron: will say red maples have been found to have they like occupy every niche right so they are They're very drought tolerant, and they're very flood tolerant, and they're a very safe batch. Okay. [1:19:01] Daniel A. Shaw: Can we, I mean, if and when you plant a tree in my yard, I will water it. Can we engage the local people to take care of the other trees? [1:19:10] Gregory Edwards: Well, these would have tree diapers. Okay. Which, we haven't lost a tree to dehydration yet, except maybe down along the railroad that would be. So I don't know i'm i'm fine with you there, but black doesn't seem like something to be a little more diverse these the four. They would be up in the area that's the very wide section of the so they're not in an area that has got more and more for her beautiful space, and there would be three, so give it a try. Yes. And I also, for those five and the service berries, I was going to get from Maine Audubon. So they will be the smaller trees. Shrub form? The service berries would be shrub because they're going to be in a two-foot section. [1:20:07] Karen S. Marysdaughter: Yep, by the church parking. [1:20:09] Gregory Edwards: And the others would be, they're probably four or five feet, [1:20:12] Karen S. Marysdaughter: but they're not going to be like the size oh yeah no that's that's fine and it'll make it easier [1:20:16] Gregory Edwards: for us planting and then hackberry which i realized is not native to me but it's going to be quite passive and you know might be something to start working on yep and that's [1:20:30] Karen S. Marysdaughter: hackberry is on my recommended yeah from your list yeah it's just tough to get okay pretty [1:20:37] Gregory Edwards: pretty tough to get that I was gonna say not through main Audubon I wanted if we say we want to do this I want to make sure I confirm with the nurseries before we move the City Council so [1:20:50] Karen S. Marysdaughter: that I know we can get these species yep the only place I know of regionally that has it is generally plants unlimited not plants at Pearson in Biddeford all [1:21:08] Gregory Edwards: right would there be a better alternative if I didn't get half buried it's in an area where there's already two and three further Norway Maples it's yes it's yeah there is that spot out there 's plenty of overhead room but it seems like they're struggling probably from the arrow yeah [1:21:32] Karen S. Marysdaughter: yeah there's also a lot of soil compaction yeah that goes on there yeah I would have to think on that okay [1:21:46] Annette Dodd: shade and intolerant [1:21:50] Gregory Edwards: yeah just something that likes full sun yes and gut tolerant yeah and salt tolerant because it's gonna have both sides thrown I don't know if you want to think about get back to me and assuming that we're good with this plan then i could make changes and get you final so that we have final numbers and finally yes species before they go to infrastructure okay in we take it in september doing planting in october yeah give us time i think that'll work okay [1:22:31] Daniel A. Shaw: Thumbs up. Yeah, okay, I've been picking and eating service berries last week, and they had a cobbler last night. That's awesome. Yeah. [1:22:42] Dominick Anthony Rizzo: That's, that's all I got. Yes, one thing, and I bring it up I think almost at every meeting, they're doing some painting work and sidewalk work on in my neighborhood on North Street. Yep, and I still notice that tree bases are banged between Poplar and Linden. There are two trees, and I saw one of the sidewalks, I happened to be biking by when they just went down with the paving, they were still working their way down, and this tree had fresh slashes in it. You know, we talk about these trees dying and other trees dying, and I don't know what these trees are, they could be ones that are going to be on the list that need to go anyway. Yeah, but it's just, I mean, I have pictures of, and it's just, and just the sidewalk being enlarged, and I know we were supposed to, but like if you didn't have a sidewalk that could accommodate five feet, it would be less. So why in the world, I mean, and I could show it later on, you know, are we eating into our esplanades and against trees and even carving a tree where root or something came up or not, whatever this, oh, ouch, oh geez, I mean, I understand we want sidewalks, we like sidewalks and hate roads, but we'll, you know, I don't think it's helping the health of a tree, oh yeah, by doing that, and plus the other two are, you know, slashed at the bottom and further up the street, and that's just my neighborhood example. Yeah, so, and I, you know, I understand people working hard and trying to get things done, but I just want to bring that up and do something that maybe we could maybe look into our education. [1:24:31] Sophia Cameron: Yes, yeah, it's not just replanting, but like preservation of what, well, on the weed whacking. [1:24:37] Daniel A. Shaw: I've talked about that at the Downey School, the weed whacking, all the trees there are damaged, [1:24:44] Sophia Cameron: damaged around the base, which is unnecessary. Yeah, it's definitely a training issue with like [1:24:58] Gregory Edwards: because there's the highway like Foreman people out there doing the groundwork, and then there's the tree people like thing, there needs to be a little better training on how to take care of the trees by the people that are out there on the ground. Yep, it's not an issue the whole time. [1:25:14] Karen S. Marysdaughter: We put it on the tree board, yeah, yep. And some of the things, it would add more work. We could look into doing this. When we used to do new home construction, we would wrap the trees with boards and then keep them together with like lashing, so that if you do bang them with a an excavator or a skid steer, you bang the boards instead of, so, but a cost of that. [1:25:43] Dominick Anthony Rizzo: With a budget that is, if you watch city council budget, oh yeah, I mean, they did not want new anything, really new programs, knew nothing. You were talking earlier about funding more people. Obviously push the financial benefit of having these people because of what we were just and what you mentioned to them in the past, but you need to really push that to get out, forget about the whole presentation, just saying how would you like to save this amount of money and we just need to do that and keep it. Clear and simple and not, I've been beautiful, which I appreciate it. No, I'm fine with it, but they're saying maybe they have so many things on them behind that. [1:26:27] Sophia Cameron: It's not as important, yeah, maybe not, yeah, so yeah, they have seen all of these numbers already, so I think the next round is like here's this, you've had it for a couple weeks, hopefully you read it, here's the big take home message of what we've discussed at the tree board. [1:26:45] Dominick Anthony Rizzo: i think you just need to have the numbers on the screen and that's it just this is what we will save this is what you know and injuries and all that 's that i think if they read that i'd be very surprised to be honest yeah okay they have so much going on and seeing things [1:27:06] Gregory Edwards: That they need to, absolutely, so yeah, good recommendation. Did we ever give a thumbs up on the technical dashboard and do it officially? Official thumbs up, go for it, go for it. [1:27:24] Sophia Cameron: And I took mental note of things that you guys said and have a couple of ideas that I might fiddle with before the infrastructure committee presentation. Thank you, yeah, thank you, thank you. [1:27:45] Gregory Edwards: It good meeting, you all right, I think we're done, yes, again I apologize for taking up so much of. [1:27:51] Sophia Cameron: Your guys's time, more than well, you get me going, I just, I can't stop and just, yeah, and if you guys do again, if you do review this and it's pretty dense, so if you don't get through the whole thing, that is understandable.