2013-07-11-TREE-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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Town of Lexington Lexington Tree Committee Minutes July 11, 2013 1)Of the 85 trees processed many more were setback trees than street trees, with many street tree requests turning out to be setback trees. 2)Season began with the complication of assessing all the trees in the nursery for girdling roots and composting those not able to be planted. Tree Committee members and Forestry Staff worked together. Strategy of planting as many of the remaining viable trees worked well. Residents declined Oak species except for Red Oaks. 3)Tagging process this season more time consuming. Permanent tags came off the trees and not salvageable. Identifying FID #s time consuming. New type of permanent tags ordered work well but are probably too expensive. Second set of temporary tags (ye IIow/setback and red /street) identifies site address /nursery location for staff doing the planting. Both tags needed. 4)Not enough trees were planted prior to the onset of very hot weather consequently they are planted later than planned. More Forestry staff could have helped this situation. 5)Anne and Jewel feel they cannot process the number of requests they did this spring and have agreed to do 15 requests in the fall(each varies in the number of trees, as appropriate). 6)lt was suggested that dead street trees could be identified needing replacement for fall. The use of the Tree Inventory could be utilized to locate other tree locations with one of the Forestry staff contacting the resident to make sure the homeowner would like to have a tree. In general an increase in DPW staff participation in this process is desired. Gerry has agreed to make the maps and Jim to do the Dig Safe. The Dig Safe process worked very well. Julie LaFlamme was extremely helpful to all. Fall will be a very different planning /planting process with some tasks the same but under different conditions. Attempting to simplify a complicated process is not always easy and requires careful teamwork. 3c. Changes to make for fall 2013 tree planting. A separate meeting will be scheduled. 3d. Tree nursery planning discussion. The Tree Nursery will need to be reconfigured /existing trees to be listed by location and tagged. Currently, Jim plans to repair two of the water lines and ask Barbara Kent to turn on /off the water. A work day also needs to be scheduled in the fall. 4a 8 AM: Lexington Healthy Community Project Guests, Lisah Rhodes and Peggy Enders Gerry Paul invited Lisah and Peggy to discuss their proposal to devote one of the LWV First Friday meetings to the subject of trees. The meeting would be held at Cary Memorial Library(large meeting room) on Friday, October 4, 2013 from 7 -9pm. A motivation for the meeting was the number of trees cut down by citizens in situations in which the tree bylaw does not apply and the tree removal may be not be necessary -- for example, when pruning might be more appropriate. The belief was that this might be mitigated by better community awareness /education. The panel would include: Gerry Paul from the Tree Committee and as a Town Meeting member, Chris Filadoro as the Superintendent of Public Grounds, a Selectmen's representative(Peter Kelly was suggested) and someone from the Conservation Commission (Duke Bitsko was suggested). It was suggested that Matt Foti and /or John Marquis be in the audience if possible. A question and answer period follows the presentation by the panelists.