Bangor Infrastructure Committee approves tree donation, Vision Zero resolution

[0:16] Carolyn Fish: Great, you are live. Good evening everyone. Today is Monday, May 8, May 18, 2026. This is the regularly scheduled infrastructure committee meeting, and tonight we have in attendance myself, chair of this committee, Counselor Fish. We also have Counselor Walker, Council Letter, Counselor, Councilor Beck, Councilor Deane. Also at the table we have Councilor Mallar and Councilor Carson. I'm Council Leonard. On Zoom we have Councilor Faloon, and at the table we have our Director of Engineering, Jeff Davis. First item up on our agenda tonight is tribute donation for [1:22] Unidentified speaker (City Forestry Staff): every spring and fall we are approached by a non-profit, Bangor Bureau Incorporated. They're a pretty prominent non-profit organization that focuses on downtown beautification throughout the city. This spring they reached out to the forestry division with the proposal of 16 trees and 64 small shrubs on a area of Main Street that's devoid and kind of lacking of vegetation. This area is from the intersection of Wall 50 about quarter of a mile along the concert venue and the new murals they put up last year, to where the overhead Route 9 and Brewer signage is right there by the main city. They have offered six red oak, seven red maple, three serviceberry, 64 fragrance sumac, and I had an omission. It is actually 16 tree watering rings, not zero. That was my fault. There total donation value plus labor from volunteers the day of to plant is $4,441.23. These trees will be planted with volunteers and overseen by myself in the fourth year division of one of my staff. We will have a three-year checkup period just like our newly planted trees and shrubs and keep an eye on them and see if they survive winter conditions. Sorry, do [3:17] Carolyn Fish: we have any questions? I do. How mature are these trees? I have a little bit of concern lining down the [3:24] Unidentified speaker (City Staff): A long way to the venue. [3:25] Unidentified speaker (City Forestry Staff): Yeah, I asked Greg Edwards. They're number seven pots through number ten, which is this big, and about the small ones will be this tall and the bigger ones will be a little bit taller. They're more mature than the trees we planted previously on Broadway. So they should do pretty well. And Ben could also explain that the bigger trees that you buy in pots sometimes actually do worse because their roof structure is not as developed for the size of the above ground part of a plant. Thank [4:06] Carolyn Fish: you said visions of people I bet if you know playing around and swinging around and all of a sudden you'll be a tree. Oh yes, so beautiful. Any other questions? Just [4:24] Michael Beck: Don't comment. I mean, what a generous donation, you know. And the presentation we received last year, I think, was around the emerald ash borer that we talked about, all the surprising benefits of trees health-wise. You know, I got a real education of that, so that makes this donation all the more valuable. So thank you. I'm [4:43] Unidentified speaker (City Forestry Staff): curious. I'm not on this committee, but I am curious because I see on this map how they're, they're sort of spaced out, and I'm wondering if the added shade that's going to be provided as the sun sort of moves around there is going to help preserve the life of the murals and the art that's along there. I would imagine that mural kind of runs north south, so it doesn't get a whole lot of sunlight. Typically late afternoon it does get some direct sunlight. There's struggling little leaf lindens. It's a very high salt area because you have two and even three lanes of really salt in the wintertime getting shoved into the esplanade. So hopefully they all do well and kind of grow into shade trees. That's the plan. [5:33] Carolyn Fish: Could I ask a gardening question? Sure. These tree rings, I just heard about them this weekend. What trees benefit from the tree rings? Are there certain trees? [5:43] Unidentified speaker (City Forestry Staff): Any newly planted tree can benefit from those. Essentially what it is, it's woven geotextile soil on the top and then it has silica gel I believe in it and then a permeable membrane on the bottom that allows water to soak into them and then most of the newly planted trees take water through their surface roots not actually through the ground so it allows them first year or two to get moisture from that. What a great idea. Any [6:17] Carolyn Fish: other questions? I think [6:19] Wayne Mallar: to take. Let me ask one question. How much money during the course of a year do we donate to Bangor Beautiful? How much money do we do? Yeah, grants. How many grants do we get? I think the only [6:39] Unidentified speaker (City Staff): one that I'm aware of is potentially through the cultural commission. Yeah, usually once a year Banger Beautiful request funds for like a mural or something like that. In fact, there's a request on your agenda under bed this evening on that. Let's see, amount of the grant for this year, I think I'll have that memorized. 1500. Thank you. [7:18] Carolyn Fish: I'd entertain a motion to accept the donation. So moved. Second. All right, so I guess this would be on until next week. [7:29] Carollynn Lear: All donations? Yeah, all donations need to go or [7:35] Carolyn Fish: okay, I'll be quiet. Sorry. It's okay. All right, and the next thing is Vision Zero is where you want. [7:43] Wayne Mallar: Do we have to have a vote? Is Susan, is following on that? She's not on the committee. She's okay. No problem. Thank you. Smith vision. [7:56] Carollynn Lear: Zero resolution. All right, so the resolve in front of you is to establish a vision zero resolution to eliminate traffic related deaths and serious injuries on the city of Bangor streets by 2036. The city of Bangor with Bangor Air Conference of Translation System backs our local MPO committed to improving the safety of residents, visitors and traveling public. We have developed a safety action plan to improve safety outcomes of crashes on Bangor's roadways. In the safety action plan is a vision zero resolution which is a formal commitment by local governments to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries. So they're, this is not required to move forward with the safety action plan but that's a, this is a federal initiative and they like, they just are asking communities that are doing these to pass this resolution. Excuse me, the primary goal of the safety action plan and again is to eliminate injuries and fatalities in all of roadway users. This outlines, this action plan outlines data driven priorities, policy recommendations and targeted strategies. So they're just asking us to assess resolution. It's, you know, it doesn't hold us to anything but it does help us to go after future funding if they, if they see that the city does have this resolution it just helps with scoring some of those grants that are going to be available or hopefully available. We don't [9:47] Carolyn Fish: have any questions. Counselor Dean, was there anything in this resolution that actually was [9:51] Carollynn Lear: new to you or? Yeah, so not in the resolution itself but the way this Bangor safety action plan is gonna run right now it's just in draft form. They've asked us to get, you know, to go through this process first and this will be incorporated in this plan and then I'll bring the safety action plan to you when it's finalized. There are some good strategies in here to help us, some of it is data driven which backs is going to help us with and then they have some targeted strategies to help us on some of our higher accident prone corridors and intersections sections but that will be a much larger discussion when this is finalized. [10:36] Michael Beck: That's all I have today. Any other questions? Comes back, is there any piece of that has to do. [10:41] Carollynn Lear: With schools and educating the kids, so yeah, actually I guess a good point there is a pretty good education initiative, and this not just for school-aged children but every user, every road we use, so pedestrians, bicycles, drivers, so and I think that's, I think we've talked about this a lot, you know, not just, you know, enforcement and engineering, it's also education that can help, it's a multi-faceted problem that takes every user to fix. [11:20] Carolyn Fish: Anything that's for safety for our community I think is a great idea, and then my other question was they're called to action and it kind of sounds like you do have an action plan and we'll be hearing more about that, yes, otherwise is there anything you need from us to adopt this resolution? [11:37] Carollynn Lear: I think I'm just to go to full Council and be voted on full Council, do I have a motion? [11:45] Carolyn Fish: I'll second. I think, is anybody against it? Any doubts? And it is 6.05 and that is the end of our infrastructure today.