Environment, Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee - Regular Meeting

if anybody had a chance, I'll get the minutes from our last month's meeting, but if there's any issues with the minutes. So Michael's making a motion to approve the minutes. Is there a second?

30 seconds.

All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay. So a couple.

Sorry, who was that?

Don't worry about it. I got it. Thank you. So a couple of new updates here. Michael Rui is now an official tree board member. Lydia Bruning is also an official tree board member. So I'm really happy to have a whole board once again. So that's great that we got this thing passed through really quickly. One more update. Colin, who's here laughing?

It's kind of a little bit difficult to hear. I think you said how to pronounce my last name, and that would be Baruchak.

Baruchak? Did I say that right? Baruchak?

Yes, sounds right.

Okay, cool.

You want to move over to Keith?

Yeah, yeah. So let's do like a little round of introductions just so Colin gets to know us. So Colin is the new St. Conny... or a new Dane County supervisor that's going to be replacing Michelle. So let's do a little round of introduction. So I'm Matt Noon. I'm the Dane County tree board chair for the last year and a half or two years or something like that. I work for the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission. Yeah, I care a lot about this tree board. Next.

We're going that way. I'm Mike Rui. I'm not a professional when it comes to forestry or trees, but I know a little bit about them and my background is transportation planner. And I try to save every tray I could on any project we were on.

Corey Rich with Operation Fresh Start. My primary focus is workforce development, so I Run a few crews that do urban forestry, conservation, natural areas restoration. Yeah.

Can you hear us, Colin?

Yes, I can. It's nice to meet everyone. Certain days will be difficult, but I will be there in person to meet all you face-to-face one of these times. And I represent District 1 on the Dane County Board. That's the downtown areas, the neighborhoods surrounding the state capitol building, basically. We have a lot of tree enthusiasts in the neighborhood and community. The Neighborhood Association covering my area has a very active tree preservation committee. So I'm happy to join here and see what we can do to connect my neighbors with this body and save some trees.

Great. I think I'm really excited to have you on board. Meeting discount. On our tree board. So look forward to getting to know you and work with you.

Well, it's up there.

Hey, Brian. So Brian Wall is our tree board advisor. He's not a voting member.

I'm with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. I'm the Urban Forestry Coordinator for the South Central Region. So I've got the seven counties down over here. My main focus really is working with municipalities and nonprofits. I'm trying to get them to understand they have a resource to manage and then sort of supporting them with that.

Maybe we'll skip Lisa for a minute.

Yeah, please skip me for a minute.

Okay.

Brianna? I'm Brianna Frank.

I own a small business called Tree Health Management. So Emma works with us on YouTube. And I'm very happy to be serving the Tree Board as well.

It's not really that small of a business, right?

OK. Tierney? Hey.

Colin, were you able to hear Brianna? Because just with the extra room and you all being in a smaller room, it was kind of hard to hear her.

It was quiet. I heard her a little bit, but it was soft.

Brianna, I don't know if you just might want to say, I don't know, what you do again, because that's the part where I couldn't really hear you.

Yep. I own a small company called Tree Health Management in Wisconsin. We are a professional

Does it have a long tail on it or no?

Hi, Colin. I'm Tierney. I'm a PhD student at UW Madison in the Wildlife and Forest Ecology Department. And I also work for Urban Tree Alliance, which is a local nonprofit that serves the greater Madison area doing tree planting and other, I guess, tree-related things. um i did super quick before we jump to lydia i put in the chat does lisa have to be the one to share the video because i'm also wondering if like could i possibly do it and we see if it works if i shared screen yeah uh we are uh brian's working on it right now if you got it but tyranny if you have it did we get the did the link come through over email um on the public side yeah okay thank you All right, go ahead, Lydia.

Hi, sorry, I can't share my face on my phone because my headphones aren't working, so I can't hear if I have that. But I'm Lydia. I'm a certified arborist. I own Brooded Tree Care, which is a small company in Stoughton. Yeah, just love trees and, yeah, like like-minded people.

So the only other people we're missing, I think, is Tedward Erker. Um, he's not president excused from this meeting. And then, uh, turn off your, uh, we either have to turn this off then. Good.

Okay, and then we'll just need Brian to unmute when you all are ready. Okay. Okay, we can hear you now. Playing it through there.

I think we need to have the sound come through there, don't we?

Was Tierney not doing that?

I can hear Brian and Lisa talking. Okay.

Okay, now we're trying to access the video. Maybe we should... proceed on to the next thing while we're...

So, Colin, do you know how to get our agendas and stuff like that? Did you get that? Let's go around, or did you pick it up first?

Yes, I have the agenda in front of me.

Okay, I'll be including you on the email list with the agenda in a minute going forward. I don't think I added you yet.

I got an email inviting me to the... and giving me the Zoom link, so...

That's good. So item C here, tree board operating agreement. You know, we don't always talk about this, but I do think it's important. We just want to create an atmosphere where all tree board members can be heard and communicate. Sorry, this is pretty distracting. And we just want to be action oriented. You know, we want to make a difference here. And we want to respect everybody's opinions. Everybody here has something unique to offer. And we want to hear, including you, Colin, what everybody has to bring to the table.

Sounds good. I agree with the principles in the operating agreement.

And then that first part on item C, there's a lot of acronyms, probably a lot of these acronyms you're not familiar with. OFS, Operation Fresh Start, WAA, Wisconsin Arborist Association, you know, DCTP, Dane County Tree Board. CARPC, that's Capital Area Regional Planning Commission. What else we got? TCC, Tree Canopy Collaborative. That's just like a group that's like less official than like what we are here.

The Office of Energy. I think I have some energy.

Yeah. OECC. Right. OECC.

Office of Energy and Climate Change.

So, yeah, I'm Lisa. Lisa is our administrative staff. So you want to do your introduction, Lisa? She's also a master gardener and does all the gardens out here.

I'm the horticulture educator with Dane County Extension. I used to teach master gardeners, but that's not happening anymore. And like Matt said, I'm the staff. for the tree board. And usually things go more smoothly than this.

I don't know, just like one other thing, Colin, I don't know if you've already watched this ethics video, but if you already have, you know, feel free to tune out for this, like next 21 minute YouTube video that we're going to watch.

Yeah, that sounds good. I think I was there live when it was presented.

Yeah. Feel free to, like, check back in in, like, 30 minutes or something.

We should be ready to roll with the video.

Everyone's going to be in for a treat here.

We worked our way through the ads.

Can we hear it, though?

Well, that's why I was wondering.

You can hit skip on it.

Yeah, I moved this cursor up there. About as loud as yours goes.

People should be able to hear it because they're on now.

So they reverse engineered how traditional seats work. Oh, no. Thank you.

I think we need something outside of the room.

I've got the, it should be, oh, can you get it?

I haven't had to share, I guess, anything with audio, I'm realizing. So I don't know. I'll just try and see what happens.

Yeah.

Does that audio come through for you all or no? We muted it on our end, right? Not yet.

I don't know whether you have to wait for it. Okay, you can skip it now. If you hit skip at the bottom, right?

Yeah, but it's still no audio. Just curious about the audio.

Yeah, so we need Tierney's audio.

Okay, so that's the only thing that I'm not sure about is how to get... Is this through Teams or Zoom?

Oh, isn't there audio within Zoom? Mm-hmm. Oh, boy, it's been a while since I did that, and I can't access my Zoom.

Let's see what the internet has to say.

The internet has to say something. Sure, you must enable share sound before you begin broadcasting your stream. Open. Okay.

One moment.

We need some elevator music.

Sorry.

Click the green share screen button in the pop-up window. Check share sound box. Optionally select optimize for video clip for smoother playback before hitting share.

So in the share screen area, click on that. Does it have like the character? If you click on that, does it have anything? No.

Can you give me any other options? If I hit the dropdown, it opens the share screen. Share.

Can we watch this movie on our own time?

Colin, that's a question for you. What was that question? 35 minutes.

Can we watch this movie on our own time?

Yeah, I was actually going to chime in and say that the way that this was handled yesterday at another committee I was at...

They couldn't get it either.

Yeah, I think it's an issue. Right, so Supervisor Wegleitner moved... that the video be notified to members and then to watch on their own time and then follow up at a future meeting. And I believe she's the author of the ordinance amendment that basically created this new requirement. So I think we'd be safe in going that direction if people are willing.

Hold on.

I think we're all willing.

Okay.

Is that working?

Hold on. If yourself, if it's something that you want to take on yourself, or if you have questions about what may be an ethical issue, reach out to me or someone else in my.

Did that come through?

Yeah.

Yeah, it does. Oh, all right. So what do we want to do? Oh, it did come through.

Okay. What do we want to do at this point? I think Colin said we can watch the movie on our own. So I think for the sake of time.

If you have more pressing things.

I did ask before if we could watch this movie on our own.

I was told we couldn't.

That happened yesterday.

True. Yeah. And with the person who made the video. So, yeah.

I'll make a motion that the group watch the video independently. And confirm that we saw it at the next meeting.

I'll second the motion if we do seconds.

Thank you. Thanks, Colin.

So I think Michael seconded that. Oh, yeah. Sure, Colin. We can actually vote on the same note. So all in favor of everybody watching, we'll be on our own. Aye. Aye. Motion passes.

I need a cookie.

Yeah, Colin needs a cookie too.

All right.

All right. Manage through that. Let's move on to E on the agenda. Let's see if Corey's got any updates for us about the workforce development plan that we've been kind of rolling over and thinking about. Maybe give Paul a little update about kind of what you're thinking about for him. PAUL LEWIS O' Yeah.

So I'll start with the general plan, which is that we're hoping to either host our own or partner with an organization that's already hosting essentially like a job and career fair for, you know, arborist and arborist related positions. In particular, Madison College with their urban forestry program and some of their conservation related programming. So hoping to get that off the ground. It would be awesome if it is well-timed for the hiring season, which is generally going to be that late winter, early spring. Uh, so we're past that for this year, but, you know, targeting that for, for the, uh, late winter, early spring of 27, uh, would be ideal. But, uh, currently there's not a lot of, uh, a lot of positive update and movement in the, uh, in the plan, other than people that I've talked to have been enthusiastic about having it happen. Uh, nobody is, you know, currently, uh, got one that seems like we can latch on necessarily, although I did speak with Sylvia at Madison College. I'm blanking on her last name. But she's important enough to have her picture on the website pretty high up there. So she was really enthusiastic as well. She's a neighbor of mine, so she'll be a great ally in helping get that done. But both both Adam and Zach have expressed interest and support for collaborating on the endeavor. So no, no material updates as far as like date or time. And unfortunately not an event that I can just help latch onto and amplify yet, but excited to see what comes from that.

Did they say to like check back in and four months or something or.

Not necessarily. I'm just going to keep bugging them.

Okay, that'll work too.

Yeah, so the conversation I had with Zach at the city was Zach Eckberg, who's also one of the professors or instructors at Madison College, was relatively informal. So I was over at the city forestry building for a different thing and just saw Zach and I was like, hey, let me run this pasture real quick.

And he was like, Yes, yes, yes. Amazing. Love it, love it, love it.

No, we don't have anything like that. Let me know how I can help. And then, you know, similarly, Adam, Adam has reached out to a couple people, but not apparently also not gotten responses back from folks that he's tried to connect with around how we might be able to latch on to. I mean, MATC runs several job fairs. He's just not apparently gotten a response back from people on how we can get better involved in them. So there's work to be done there. I still think probably our best bet is to find one of those job fairs and find out how we can like amplify that and invite greater industry into that realm. So that'd be awesome for the graduating folks from the kind of the forestry and conservation programs over at MATC. It'd be awesome for, especially if we've got folks, we time it for that early springtime. There'd be a lot of seniors that are rising and soon to graduate. It'd be a good way to help potentially inspire your choices for them. So, yeah, that's where we're sitting. Hopefully next month I'll have a more concrete update for everybody.

Did you say you're thinking like 2026?

No, just that we'll be largely hired, like the targeted hiring season will be the spring of 27, late winter, early spring of 27. Because at this point, at least locally, the jobs are pretty well filled. Other than, you know, like onesies and twosies here and there, like the larger scale hiring seasons passed us. But that was always going to be the case. We were never going to get this off the ground in time for that. too tight of a timeline so if we do like latch on or have our own event would that be this year this fall or potentially I want to work and see what you know like what industry wants as well so my worry would be if we do it in the fall this year and then there's going to be a five month gap before there are like jobs available that it'll have a lower impact um I think it would be my, my ideal would be that we're able to time it just before the hiring season so that people can like me create, maybe even like bring resumes, all that kind of stuff, become a known entity before they then submit their application in short order. Cause that allows people the opportunity to follow up and, you know, shoot an email to whatever hiring manager or, you know, company owner and say like, Hey, we spoke at the, you know, at that career fair, you know, really interested in that position that you were talking about, what are next steps? So that's, yeah. So we'll see what, what industry's thought on that is though. So I just want to, you know, talk with like the city, the county, and then, you know, private companies as well, when they would be most interested in hosting that.

And then just for Colin, just for your reference, He's our other tree board supervisor, or no, tree board advisor. So those are like our two non-voting members. And Corey works a lot with Adam. And also like, are you pretty familiar with OFS or maybe just out of curiosity?

I'm somewhat familiar. I think, you know, Matt, I think we've corresponded by email a couple times. I appreciate your help on those issues. So I've looked a little bit into the tree board, but I wouldn't, I probably wouldn't call myself very familiar with.

Well, I was just curious if you're familiar with Operation Fresh Start, because that's kind of where Corey is coming from. If you're going to do a workforce development program or something.

I guess I would describe my familiarity with Operation Fresh Start the same way I did with the tree board as well.

Well, it's a really cool program.

Thanks. Yeah, thanks for saying that. So yeah, Operation Fresh Start, we're a youth serving organization in Madison. So we serve youth 16 to 24. We've got programs for everything from high school completion to trade-specific training programs. So we do trade-specific training in construction and urban forestry. We've got a driver's license attainment program. Love to have you come by the office sometime and I can show you the operational guy. We serve roughly 400 young folks in Madison each year. And we're not too far off the corner of East Washington, Milwaukee and the old Lutheran church there. So yeah, love to host you sometime if you are available.

Yeah, that sounds great. I'll get in touch.

Cool. All right, just a little update, number two here.

I'm sorry, I had a question. I'm a newbie, too, and I'm asking dumb questions. Is there a written development plan?

Is there a written, like, workforce development plan? Is there a written one?

No. Okay. I thought I missed something by not studying, but you don't have a written one. Okay.

Not specifically for this. This is more of a, like, career exposure. Thank you.

Yeah, I think it would just be like, I don't know exactly what it would be, but, you know, us, like, collectively kind of trying to share, like, our personal experiences with the youth, career exposure. So, moving on to the School of Treatment Nursery Program. not too many updates there. We got a tree nursery. So to bring us back, Colin, we've got eight school tree nurseries where we've been incorporating kids into growing trees, collecting acorns. And that's been primarily what we've been spending our budget on for the last two years, I would say. Not entirely. Our budget's $4,000 every year. But so we're gonna expand our operation to West High School and we expanded it to St. Dennis. First time we've ever partnered with a private school and also Lodi, even though it's not in Dane County, it does serve Dane County residents. And most of the funding for those, tree nurseries that we just talked about the expansion or not even commit them to the country for budgets from other grants.

Yeah, well, how does it so school tree nurseries are those tended to by school and school staff?

Oh, yeah, you know, finding like a good partner with a teacher that's interested. So right now it's Shabazz. Severson Learning Center, Schenck Elementary, Thoreau Elementary. It could be West High School. I'm forgetting one or two.

So the kids and the teacher are maintaining them?

Yeah, for the most part. I mean, like, a lot of it does come down on me. But, yeah, I mean...

Depends on the teacher, you know.

Some teachers, they can just take it over on their own and they don't have to do anything.

Like in Severson Learning Center or Thoreau, they just take care of everything.

They don't need anything from me. But we are doing a science experiment, too, where we're trying to monitor the growth rates, the root growth. We're experimenting with growing trees in different types of containers. And that was from a Wisconsin Arborist Association grant.

Sounds like a good program.

Yeah, I think so. Over 400 kids have gone through the program. Not just elementary, but it's also high school and I think some middle school kids too. So I think... I think part of this meeting is just trying to get you kind of acquainted with some of the different things that we're doing here, get you on board. So that's one of our programs. There's no real action items on that. So I got future purchases. I got nothing. Future meeting location. Lydia suggested the beer garden. which was where our meeting location was going to be, but then I got X-nayed by somebody so we could watch the video. So maybe we could do that again. I think it's a good central location for a lot of us. It's good for Adam because he lives near Bonona or McFarland, and it's a little bit easier for Lydia, I think, too.

Colin, are there any

problems with us doing that um is at the beer garden where's the beer garden in old brick gardens okay uh i don't i can't think of any issues um i'd be convenient for me it's a short bike ride from where i live so i'm okay with that just tell me the date um uh whenever it's appropriate time third tuesday of the month Okay, third Tuesday every month.

July 21st, the next one.

Thank you, Mike.

We haven't TVed it from our schedule for a really long time.

But Colin, also, if you have other obligations or other meetings that you're at, that's something we can look at.

Yeah, I'll just say, so on the 21st, I have a public works and transportation meeting at... 5 30 at the um at the alliant energy center so i might have to leave early or if i do the meeting virtually again which i i'd like to see you guys in person but like sometimes It virtually makes it easier for me to be at more meetings.

I'm not sure I can do that with my laptop outside.

Oh, right. Okay.

We can have them call in or something if you want to listen in.

I don't think that's something.

Yeah, maybe if somebody wanted to do it on their phone.

Or I could give you and your bike a ride.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, that would be 345 at Ulbricht, and then I could probably, if we end quick enough or if I can leave early, I could probably get down there in time for my next meeting. I really like bike riding as long as the weather is nice, so I'll take that excuse.

You're trying to bike out here today.

I wanted to so badly, but my schedule didn't permit it.

So, Colin, is that something that every month you end up having that same meeting, the same –

No, honestly, no, it's not the same conflict every time. For the most part, there's not a lot of conflicts. It just happens to be, I guess, my first two months in the committee.

So, Muddy, those are your suggestions that are still appealing to you. I know you're coming from a little bit further than some of us, but...

It'll be about a six and a half, no, six mile bike ride for me, but that's okay.

I actually don't remember it being my suggestion, but yeah, that sounds great to me.

We are missing one other trademark number, Kate. So we'll put that down for the record. That was Kate's recommendation.

Would you be able to, like, send a map with where it's supposed to be?

Absolutely. Uh-huh. Okay. All right, moving on to discussion items. Number one, the county executive strategic vision plan. Are there any opportunities for the tree board to be actionable in it? So Adam requested me to put this on the agenda. So I'm going to Rely on you, Brian, if you know anything about this.

I know nothing of this.

I know nothing of it either.

So is it something we, are they developing the plan at this point, or is it something we can read and interject? Where's that at? This is mostly like a copy-paste from an email from Adam.

Do they have an outline on what the intended vision?

I think it's probably on the Dane County website.

We had a while back somebody, I think it was from like the planning commission came and talked to us.

Wasn't that on the Was that on the vision?

No, that was like But what I was going to say is maybe we can get something similar from like Agard's office and see if we can have somebody come and talk to us about things that might be pertinent to like tree related issues and see if there's an opportunity for us to have a neat input or influence on those sections? Because I'm sure that the vision plan is probably vast. I mean, I'm not engaged with it.

The internal or the consultant doing it?

I wonder if there's anybody that we could engage with. Yeah, Colin might know. Do you know anything about this, Colin? No.

Well, yeah, I'm wondering if it's this... I saw this on the agenda and I found something I thought maybe this is this thing that came out on June 8th. Strategic plan for 2026. So I haven't had a chance to read through that yet, but it looks fairly short. It's 19 pages. So I don't have a comment about it at the time, but I think if I can send this in the chat, this may be what the...

Sounds like workforce is part of it. You can put it in the chat, but I can't do anything with it.

Okay. Leadership is part of it. Where did you access this?

I just Google it.

It's on the executives, Dane County executives website.

I'll revisit that, that's Mark's.

Yeah, and of course, I'm sure Adam has read it and has some commentary about it.

So maybe an actionable item where we don't actually have to vote, but to have Adam kind of explain more what he's thinking about this to the group. And maybe members of the group should take a look themselves as well.

Yeah, I'll send it to everybody.

Yeah, that would be great if we can get it sent out. You can do that, Lisa?

Mm-hmm.

To the whole group?

When my computer freezes.

Then you have, like, all the contacts, Lisa? You have everybody's contacts? Yep, I do. I do. Okay. Next discussion item. Do you want to take this one, Brianna?

What was it?

About Philip, your interactions.

Oh, yes. So as we discussed last time, and I sent out kind of a form letter that I send to clients, we've been having an issue with mature trees being subject to insurance letters mandating that their removal if they kind of pick them up on aerial photography and there's a lot of canopy over a home. So Matt had a connection with Phillip, I can't remember his last name, with Spectrum News who I spoke with today. And he would like to do a story on it just to be able to inform the public that there are being letters sent out to homeowners that have canopy over their homes and that it's really important before acting on those letters to have a professional interact with the insurance company so that more can be understood about the actual risk that the trees pose and whether they just need structural maintenance pruning or if something like a removal is really is really something that should be considered, should really be in the hands of a professional and not aerial photography.

You mentioned that some professionals are, they should be aware of. Be depending on the ownership of the company?

Yes. I mean, we will list out certain credentials that help. No, we shouldn't. So, you know, the people that would be qualified to handle situations like an insurance letter mandating a removal of a tree would carry with them certain certifications and qualifications. Okay.

I'll say about recrafting a little bit. I'm putting a lot of my hate getting in my neighborhood. We have a lot of mature trees in our neighborhood. We're slowly losing them, but they're all generally been legit when we do lose them. I was thinking about crafting it for our neighborhood newsletter, sort of.

I think any way that we can help get the message out that there's kind of appropriate responses to those letters, I think.

It's not my neighborhood, but I know the Marquette neighborhood is very into tree stuff. That's closer to where Colin is. And I know they're really into it. They're worried about every developer who comes in wants to cut a tree. So I could probably get that one to them too.

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest concerns are neighborhoods that have big trees.

doing okay over there, and my neighborhood's definitely got big trees. Some of them I'm worried about are street trees, and I will wait for the new city forester on that one.

I do think, like, approaching, like, neighborhood newsletters, that's probably a pretty good option as well. If we can get somebody to, like, make a rough draft of an article for the newsletter. I don't feel knowledgeable enough to confidently write one up, but I could probably take what, you know, like an outline from you and craft it.

Yeah, I can do that. I mean, I can essentially like revamp the homeowner letter that I wrote to do more of a newsletter. That's what I was going to do. Yes.

So I'll be happy to do that. Okay, cool.

I appreciate that. Yeah. I feel like the Bay Creek Bulletin would probably run that. The next deadline for our newsletter is in July.

I thought we just all needed to agree.

I was going to say the same thing, Corey. Like, Brianna, it's not like enough, like, so you go do, like, a news bet with Philip or whatever. Is that enough exposure?

I think it's multifaceted. I don't think anything, because our ultimate goal is to have people understand that just because they got this letter doesn't mean that they have to take down that tree. It might mean that, but it doesn't definitely mean that. And the Wisconsin Arborist Association is also working on different ways at the top level to get the insurance companies to stop writing those letters and have a better way of being able to get homeowners to assess trees. And that's where sometimes tree ordinances can come into play as well.

Would you be willing to go on WORT? Just another, you know, form of publicity.

Yes. I do think it will be important to make sure that it's not just me. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I can be there with you, but other...

Yeah, you maybe think of one that's tied to the state record of all cypress is in a coma tied to a house, but they're proud of it. So they'd probably fight it. I don't, I'm not worried about them, but I'm sure there's other cases just like that. Absolutely.

Well, and sometimes trees very close to houses do need risk mitigation and it's fine to have, it's fine to mandate risk mitigation. Um, but to simply the methodology from just looking overhead, seeing a picture and not knowing a thing about trees or what species there in that's absolutely, that's absolutely ridiculous. And for some of the homes where this is being mandated, the neighbors also have the exact same situation and the neighbors next to them, they just have different insurance companies.

So it's, uh,

none of these things are like the other in that there's no kind of general methodology to it. It's just.

So in terms of like circulating something like that, I know, I think, is it just for Massen or is it for the county? Anyway, there's a list of like the neighborhood associations with contacts. I've used that a bit to reach out to the neighborhood associations and uh for the project area for urban tree alliance um so i guess i'm wondering if we feel like that's a useful place and then because cory i think you had said maybe like some of those neighborhood associations could be a good point uh starting point to maybe put something in their newsletter um and then i guess my bigger question is you know who would that come from because i think i heard lisa say something about you know agreeing on verbiage Um, and then maybe how we would get that out. Cause I mean, I I've kind of cold contacted emailed being like, Hey, we're giving away free trees also have some upcoming events. Um, and I've, I've gotten pretty decent feedback from some of those folks that were on the newsletter. So I think that could be a good place to put something, um, you know, once we have a draft and maybe think about who that email should come from.

That's a super good idea. So I'm going to revamp the letter that I wrote to be more of like a newsletter article. And then I'll send it to everyone for comments.

Awesome. That's like an action item. Is this something like we can ask you, Lisa?

We have a list of the neighborhood associations that's updated.

I'd be careful sending out my association. I want to handle it. I'm actually on the council too. And I've got an in with that newsletter person. Which one is it? I have a wireless neighborhood.

I think a personal approach is great.

I'd like to be making more personal when possible and not just coming from up on top from us.

But from Lisa's perspective, it's a lot easier just to have these 30 email addresses.

If people heard it twice, great.

If people hear it three times, great.

We also have Nextdoor.

That's a great way to- And you said WLT, but is Larry Miller gone now or not?

Almost, but I'll be on with Jill Nadeau. I think it's July 10th.

Because I think it would be great if we could get like Brianna and like Brian or Mary Mueller. I don't know if you're doing that kind of thing.

Yes, Jill is the new host. Oh, she is. Yeah, I'll give you her contact if you don't have it.

Because I get what you're saying, Brianna. You don't want to be the only spokesperson about this one issue. Especially for different facets.

Yeah.

It shouldn't be like a one.

As far as newsletters, let's talk about how we distribute that because some neighborhoods, there are some people that'll do that for us and that'll come across better than if somebody in the neighborhood does it.

Well, I think we're sending them to the presidents to- Yeah, that's what we usually do.

To modify or- And I'll tell Doug, don't send it out yet in our case.

And we have also, I just lost my train of thought.

I think to anyone, I mean, I have called some municipal foresters and asked like, okay, how would you respond if someone

because that might be a logical step for somebody to try to get information. And the other part of this is depending on what type of tree they're taking out, they may need a permit. And we've had those violated because the fines aren't high enough for people to care. But for those people that do care in that process of asking for a permit, they're going to get stopped. So, you know, I've reached out to the city of Madison and I talked a bit with Craig Plinke about the situation, and he did mention that if somebody were to ask for a permit, there would be questions. And they would direct that individual to have a risk assessment.

But that permit in Madison, I'm under the impression it's only for street trees, not for private property trees.

Not for oaks and elms off-season. There's an ordinance.

Well, off-season, but that's different. They can take them down if it's the right season.

Right, or if it's the right species, yes. But I'm just saying that that's another small stop to be able to get to where somebody's going to say something instead of just let it happen. You can delay it.

And just to explicate things here, what's the action item going here?

I'm going to send out, I'm going to revamp my letter to be more of an article. Or did you say you wanted it to be a letter?

I think article is the way to go.

I will remap it to be more of an article format and then I will send it to everyone.

Read everyone to us.

Then everyone can offer input.

You'll send it to the presidents of the association?

Once we agree on all of the stuff.

I'm getting more nervous here. I think we should have this as an open agenda item before it gets sent out and approve it here. Yeah, we will. I just want to sound like we're getting ahead of that. Okay.

We're saying that we'll be sending it out via email so that everybody has it and has time to review it and change it or offer what they would like to see changed. And we can talk about it before we go.

I'll make sure that it's an agenda item.

And it'd be an attachment on the next agenda. Yep.

Okay. Well, I think we can send this out before our next meeting.

I'm talking about for the public to see what's on the agenda and they can read the attachment. Sure.

I mean, we can do both. If we can send it out before and it feels ready, great.

You can call it a draft and put it out as a draft as an attachment too.

I don't really know how to add that to our agenda. I can ask, you know, we'll ask Sarah if she can do that. I'm sure she can.

The other benefit of being able to let people know that they don't have to respond to these letters is that it might actually change the way that the insurance companies, if they have a lot of pushback on it and they're constantly having certified arbors call them and send in risk assessments, they might find that cumbersome enough to stop issuing those letters.

Okay, so municipalities and neighborhoods, this is going out to all of them.

And don't worry about trying to do this before next meeting.

We might be talking about.

I honestly don't. We will. I think we probably need the next meeting to finalize it. And then that was fine.

And this, this is something that's, this isn't like necessarily new, right? This has been going on for a while. So no, it's just increasing because of what's been happening. Yep. But a one month delay is not ideal, but it's not the end of the world.

We're good.

Okay. I think that's a good plan. And just Michael, for your reference, I think you've got to like BCC me if you're going to like comment on like a document or something like that.

There is about the attachment is that I've been on a number of committees. I thought we're getting a little better ourselves here right now without the public knowing what we're going to be talking about at this meeting. So I'm worried about that as far as not informing the public properly that public properly that we're doing this. That's why I wanted to all be able to open at the next meeting. Yeah.

And so one last thing, Lisa, that guy, the Futurama guy, he didn't join the meeting.

I can't tell.

Cause it's frozen. Yeah.

Cause it's frozen.

So, I mean, just to say, guess not some, some guy tried to join our meeting.

I don't think so. Cause I only see four.

It was kind of like a joke with some cartoon character name.

It could just be somebody who wanted to remain anonymous. I did send, I don't know whether you saw it, but I did send a letter or an email to the legislator person as to how that should be handled in the future.

Okay. Just to be respectful of everybody's time, I think we can kind of move on to our, let's see, future meetings, items and dates. That would be 7-21, as Michael said. We'll figure out a location. Public comments on items not on the agenda? Nothing? Okay. Such other business is allowed by law. Got nothing. Am I doing everything right, Colin? Okay. Looks good. Is there a motion to adjourn the meeting?

Rich, motions to adjourn the meeting?

No.

Michael? Sure. Second. No motion. All in favor of adjourning the meeting, say aye. Aye. Thanks, everybody.