2018-10-11-TREE-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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Lexington Tree Committee Minutes 10/11/18 Meeting 1. Present: Gerry Paul, John Frey (chair emeritus), Jewel Kuljian, Gloria Bloom, Pat Moyer (scribe), Nancy Sofen, Jim Wood, Chris Filadoro (Tree Warden) 2. Minutes of 9/13/18 were approved with one change, Appendix E was changed to Appendix F. 3. We discussed concerns about the Town Center Recreation Complex. Plans for a newly placed 400 meter track are going forward and may involve tree removal. There will be a hearing 10/17, and an interested individual has written to encourage us to attend. We agreed that some will attend, and, if removal is needed, press for mitigation. 4. Vacant position. Currently we are allocated only 7 members, and Selectmen currently hold us to that. 5. Chris stated that he will report on trees removed for the town report 6. Chris reported on EAB activity. Weather has prohibited many planned injections. The committee requested of Chris a monthly, written report on EAB progress, including stats. 7. Chris told us of his concern with Davey's assessment of town-owned trees. We have Davey's assessment, but Chris stated that the inventory does not contain accurate location information. GPS did not work for them as accurately as he wished. 8. Chris will investigate whether Tree Hearings can be posted on Town website. 9. Farmer's market trees. A fringe tree and a crabapple were put in. We requested that Chris instead plant two larger shade trees, and move the smaller species. This would be done by a contractor. 10. Gerry reported on his dealings with the ad hoc subgroup of the Center Streetscape committee. We advocated for 4 species to put in next to a retaining wall: amur maackia(maackia amurensis), crabapple, hawthorne, flowering cherry. 11. Best Practices Item 1. Under Tree Siting, we replaced bullet five with "Homeowner has significant input regarding trees planted in front of property, but the tree warden has the final authority." 12. Best Practices Item 2. LOCATION PREPARATION. We accepted this as is. BARE ROOT ETC. We accepted this as is. PLANTING: First bullet was moved to introduction. Nancy shall make other minor changes in wording. WATERING was accepted as is. MONITORING: The meaning was preserved, parentheses removed. SURVIVAL RATES AND REPORTING: We added a goal of 90-95% survival rate, and added a plan for summary stats to be included in town report. SNOW REMOVAL: best practice not to pile snow onto trees. 13. We then realized we were looking at the wrong version, and Nancy will correlate current amendments with the most recent version discussed at 9/13 meeting. 14. We discussed how to communicate and disseminate our ideas about Best Practices. 15. We recommended Gloria Bloom as our seventh member. 16. We are interested in expanding our numbers to 9 and discussed how to go about this.