2005-02-10-TREE-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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Lexington Tree Committee Minutes of February 10, 2005 Meeting Present: John Frey Nell Walker, Jim Jones, Anne Senning, Karen Longeteig, Jim Wood, Dave Pinsonneault 1. Jim Wood was appointed scribe. 2&3. Minutes of December 9, 2004 and January 13, 2005 were approved as presented. 4. 4.1 Bylaw actions: 258 Sites, of which 168 were resolved, 358 to be removed (of which 145 have been removed, to plant 809, of which 322 planted) presented by Dave Pinsonneault. 4.2 Forestry in January: 3 removed, 2 pruned 4.3 Tree City Application being processed 4.4 No word on grant application 4A Sherri (Kathy Miller)-suggested we might be able to get on the Community Forestry Partnership Grant. The Tree Committee could apply (not the town) for the ESRI grant for the software license for the Arc Pad hand held computers. Presented by Anne Senning NSTAR provided a $1000 grant for tree planting. This was in the form of a $1000 gift card for Weston Nurseries. Per Dave Pinsonneault 5 5.1 John Frey presented the Tree Article on February 7, 2005. The Selectmen asked where the 15K funds were coming from? Patrick Mehr suggested increasing fees on the tree removal permit applications to $150.00. John Frey estimated 11-13K a year would be raised with this increase. 5.2 Selectmen’s position on the fee increase was to ask Linda Vine to look into how this fee change might work. 5.3 There is some potential for an additional 10K to be put into the DPW budget for tree planting. However, on February 9, 2005 Jeanne Krieger said the Selectmen had not found the 15K requested in the Tree Committee's article. 6 6.1 Moved that we proceed with both Article 18 and the Lexington Tree Fund to be held by the Trustees of Public Trusts. Passed 6.2 Agreed that Anne Senning should approach the Douglas Funeral Home to determine interest in participating in a program to have donations provided for the purchase, planting and maintenance of trees. 7. Article 16-Substitute "fund" for account. Article 18-include the words,"not to exceed $75,000" 8.Memorial Tree Fund Brochure Prerequisites for implementation 8.1 Brochure approval by Selectmen 8.2 Approval of Article 18 by Town Meeting or establishment of the Lexington Tree Fund to be held by the Trustees of Public Trusts. 9. Working on debugging Tree inventory software to allow data entry into the Tree Committees laptop computer, our main data base. The software that we are attempting to use is the Community Forrest Partnership Arc Pad SW which we are trying to use for data input into our laptop. It was suggested that each member of the Tree Committee learn how to enter data from our manual tree inventory records. (Equal pain for all) John Frey asked if "where we needed trees planted" showed up as a function of our Tree Inventory data base. Yes 10. Articles for Town Meeting-Previously discussed 11Other Business 11.1 Karen noted that the Dixon report on the center revitalization suggested the performance of a Tree Inventory 11.2 The committee briefly looked at the Historical Society's plan for Tree planting around the old Depot building. 11.3 Jim Wood suggested we work with the Conservation Committee to get the Town owned land around the school administration building and bordered by Fletcher Ave and Mass Ave transferred to the Conservation account. Otherwise it will surely be built on, destroying the 20 trees that we planted on this site. Respectfully submitted, Jim Wood