Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Come to order for the beautification advisory committee of the city of Marco Island. Can we have a call to order, please? A roll call, please.

Member Sepe?

Present.

Member Rogers?

Present.

Member Corey? Here. Vice chair Scherzinger?

Here.

Member Myers?

Here.

Member Sullivan? Chair of Needles? Here.

I'm

sorry. Okay. Would you stand for the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay.

Approval of the agenda. I have two people, two one's a group and one's individual that would like to move up because they have other schedule. So one is seven a, which is a presentation for the Joe Furley is gonna guide that. And also, city council would like to move that up also. So in order to get things moving quickly, because I understand it's gonna be a short one, we'll get the city council first and then the Joe's program second, if that's okay?

All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. So be it. Approval of the minutes?

I have a correction. Item six d. When I was it refers to how much the Marco and Bloom signs will be. It says $500 per, and that's an approximate total, not per.

Okay. Okay.

Would you like to make a motion for that correction?

Yes. I move that we change that to $500 total instead of per sign.

Okay. All right. Second. Second. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carried. Let's move on to number nine, city council.

Hi. Thanks for accommodating me. Deb Henry, Marco Island City Council. I just wanted you guys to be aware of something that the Waterways Committee is working on. They're working on revising our fertilizer ordinance 18 dash 64. And as I was helping them go through it, I realized in it, it says the beautification committee will handle all kind of community outreach. I just wanted you guys to be aware, and if anybody wants to work with them, that's fine. But I just didn't want if I didn't wanna step on anybody's toes. So So if anybody on this committee would like to be involved in fertilizer, let me know. If not, our goal is we will amend the ordinance in various ways adding that it would be any committee, not per se just specifically the beautification.

I just wanted you to be aware people are talking about you and you're not in the room.

The exact thing is the beautification committee, in conjunction with city staff, shall incorporate into their community outreach programs no less than two educational sessions on the requirements of the fertilizer ordinance per year. And I don't really think that falls under beautification at all. And I would be happy to say, let the Waterways Committee have that, and they can put their name on it and take ours off.

Yes. I think it affects

the had water to do with the reuse water and the medians was why the beautification committee was involved initially. So that's all in This is about fertilizer, not reuse water, but that's why beautification, from what I understand from my research, is beautification was labeled on it. I just didn't wanna go getting people involved in things and finding out somebody else wanted to be.

I think it would be appropriate for we're trying to get not necessarily a separate website, but a separate presentation on the, website for the beautification, which we have. We're both trying to enhance it, but it would make sense to incorporate that information on ours, but I don't think we wanna be

responsible for That's what I just wanted to make sure. And also when you talk about budgets and stuff like that that you would be involved with having to do educational sessions, which

We don't have any money.

You don't have any money, and you guys all have so much on your plates already because you've all you're accomplishing so many things. I would hate to toss one on when there's a whole another group of people that are more than willing to do it.

How would you suggest we approach the opposition to that?

If you have an opposition for that, I say your best bet would be either to contact me at my city council email or attend the Waterways meeting if you had a question about it because that's something I believe is on their next agenda.

Okay. Any comments?

Well, our question is how do we remove ourselves from it?

Well, we're going to be in the process right now. The waterways, they're going to be rewriting the ordinance and making changes. So what I'm going to suggest is that part be modified as well.

Do we want to, as a group, just get a consensus we'd like to be removed or vote one of the two?

That's what I was kind of hoping if just wanna give a raise of hands. And obviously, all this would be through under city council full approval. I'm just working with my liaison there.

My understanding excuse me. My understanding if it's something that has to do with the code that we would actually have to have a roll call vote on that. So does anybody wanna make a

You wanna start?

Oh, I make a motion to allow the waterways committee to make amendments to the fertilizer ordinance, particularly the part about the beautification needing to conduct two educational sessions per year to actually remove us.

Remove us. Remove it.

Remove I will second that.

Okay. I mean, any further discussion on it? You wanna have a roll call for a vote, please, Jose?

Member Sippi?

Yes.

Member Rogers?

Yes.

Member Corey?

Yes.

Vice chair Scherzinger?

Yes.

Member Sullivan?

Yes.

Chair Needles?

Yes.

Member Myers? Yes. Oh.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you very much. I just I think everything is going the communication amongst all groups is going so well. I just didn't want anyone to find out at the eleventh hour and really wanna get involved in fertilizer.

So Thanks, Ken.

Thank you, guys, so much.

I won't be up to our eyeballs in. Okay.

Joe, come on up, please.

Joe Pearlie, fleet and facilities manager. These gentlemen from Kimley Horn will be here to do a quick presentation on the beautification of our beach access pro or program that we have. We are redoing maple and winter berry beach access. So, let them do the presentation and they'll do the live area. Thanks.

Thanks, Joe. While I get set up here, Pat's gonna hand out a hard copy just for your reference for future referral back to you or if you wanna follow along during the presentation. Good afternoon. Just for the record, James Panken with Kimley Horn and Associates. With me today also is Patrick Tichner and Laura Cornell from our Naples studio.

I've had had the pleasure of working with you all over the years. Years. Going back to when we did initial improvements along the North And South Collier Boulevard, the master plan for Veterans Community Park in 02/2010, and then the recent revisions as well. So it's nice to be back down here working with you. As we talk about the beach access points, the agenda for what we're going to touch on for each of those is shown on the screen there.

We're going to review the existing conditions, talk about the opportunities and constraints that we observed during those reviews, review the site concepts that we have for each access location, talk a little bit about lighting and then next steps moving forward after that. We started off looking at the Marco Island public beach access closer to Maple Avenue. From both locations, we looked at, again, the existing conditions. We started on Collier Boulevard, worked our way towards the dune and then came back and made a number of observations. Pat's going to talk us through some of our initial observations, and then I'll get into what some of the proposed treatments are that we're going to discuss today.

Great. So we're going to start up the Marco Island public beach access looking at the existing conditions. So from the site photos here and the pamphlet that we have Can

you get closer to the microphone? Thank

you. Shorten your

So as I said, we're going to talk about the Marco Island public beach access. We're going to start here at existing conditions. So looking at the site furnishings based on the site photos, they're all a little worn and dated, obviously due to some hurricane and being out in the Florida sun. And on the two photos on the light, we're going to look at infilling those with the plant material just so there's a nice cohesive landscape throughout the corridor. And then this is looking at the same corridor kind of facing north as on the photo on the left.

So as we're looking at shade opportunities, you can see in the photo on the left that there's pretty open corridor, very exposed, lack of shade. And then the photo in the middle is kind of highlighting some of the differential settling that's occurring, which can create a tripping hazard for patrons as they're walking to the beach. And then as well as seating elements and the fencing that's adjacent from the adjacent property owners just needs just needs a little bit of cleanup. There's some rusting fence posts. Things that can kind of create hazards and tripping for those patients that are using the beach access points.

And then these are just kind of highlighting the instances along each corridor showcasing those instances and the kind of recommendations that we're going to be addressing in these proposed improvements.

Yes. So all of those again, the observations are kind of key to the map that you see here. So the photos and the numbers correspond to those locations you see on the plan view. Those were shown in broader detail in some of the initial photos that Pat showed as well as the photos that you see here. So getting into some of the proposed improvements, we looked at a number of options that and each of those options I think has a kind of a cost and a timeframe associated with it.

So there's easy kind of low hanging fruit that we can do. Pat talked about some of the existing furnishings that the paint is chipping, the wooden slats are pretty worn. So those need to be addressed. There's other furnishings such as bike racks and trash receptacles. One option that we looked at is replacing the existing bike racks with something that might be a little more thematic.

There's companies that make nautical themed nature based bike racks, so in this case, a shark or dolphin as we'll look at later. But there's a number of themed elements that we can use to make those a little more playful and fun. There's also opportunities as we talk about public art and how that might be a broader concept within both of these access points. Starting again with some of the lower hanging options like wrapping electrical boxes. Those are fairly quick fixes.

I think you've seen those in other locations, other cities where we can take an existing utility structure box and do a decorative mural wrap on it. That could be an artistic mural, it could be an advertisement, it could be a message from the city. There's really a number of quite a range of options that we could do just to dress those up. And then those could tie to a broader mural kind of theme that we're showing in the lower left corner. So you see with the image number four there, the existing wall and the fence and then the proposed concept next to that where we would propose actually redoing the fence, upgrading it a little bit, using that blank wall as a canvas for a mural and then maybe using the part of that structure that is right at about seat wall height and covering that with a slatted bench or something to provide more seating opportunities.

Kind of contiguous with that option, there's a portion where you don't have that seat wall in front and it just becomes an existing fence. So much as they have the existing windscreen at the top of the fence there, that's something that could easily become a printed mural or something. You see that often at construction sites where they might print a rendering of the future building or architect's name. Again, a pretty easy thing to kind of incorporate into an existing piece of infrastructure. So looking at those just in a little broader detail, again, here's some enlargements.

You can see the existing wall and the fence on the left hand side. Again, using that concrete wall as a canvas for a mural, that mural could be something that is advertised through your public art program where you select an artist and then they would come back with a proposal for a theme for that mural. That could be something that is a vinyl wrap again or it could be painted or you've seen different options where those might be tiled mosaics or something. So again, you've got kind of a range of pricing options that you can use to accomplish that end result. And then again, we talked about using that existing structure as maybe an opportunity for additional seating as people are coming to and from the beach, wanting to sit down and dry off or put on their shoes or something.

This could be topped with a bench seat top and then utilized for that portion as well. Now some of these structures and fences, the line is a little blurry as to where the ownership from the adjacent condo might stop and where the city access ends. In this case, I believe, as we discussed, that's a condo owned wall. So there would be some partnership and some coordination with them to in order to accomplish this. But usually that's handled through something like a maintenance agreement or something that is entered into between the condo and the city.

A little further down then again, this is the portion where you can see where the seat wall kind of part there ends in the back right at about this location and then it just transitions to chain link fence. What we observed here is that there's some embankment that you can see behind the fence there, and that's lined with riprap. A lot of that riprap has started to slough down the slope. In certain locations, it's caused that bottom rail of the fence to split. There are some breaks in it.

There are some rusted areas. So there's a little bit of a safety concern there, too, that we wanted to address in terms of how we would treat that as far as replacing it with a new fence and then also with the artistic component to it. So again, a number of options that we can look at for that location. The other option that we talked about, as Pat mentioned, is there are some areas within this beach access where it's pretty sunny, it's pretty open to the elements. That's kind of shown on the left hand side there and then the sort of the middle right picture that's from about the same vantage point, just looking in one direction or the other.

As we talked about solutions to address that, it's pretty tight in there from the standpoint of areas to plant new trees. On the left side of this image, there is some retaining walls that fall into the adjacent property. So there's not a lot of roots on there to plant new canopy trees to create shade. We could probably do a couple more sable palms, but not sure if that would accomplish really the shade that we want. So we looked at options to incorporate some Trellis features in some of these select areas.

You can see where those are shown on the plan view here by the shade structure there. So the intent would be that, that's probably on the scale of things that we're talking about, probably one of the more expensive items, but does provide a lot of shade as well as some place making opportunities within this access area. Associated with those trellises, we looked at doing some freestanding planters that could be incorporated into the design. Those could be planted with vines or something that might grow up and over the trellis to provide a little bit of greenery and some landscape and just to kind of soften the elements there. So that was the proposed solution for some of those sunny areas.

And then here is a view of that trellis, again looking in this case first back towards Collier Boulevard and then kind of pivoting 180 degrees and looking back towards the beach access area. Next, we looked at the city's South Beach access, and Pat is going to walk us through the existing conditions for that location as well.

Thanks, James. So as we look at the City South Beach access, it's a lot of the same similar issues that are occurring. I think the biggest thing that is the one we want to address on this access is the shade. Obviously, it's a long corridor with really no reprieve from the sun, especially in those summer months. Site furnishings are having similar issues as we saw on the Marco Island Public Beach access point as well, differential settling in the pavers as you can see in the photos in the middle right there, and then as well as upgrading the low voltage lighting, which is currently not working.

And then as and this is just a few additional photos showing the shade, the lack of shade, but obviously, the opportunity to provide additional shade, seating enhancements and then screening the adjacent property owners kind of unsightly back of house as well as transformers and adjacent kind of accessory uses for that to the adjacent hotel.

Again, the plans that we show, the enlargements there show really about the same photos that you saw previously, but where those are keyed to the actual plan location. So if you want to study that a little bit further, that's what these couple of sheets indicate. So then moving back into the proposed improvements. From a sort of consistency standpoint, a lot of what we're talking about is pretty similar. So there's maintenance improvements that we talked about.

There's some differential settlement. There's areas of fence that are rusted that probably needs to be replaced. And then we kind of transition into landscape enhancements. Those would be filling in areas where plant material has died off with something that's consistent and in context with what's adjacent to it. And then we get into some of the murals and maybe more public art components and then the shade structures.

So the treatment of both beach accesses is pretty consistent. It's just the location of those might have varied between where that occurred on the beach access point. So looking at this one specifically, as you enter off Collier Boulevard, one of the first things that you see is the large gray concrete wall that's adjacent to the adjacent condominium building. That's got some really nice existing educational signage on it. The thought was that, that could be enhanced with, again, maybe a mural treatment like you see in the proposed image there just next to it with the dolphin and the aquatics.

It could be a combination of maybe mural. And then within that mural, there's location to use existing signage and maybe spotlight it a little bit more. But we think that wall is really a blank canvas to do a treatment like that. Again, from a bike rack standpoint and a site furnishing standpoint, a lot of what's out there from the benches are cracked and peeled and a lot of the wood slats are failing. So we would want to address those regardless.

The existing bike racks, again, we think there's an opportunity to maybe tie that in thematically with maybe the mural by doing something like a dolphin or a shark like I showed in the previous example. Again, but something that kind of displays wildlife that you would find in this area. The plan here also shows then the couple of instances where we thought we could fit in some shade structures, again, based on kind of the open sunny conditions and providing that additional shade. And so those are shown on the bottom images there. This is again, there's several areas within the corridor and those are noted on the plan where plant material has just died off.

Sometimes in an environment like this, that stuff reaches its useful life cycle and so it's time to replace that. And so that's what we proposed doing here is just replacing that with stuff that we know is going to survive and that kind of ties in with the adjacent context. So this is a little more detail on the mural area. Again, you can see your existing signage. There are several of those themed signs out there.

So again, maybe consolidating those or those could be along the wall as sort of a storyboard that is stitched together by the mural that you see on the right here. Again, we would envision that that's probably a public art type project where you would solicit an artist to present proposals for the theme and the material. But again, there's a number of ways that, that could be implemented from vinyl printing and essentially stickers to paint or tile mosaic as you get more and more into the kind of artistic implementation of it. This view shows, again, one of those sunny locations with not a lot of shade. Also, the view is a little bit interrupted by some of the adjacent utilities that you see in the background there, some of the electrical equipment.

So the intent was to provide shade and screen that with new plantings as well as slat material that's incorporated into the shade structure. Again, we would envision something that might have freestanding planters where you could train vines to grow up the side of the shade structure and maybe over the top and provide color and flowering and all of those components. Next, we want to talk a little bit about lighting. We did look at what was out there today at the Marco Island public beach access. There's not lighting existing.

You do have some spillover light from adjacent buildings, but nothing dedicated. So we would propose all turtle friendly bollards to be to provide the lighting requirements that we would need to do there. From an electrical standpoint, we would need to provide new service and transformer to power those. We did look at shade as an option, but there was a bit or solar as an option, but there was a bit too shade. We didn't feel that there was a great location convenient to put a large panel that could power all of the bollards.

So we think it's probably best to do a new electrical service for that. And then to meet the city's one foot candle lighting requirements that would be about 144 bollards. There's some other standards like the IESNA standards and they would actually allow you to do like a 0.6 foot candle, which would be a little bit less lighting. If that were the case and we could get the city to agree to that, we could reduce the number of bowels by about 30% to 40%. And then at the South City Beach access, there is existing power that we could tie to because of the length is a little shorter, so that would be about 130 bollards that we would need in that location.

The bollard that you see on the right here is on FWC's approved website. So they have an amber light that is turtle friendly, that's preapproved. We would probably recommend something in the dark gray color, but that would be what we would recommend for those lighting installations. And that's kind of what we based our fixture count off of when we ran the photometrics for both of these locations. So as far as next steps, we want to answer any questions that you have here today and get some direction on what sort of concepts you'd like us to explore a little bit further.

We would anticipate construction documents for any of our portion of that work to go through January and February and then city permitting and FWC in the 2026 and then looking at construction or implementation starting early next summer or late next spring, kind of once we get out of high season. So with that, we'll go ahead and turn it over to any questions or comments that you have.

I have some questions. This is all very lovely. A lot of the pavers were heaving and hoeing. Are you spot fixing them or just redoing it all?

Yes. The intent I think what we saw, there's a lot of locations that are settled at different locations. We would intend to fix those from a more of a spot location standpoint versus redoing everything. We didn't think that that was necessarily we didn't think it was needed. Mhmm. And then from a budget standpoint too, that's also quite an extensive cost.

And you said one of the more expensive things was shade. And I don't know what you were charged with, what Mhmm. The priorities were given to you. But as I think about this, these are beach access points. Mhmm. All these people are going to the beach. Yeah. They all have suntan lotion on, and they're all gonna spend the day in the sun. I don't understand the drive behind providing trellises for shade.

Sure. So yes, that was just one option that we talked about. I think one of the main things that we talked about kind of kicking this off was opportunities for more public art and just general beautification. So things like the murals might be a higher priority to you than the shade. You And bring up a good point. You're going to the beach, so do you need are you that concerned about a couple 100 foot walk to the beach? Maybe not. But nevertheless, that is one of the things that we considered and and did wanna at least propose as an option for for discussion.

Okay.

I have a question. Yeah. I was concerned about the same thing, why the shade because people are coming and going to the beach. Once they've been at the beach, they wanna get the heck out of there and get home and do whatever. Yeah. But I've got a question. The funding for this, where does that come? Maybe you can't answer that, but maybe, Joe, you can because we don't have any funds.

Yeah. So city council has already put aside money for a portion of it. And then Collier County, the tourist development committee, has also offered a donation to that as well. So between the two of those, that's how this is gonna be funded.

There's sufficient funds to do pretty much what they're saying?

Well, we're hoping, yes.

At least portions or, you know, I think part of what we've tried to do is show things that could be phased or implemented in different sequences depending on funding, right? So it may be that you choose to do landscape and lighting first and then layer in the public art or maybe shade or maybe not shade in the future. So I think there's ways that you could structure that depending on available finance.

One of things you brought up was there's a lot of dead plants and things like that. I I I have a fault with the city, and I'm not sure where it lies, that maintenance is very poor.

Mhmm.

A good example is the, you know, the medians coming in. But also in here, where you got a lot of dead plants, there's been plants dead for a long time there. I don't know how we address that. I don't know the beautification committee can do anything about that. But, you know, at least point a finger and say maybe may need to look more closely about maintenance of these facilities that we have.

Yeah.

Regarding this as well, on the page where, it's the proposed trellis on city South Beach access proposed improvements, showing the existing conditions with the old bench on the left. And then on the right, with the new bench were the benches. We're planning on fully replacing those or was it refurbishing the existing benches? Because the one thing that I noticed was on the bench that's in the image on the right is that the metal is black, which I just know that in the sun, those are gonna get real hot

in that. This was talked about before and we our intent is to replace them.

Okay. So would it be black metal for for those?

No. Actually, the new benches that I've been putting in at all the parks are like a recycled plastic, like the Trex board.

Okay. Cool.

So that's what I'd like to use.

Okay. Cool. I was just checking because based on the image, was like, that looks like cast iron. It's gonna hurt. So, alright.

Cool. That's a good question. I think some of that is a little bit based on the limitations of what we have to plug in the model. So apologies The for any confusion

AI can only go so

far sometimes.

So, Joe, has the the city gotten much feedback from visitors or residents asking for more seating or shade or that the lighting is poor when they're leaving the beach at night?

To my knowledge, I just know that they would like them to be updated, and I know that shade has been brought up at basically all parks and and beach accesses. So some people want it, and some people, I guess, could see a need no need for it. So

I have a comment on the lighting. I am a sheller. There's a lot of shellers, and they go before sunrise. And those paths can be dangerous unless you have your cell phone light on. So that would be an improvement. I I totally agree, Joe, that a lot of our parks need more shade, but that's where you're sitting around hanging out. Here, you're on the move, you're going to someplace sunny. I don't know. I I was there a survey done saying, really, that our access points want shade? I don't know that. And if we haven't been told that, if that's the most expensive part, I would rather give priority definitely to the other parts, particularly the artwork. We do have some of our electric boxes, long haulier wrap. They're beautiful. And I definitely like the idea of a dolphin versus a

shark. I do see the use of the shade because then it would be the only place with shade on the beach. So if someone is overheating, that is the only place that you could go to, unless you are going to go to Sunset Grill or, something along those lines. But if you want to go somewhere that you don't have to, you know, pay to sit down, I I I think the shade is a great idea. I mean, if we could do it with more trees, perfect.

If I mean, less but I I I see the point of the seating as well of changing your shoes when you're heading back to your car so you don't have all your sandy shoes dirtying up your car or anything along those lines. So I see the point of the seating and the shade as well.

I love the idea of the artwork, educational signage. I think that's great. And that could be one of the reasons that one of the things that drives the tourist development dollars. In order to get that money, we have to show that we're for tourism. So that's super helpful. And I would like for the Beautification Committee to be involved with that and help identifying what those look like. I

I agree. If if it is a phasing thing, then I think the artwork and the, like, educational artwork, we should prioritize. Safety first. Safety in, yeah, yeah.

Are we maintaining our water spigots for washing the sand off? All right. I didn't hear that spoken to. Good.

Yeah. And I think on that line, there was a couple, I think just maintenance updates that you need to do related to some of those areas such as differential settlement and maybe some washout and stuff. So we would plan to address that in the construction documents.

I think one of the things that people most want that I don't see in this plan is bathrooms.

Bathrooms. Correct. We don't have bathrooms in this plan. That was not part of the discussion. I don't know if there's been further discussion with the city on that. But

At this point in time, I don't think we have the funds to do that. We can look into it, but I yeah. I just don't think that that's gonna

be possible. I know. That's like the number one.

Isn't that a FEMA issue also?

I believe it would be. And yeah. And like I said, getting the plumbing out into that location and the waistlines and all that would be a little tough.

And elevation?

Yes. And these are also fairly narrow corridors. So ramping up to the base flood elevation could be a challenge, but yes.

What is the life of these vinyl wraps for the utility boxes?

That's a good question. I think it depends on the grade of vinyl that you get, but I've seen them last from a couple to five years. Think Because

we've got a lot of them out

there that I'm wondering if Time for us to start

thinking about We need to be looking at replacement at some future date?

Yes. There probably needs to be a sort of a schedule of replacement for those, much like when cities do banner arms from light poles. Those are kind of replaced on annual or some sort of schedule based on lifespan and everything. But I think from the standpoint of how those are done, if you were to create a graphic and use that as your mural option, then you always have that graphic, right? So you could always reprint it and then replace it as needed depending on UV degradation or anything like that, yes.

Okay. Has there been any preliminary discussions with any of the adjacent condo buildings?

We've not had that discussion. I don't know if you have in some of the earlier

Yeah. Well, just with the Hilton, when our when we were talking about it, the Winterberry one, they would let us stage some of the stuff in their lot. But, I have not yet reached out to actually, Casey was going to reach out for the mural aspect of it because we would have to ask their permission to to use their buildings for that.

Mhmm. Can we get, like, measurements of where we could put the artwork so that we could like work on a plan if we wanted to do a bid or if we wanted to do like a contest of some sort for the artwork?

We can help them form the contest, but that's theirs. That's their umbrella.

Yes. Just to point out here on on one of the pages that you have and then also in separate handout on this page, this is the City South Beach access. That long gray concrete wall that we're showing in the upper left here is shown on the plan view here and we do have a dimension on there. And I don't have the height, but I believe it was around four feet. But that's something that we could certainly confirm so that you could give an artist what the dimensions would Yes. Be and

That's an ideal spot. And I don't know how many of you have been to Veterans Community Park lately, but the main building on the side there is a beautiful that's been painted there. And this is another ideal spot for the same thing.

Yeah. It's perfect.

I know that for the art wraps around the electrical boxes, the Beautification Committee worked with the Mark Wyland Art Center to get artists to submit. And we paid basically to install them and paid for the vinyl, but the artist's work was donated in my Yeah. From what I can recall.

Mhmm. And because we do already have this sign here about the, I I believe it's the shorebirds. It would be great if we still had something that is educational. Absolutely. Even if it was like a mural of the beach showing the different shorebirds, that would be great if we wanted to reach out in that capacity. Think that'd be really cool.

Agreed. The artwork needs to include those educational components.

Would those walls have to be have a new finish put on them to in order to put the murals on?

It might need yes, there's a chance maybe you need a skim coat or something just to get the right amount of adhesion. But that's something that would determine that based on what product we ended up using. If it's paint or something, then it's more of a primer and then finished paint surface. But for the if we went the vinyl sort of wrap route, there may be a little bit of surface prep that we have to do, yes.

I have a question, Joe. Maybe hopefully you can answer It's coming in front of us. Is the city council looking for us to say this looks good? We'd like to see this move forward? Is it coming from the city council want us to take action on it?

Yeah. I mean, to a point, yes. We want you to make recommendations so that we can move forward with getting pricing.

Okay. Another thing that was shown was the life jackets for children, and that's being maintained.

Mhmm. Good. Yeah.

See some greenery on some of these existing, and then proposed, I'm seeing wood, more wood. And I understand some of those plants have to be removed or whatever. I would just like to suggest all Florida friendly Mhmm. Something that doesn't require water. And that bench, that long bench. If they're sitting just to take shoes off and and do that kind of stuff. I just don't want something really long that might lead to some loitering Mhmm. After hours or something like that because then it comes another Sure. Process to have to, you know, make sure that that's safe. But Yeah. So just a couple of

That's good point. Things like arm rest or something could be incorporated to discourage people from maybe laying down if that's the activity you're worried about. We showed in that rendering a continuous bench surface that could be a series of two or three foot segments or something like that. Maybe it's broken

up by planter boxes. Right.

So there's options that we could study further. And then from a landscape, certainly, Florida friendly, if not native, is what we would anticipate doing that's appropriate for kind of the dune coastal environment that you have here. And then you brought up the point earlier about you have existing plant material that's struggling in some cases and you want it to look good. So us working with city staff to really understand what has worked and what hasn't worked and what's within the maintenance capabilities would be part of that final design process.

Is there an irrigation system in there now?

There is now. I wasn't quite sure. Joe may have better information on the full operational capabilities of it, but the intent would be that we tie into that for the new plantings at least until the material is established and then maybe you could turn the zones off. And then you could always have it as a backup if needed in times of major drought or something.

Any thoughts? Anybody? Comments?

We just need to formulate what we wanna pass along. Right, Joe? And I guess we like the stages, and I think we would prioritize safety, education, beauty, and then shade structures last. Any shade we could do with trees would be my preference. I know there's places we can't, but I'm not sure we need to shade this walkway But, you know, I'm just one person, so where does everybody else fit into that?

Aesthetically, I think it adds something, but from a practical standpoint, I'm not sure it does.

Mhmm.

And he did say it was his most expensive item.

It's probably the most expensive of those elements. Yes, ma'am.

So we would recommend, if it's a budget issue, because you said we had partial funding, we not do that now. We try the other things first.

It's something that we could recommend that we do the rest of this without the Tracy. Wood covers, and then look at that down the future if it we feel after it's all done that that should be done. Could be done in phases.

Mhmm.

I love both of the bike racks. Both the shark and the dolphin. I like both of them. That's all I wanna say.

Yes. So

I don't wanna suggest they're gonna encounter sharks when they get

down there. Well

They are. They are.

I I wouldn't think that's what that's saying. But

They're there. But

We would have a motion.

What would we be motioning?

We motion that we advise city council.

So at this point, I think what we would do is take the recommendations.

Okay.

Let them make any changes that you would like them to do, then I'll come back, give it to you. And once you guys have signed off on it, then we can go to council for approval to go out. And councilor Schwann looks like she has a comment. Mhmm.

Yeah.

Good afternoon. Bonita Schwann, city councilor. I did wanna let you know that the Beach and Coastal Committee has discussed this also a couple of their members and particularly about the artwork and the murals and QR codes and what information needs to go in there. So what I was gonna suggest to you, like you've done with Parks and Recs on the tree issue, that you may want to consult with them if you have a member here who's particularly interested in working on this project. Possibly then Beach and Coastal would do the same thing because they are our Beach and Coastal Committee. So I think they would like to be involved in it too. So I just wanted to bring that suggestion forward. Thank you.

From the standpoint of the murals, I would rather you come back with something that's painted versus a vinyl. I think that would have more longevity, would it not?

Yeah. I would imagine it would. Yep.

And then going the next step of the mosaics, I don't know that there's budget for that. So Yeah. I would rather focus on paintings with local competitions and what the theme looks like.

Yeah. Think I heard maybe engaging the local arts council and seeing what sort of content they could develop. Or like you said, maybe there's a competition for it. Or the wall, again, that we're looking at here, for example, is pretty long. I think it's set around 90 feet, but it could be that that's a canvas for multiple artists, right? There could be sort of three, like a triptych that works together that's done by different people or something. I think there's options there.

So is someone interested in getting more involved with this and working with the Beach and Coastal Resource Committee?

How imminent is it?

Well, it it it certainly there's no reason not to. It it just is I don't it kinda hard to find out what their position was. They've already seen this?

Well, that's the great thing is is just like I could do with Parks Rec, I can meet with Parks and Rec all day

long. Yeah.

And I don't need to worry about these meetings or sunshine laws. So one one of our people could be a liaison to park to the beach committee for this project, where you guys can be talking about art and education and learning about what they're doing and reporting back to us. It's

Does anybody have any desire to do that?

I'd be happy to take that on.

Okay.

That'd be great.

So I would just contact them first and go from there.

Okay. Yeah.

Jose, can you provide her with the who the chair of that committee is? And then they then you can arrange to meet with somebody.

Okay. I'll do that. And about when when would we expect your team to be back? Is it a few months?

Well, we'll get with Joe after this and kinda recap. I think I wanna be clear on what I heard from a priority standpoint. I believe what I heard really is kind of safety and maintenance things first, those need to be addressed. And then we had beautification, art and then shade, right? So as we kind of come back and take another look at this and work with Joe and develop costs and priorities, we'll kind of present it in that way that gives you kind of a good indication that follows your recommendation there. So I I think probably within within maybe a month or two years.

The concept is beautiful. No question about it. The city Needed. Has been so tight with their budget, you know, that I'm not sure how far this is gonna go.

Right.

But so it's I don't know how much is put aside.

There's hundreds of thousands of dollars already set aside for this between city council and and TDC.

It's great. If it was x dollars, but it was gonna cost y, that doesn't always come together.

Yeah. They have

to make those tough decisions.

So I think it yeah. I think in a proposal coming back, we ought to have some estimated of I don't know whether you can do that or not. Yeah. But here's the priority and and then future use maybe the the covers or the shading areas would be a second phase. Mhmm. And we go to price out each phase as we go along.

Yes. We can we'll provide costs kind of associated with each of those main items. It sounds like there's a couple of buckets of money that are in place. So we'll confirm what that total amount is and how that aligns with the cost. And like you said, there may be phase one and then some future items that we can look towards in the future.

We just assume in concept that we like what's been presented, but changes are gonna come back to us.

I think he wrapped up I don't think

we need to vote on that. There's a concession here. Okay. Alright. K.

Great. Sounds good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And I'd like to make a comment about Kimberly Horn. My my granddaughter was intern up in Saint Pete from Georgia Tech, and she's been hired for next year. So Excellent. She loves the company.

I didn't know that. So thank you for that.

I'll reach out to her. Okay. Thanks a lot.

Did you want these back? There's a lot of them.

Those are for you if you want them. Yeah.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Moving to approval of the minutes. Well, we did that. Sorry. Old business funding for the this is for the funds and allocation, Christmas lights, sponsorship, outside funding, tree foundations. Where'd Joe go? Is he gonna do that?

I think we covered it at the end of last meeting. I don't know if there's been

any Yeah. I'm I'm No.

There's I would like I would like to

You weren't here, so you can speak.

Jose, can you could can you put up that BAC funding document for me or somebody? Martin. Martin.

He's working on it.

Yeah, it's the one that he took a oh, I'll go down. I'll turn on the thing. Alright. You got it?

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. It's the word document. I just typed this up and hopefully this is all right. So this is what we have coming in. We have our 25,000 just scoot it down a little bit tree seed of USA money from city council. Remember

Down? Yeah.

30,000 is what we got, but but 5,000 in the city with hells, and they're going to use that for other tree maintenance. So we get $25,000 Councilor Gray donated $4,000 of his salary. We have $4,000 in Christmas donations from Joey Oliverio, Rose Marina, and the realtors. And then we have extra discretionary money, dollars 1,000 from me and the extra $1,000 from Councilor Gray. I think that's correct, we're at with our money in.

And then our money out is so for the Tree City, we have $29,000 available. We approved a plan last year for Calusa Park for 11 trees along Winterberry. So the estimate of $5,000 is based on affordable landscapes, dollars $4.58 per tree that they just put in on Swallow Avenue. I know we have a new vendor, so I don't know if that's accurate. But it gives us kind of a rough idea of where we're at if we want to do that.

The Mackle Park plan, which I'm going talk about in a little bit, is for 45 trees. That's 21,000. We need to do Arbor Day. And then Victoria is going to present something under $5,000 That's a a little bit more than $29,000 But one of the things I thought we should talk about is how do we want to allocate our Tree City USA money. Because that will give the Parks and Recs Committee instruction on what how they could phase their projects as well.

And then we have the 2,000 discretionary for us that we can use for Marcon Bloom or Nature Night or signs or if we want to do anything with the posters, the most wanted posters, etcetera. And then for Christmas, 3,000 is gonna go to Ridge Valley for their installation plus the bows and all that. And then I didn't know if you were ordering more wraps, but that was something that you had mentioned before.

I'm gonna talk about that a little bit. Yeah.

And that's Christmas twenty six, right, the 3,000?

This is what's being paid out of the money we just got in. Okay. Got it. So that's kind of what I was thinking about. But the reason why I put this together is because I wanted to get in my head, how are we allocating the Tree City USA money? How do we how do we wanna do that? I don't know that we need to make that decision this minute.

No. I think that maybe January, we ought to be have a pretty substantial decision to make.

Yeah. Yeah.

I I did have some thoughts as I was walking around this past month. Someone used to have a bunch of trees on San Marco that they removed from their backyard. It's on San Marco between, Heathwood and, Barfield, right by the entrance to the school. There's a long stretch there where there's no power lines, and there's also no trees now. There's like one or two trees dotted in there, and I think it would be a great place to start.

On the North Side or the South Side?

On it's the South Side Of Barfield. Okay. Yes.

Of YMCA, sir?

South of the YMCA.

Oh, South of the Yeah.

South South of the Y. So, like, where the kids would be walking, like, to and from school on the opposite side of the street. So the the East Side Of San Marco. I there doesn't seem to be a lot of power lines there, and it's a pretty thick roadway or right of way there as well. So I'd and it's a shared use path too. So it's a great place to walk, except there's a lot of sunlight and not as much shade as there used to be because there used to be trees on the other side of the sidewalk. There's not anymore. So

I would suggest that you put a plan in place. Kind of like what we've done in the past, and bring it to us. And if it doesn't get done this year, it could get on the list for next Because until we kind of approve it, then it doesn't go to the city or for them to say, nope. You can't put them here because there's underground like, you know Yeah. Or whatever. So and I don't know if this is true on San Marco, but what we did learn from Justin last year at the south end of the island, if there's power lines, you can plant. Where there's no power lines, you can't plant because that's where the underground utilities are.

I thought that just happened to be what we learned.

It was on all those streets and map those maps that Justin gave

us. Okay.

So I don't know if it's true on San Marco.

Okay. But because I I know that just that was the case on Heathwood. I didn't didn't know if that we learned that that was going to be the case.

We don't know. Until until we, like, have a plan that we talk about and we approve, and then we move forward with it, that's when we find that's when we'll find out.

Okay. Ryan, I suggest you, and maybe at the next meeting, if you want to just bring us a a map showing where that is and what your intent is.

Okay.

Maybe some pictures of it

as well. I had this idea, like, three days ago. So I'll Well, you've had three days? I'll figure it out. Yeah. Well, I I still work full time plus more other things. So, yeah, I'll figure it out. I'll I'll get some pictures, and I'll have a map, and we can actually try to move forward with it. But that's just my first idea of some places that we can try to allocate some of that money.

Okay.

So does anyone have any questions? Is this accurate?

I don't know the accuracy of it, but I think it appears to

be Do a

you know if this is accurate?

So I was gonna ask you, did you already get because I'm jumping into this a little bit halfway into the game. Did Justin already agree to water these with the trucks? Or are we looking for irrigation to be added as we install the trees?

So for the trees on Heathwood I mean, on Swallow that we just had done in September or whatever, that was by Affordable Landscaping, That included a small amount of period of time of watering, included maintenance, included there's little list. But for anything we're doing in the future, yes, we need to understand the irrigation need of the site and also what the capability is of the landscaper who bids it out.

But I guess that was my question, was part of that $400 including irrigation of any kind? Or did it?

Yes. It was planted during they were planted during rainy season. But we'd have to go back to Justin to get the exact bid. But those are questions for every place that we're thinking about planting is how are we going to water. Is there already irrigation there or not? Is it unfeasible because there's not? Can the water truck for the landscape company swing by a couple of times a week? So

are we not getting a second water truck this year?

I don't know.

No. One of the landscapers has their own.

Right. And that's the one that does parks versus trees. But we can get bids from the one that does parks to plant on a tree

Let me

on a street.

Let me adjust the watering, and somebody brought it up. And since then, I've seen them where there's new plantings Water bags. And they have the water bags around them. Right. So that could be something that they'll worry about the irrigation.

Absolutely. So those are when we go out to bid, those yeah. Those are things that all have to be understood.

And let's keep in mind, our bids jump from the mid twos to the mid fours in a year. So maybe if we're going to different contractors, they will not be mid fours. Maybe we're upper threes. We don't know.

We don't know. Yeah.

They it took a huge jump. Okay.

Linda, that's it?

Yeah. So I just I just wanted everyone to see where the money is

and like having that summary.

Can you get that to Jose and then let him distribute that to everybody?

Yep. I can send you this electronically.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Thank you, Wanda.

Okay. We're done with six a. Six b, I'm gonna make this rather quick, Tree City USA. The app application last year is a totally different form than what I'm seeing this year, so we're having to get I'm gonna have to get with Joe on this to get some more details on how we get back into it. Because when I went into it, it would only let me as a new a a start up application when, in fact, we're trying to renew it.

So the whole thing is a little different. Mhmm. Okay. And some confusion gains in my part. Cul de sac, still working and gotta get with parties in the city to and when I I met met with Mike McNeese, but that that so much for that because he was going to arrange some changes where it would be much easier to find the beautification committee, and we could add whatever information we wanted to it.

So that's a work in progress there. Lastly, there was one other thing that was brought up, and I it didn't need to be on the on the agenda, but it is further back. Had to do with the article in the coastal breeze. It was not intended to be come from nor was it identified coming from me as chair of this committee. It was I called talked to Val at the coastal breeze.

She says, right now, I'm having difficulty because I've got people that are off and can't get the article I don't have anybody to write it. And she said, why don't you write it? So I wrote an article to include everybody and give credit to where it was due. A little tongue in cheek about

you know

I thought it was good. So, anyway, that's the report there. It it wasn't intended to be on the agenda, but it is there. Actually, Jose suggested it beyond, so I I agree to him.

So I I was wanting to celebrate our accomplishments.

Okay. Alright. Alright. That's my report. Moving on maximum high height tree height. Thank you.

No update on this one.

I have an update on this one. Good. I'm gonna come down here.

So I went over our list. Yes. What's there?

So this is the first time I've ever seen this before. This was included in our agenda. This is from LCEC. LCEC has a list of power friendly vegetation. So I went and looked at those trees, and I compared them to our list, which was put together by the botanical garden for the most part.

And I wanted to understand, could we can we find a tree that will meet the LCEC requirements? And most urgently, this is because of Bald Eagle. All of those trees that were removed, remember, when Bald when the LCEC was replacing their power lines, Justin told us and former city manager Mike McNeese confirmed those trees would be replaced. I don't know who's paying for that. Not me.

I mean, not us. Is LCEC paying for that? But I wanna make sure that that's still the case, that that they are paying for those because there's 13 trees. So on the LCEC list, the first one is a bitter bush. It's a bush. It's not a tree. It's not a shade tree. And the thing I didn't like about it is it said it's not wind tolerant when I went and did research. The second one on there is a lancewood tree. It's not tolerant of storm water surge.

The Joe Wood tree, it's not on our Marco Marco Island recommended tree list, and I don't know why. We'd have to go ask the botanical gardens, but it seems to be it's it would meet the height requirement. It's native. It's salt and wind tolerant. It doesn't have invasive roots. I could only find a picture of it in a pot. I couldn't find a picture of it out. So I'm not sure how much maintenance would be required to provide shade, but that's one thing we maybe could consider for those trees of bald eagle. There's a couple of palms on the LCEC list. Again, I'm not sure how much shade they will provide, but it meets our requirements and it's on our list.

They had higher requirements for palm trees. More limiting on that flyer you had the initial one.

I mean, that's it's it's right here on the list. Like, this is the one on their list.

Right. Yeah. And then do you talk about surge tolerant? Is that like

when Salt water.

Yeah. Like when when our island floods.

It's been a one one time occurrence.

I know, but we don't wanna pay for trees and then lose No.

I understand. But they generally, if there's a lot of trees and a lot of vegetation that had the the surge come on, but yet what they got watered with natural watering from storms or wherever, and that washed through the soil. I mean, I experienced that at my house because I I lost quite a bit, but a lot of it did come back.

I think that there's other options. So let let keep going. So the palm the palm tree, I I don't again, I don't know how much shade that's gonna provide Right. To replace those big beautiful olive trees that used to be there. It's another one, Pygmy Date Poem. So then I went and looked at the Marco Island recommended tree list for trees that were underneath, under 14 feet. I would want to know, would LCEC accept those or not?

That first diagram shows 15 well, they list a tree that grows 14 to 15 feet. So if we go to our approved list already, and if you include 15 foot trees Yeah.

That's what I have.

13 of them, it gives us a total of 17 to choose from.

So here's one of them that we should we could consider. It meets all of our criteria and it's on our list and it's got it's really pretty. You can't see this but those are really beautiful blue flowers. There's a tree called a White Stopper. This one makes me sneeze just looking at it, so I don't know if I would want that one.

And the Strong Bark has really pretty red berries. There There's three on the list on our Marco Island recommended list that I don't understand why they're on the list. This one's a shrub. The other one is not surge tolerant. Pond apple says it's it likes swampy soil, and there's no swampy soil on bald eagle. So that's just a start. But what we need to find out is, does the new city manager and you agree that someone else is paying to replace those trees, maybe LCEC or somebody, and could we veer slightly off of the LCEC list as long as we meet their under 14 feet?

Yes. I'm looking into that. I I got a note down. I'll ask.

Great. Thanks. Can we make sure that's on the agenda for January to continue this conversation about the because I don't want it to disappear. Thank you.

I'm gonna if I can, Linda, January may be difficult with all the vacations coming up and people with holidays that maybe we can shoot for January. But in reality, it may be February before we get an answer.

Sounds good.

Okay. Thanks, Joe. Thank you. Coast apart? Okay.

Basically, I wanted to just remind everybody. So we have the Calusa Park tree plant along Winterberry, about $5,000 for trees there. So I went to the Parks and Rec Advisory Council meeting and met with Darren Spindler. And can you put that diagram up for Mackle Park? So what we agreed as a committee is that I would go work with Parks and Rec.

Since we have Tree Seating USA money, they have land, could we come up with a plan could they come up with a plan where we could share resources? And so I wanted to show they're at the early stages of this. So here's kind of what the Parks and Rec Advisory Council is thinking. So at the top is the soccer field. And they've identified several areas that could use some trees, like this upper so Heathwood is on the left side.

This is a facing north map. So trees up there in Section one and two, 1B, and maybe even some more shade trees along Section three. I think that there are some ideas of helping that field with better drainage, so we can't go all the way around it yet. But that's some ideas of where they would put trees, and it shows how many trees. And then at the bottom is the Mackle Lake.

This is where those trees were planted last year, the 25 trees that the lady donated. But the Parks and Rec guy walked this with Dan Smith, and they believe that there's a space for 15 new trees around there. This one needs more. They need to do some more work on this because there was irrigation needs. Like, they had to plumb the lines, and that's not anything that Tree City USA can pay for. So that may or may not be feasible, but that will be coming. And then one other thing I wanted to note around Mackay Lake, there's about four, maybe five plaques that say that are a memorial plaque to somebody. Someone passed away. Here's their family. They donated this tree, etcetera.

And there's no tree there. There's a stump or something. It would be great if we could replace those specific trees. But because they're stumps, there needs to be some stump grinding. Again, that's not anything Tree City USA could pay for, but maybe Parks and Rec could with their discretionary funds. Not sure. But that's coming. So this is where the $21,000 worth of trees at Macklem Park dream came from. One

of the things that I've just to follow-up on that, the the soccer field is in dire need of shade.

Yes. Agree. And there's I there are once they figure out the grading, I think then this could be, like, this year, we do section one and two. Next year, we do section three. The next year, we do the next you know, like, if if we continue to get Tree City USA money and we want to continue to share money with them, we could definitely help that. And I like this idea because so many people go to Macklem Park, and you're going to be able to see right away the impact that Tree City USA money has.

So more to come on that. Very nice. Thank you.

Most we're through with that?

Yep. Yeah. Okay. Brian? Okay. We're doing the exact opposite.

Talking about what we don't want. Thank you.

I'm not gonna apologize for this pun because I've been waiting to tell it all day, but I've been barking up the wrong tree. So there is a different ordinance on the books about unwanted trees than the one that we have been talking about. So under article four, this is, 30 dash four three five, f and g of prohibited species and prohibited invasive exotic species. So not all these are trees. Let's see.

Can so this this is just the ordinance as it is written. And then on your second page here, what I did is I wrote and annotated a tad. What I have highlighted in yellow is what was on here and was already on my unwanted trees list that I had already created. The ones that are underlined are not trees And then the ones that are highlighted in red were the ones that I that I missed. Now, you will notice there is one that is missing from this list that was on the unwanted trees.

So what I am going to do, these three, only one of these and pardon me, I'm completely forgetting which one it was at the moment is going to get its own spot on the thing that the rest of them are gonna go into the dishonorable mentions area that I showed last time because they're they are illegal, but they're not as big of a problem because, they're not really seen in this area too much. But the carrot wood, this is the entry on UF's website all about the carrotwood tree. It is the only one that is on the category one of the invasive trees that is not mentioned anywhere in that ordinance that we've been talking about or not that we have been talking about that I recently found. So I've got all the info about it there and I think it's because it's actually was a little bit difficult to find because it's known by so many different names. It's either called the carrot wood or also known as a turro, I believe.

So when it comes to that ordinance under the prohibited exotic species, I want to present to counsel to add in this tree. The carrot wood because as you can see there are couple of reasons right here as to why we shouldn't plant it. Carrotwood is not recommended by UF slash IFAS. It is prohibited plant according to that noxious weed index prohibited in all

parts of the

state, invade displace native plant communities. So that's that's basically the only update. There will be some very slight changes to the poster to adapt to this, but when it comes to the ordinance stuff, this is the main thing that should change is we should add in the, carrot wood. And in the ordinance or in the, code, It does have, says that it can change. So we're we're good there.

Any questions or comments, concerns on that front?

So you're only proposing that we add one item to the ordinance? Yes. And then for your poster, how is your poster changing?

So the poster, I I need to double check which one. But one of these the either the ear tree, the china berry or the Indian rosewood. Apologies. I'm completely forgetting which one it was. Is going to have its own dedicated spot on the poster because it's more common around here and it actually like grows in this area.

Because the UF website is for the entire state of Florida. I have made the poster specifically for what actually grows in Southwest Florida. So there are dishonorable mentions on there for things that are we want to avoid but are so uncommon in the area that it's not as much of a problem. Like the Brazilian pepper is number one on the list because we see it a ton. The ear leaf acacia is like number two and all that. But so the less common ones are in the dishonorable mentions category.

Sounds good.

Alright. Anything else? Nope. Cool. We can move right along then.

Okay. Great. Yep. Thank you. Michael?

The plaque has been installed. The tree looks good. It's surviving well. I'll have a picture next time the next meeting. And I'm also gonna bring a picture of all the historical markers Super. So you all can see Super. The locations of each one.

Maybe we all wanna go out and visit it sometime. Mhmm. Okay. Seven a has been done. Victoria?

Yeah. I don't know why I enlisted on Marco major nature night. I'm doing Marco and Bloom and Leland Way. I think it's a discussion for all of us, and we are about to have a late start if we don't get moving and a person doesn't take point on this.

Okay.

So I think it's kinda all of us.

Okay. Can

we get a volunteer? Because if we're gonna do this in February, we decided last year March was too late. We should probably get someone to volunteer to do this.

I'll pick it up.

You're gonna do it?

Yeah. Great. Excellent.

Since I didn't see a whole lot of hands going on.

Yeah. Okay. So we should any recommendations that we might have for speakers? Final to you.

Yeah. I'm gonna I have some from last year that was recommended. So I'm gonna be following up with some of them, one of them, like, couldn't make it. And so I'm gonna follow-up with some of those big but we need to kind of we we talked about a time time frame too on those to get it started earlier so people aren't you know, literally had to cut one person down off. So try to avoid that. So and probably bring a bell or something to

ring. Or if we had a clock on the back wall and we actually told speakers that they had a an an amount of time to talk.

No. Exactly. Yeah. Mhmm. But they did have the time that they kept going over. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. Let's see. It's

Evan c? Yes. They they got grouped together. They're separate issues. I'll start with Marco in Bloom, if you could bring that up for me.

So the first thing you'll see oh, there was something before the timeline. There was just a summary. Let me go. Let's see. How do I go through? Let me see if I can find it. Oops. That's not changing it. We're starting with the timeline. I'm looking for Beautification Advisory Committee, Mark Wenbloom, item number one.

You may not see it as item number one, but there we go. When we earlier talked about this, I said five categories. I took a deep dive, and I have now decided it may be best to do six, and that's how I have drafted it here. And the reason for that is in 2025, we had seven properties that were nominated for residential professionally landscaped and 14 personally. Those were by far the two largest areas where we had entries.

And so I thought clumping those together in one didn't make sense. So now it's personally designed, professionally designed under beautification, and then a special one for sustainable. And then, of course, we're keeping cul de sac condominiums and public commercial. All right. The next one is our time line. So we're going to have a little closer timeline on this one because we're starting early enough. We'll launch it. I will launch it at the January 15 City Council meeting. Linda, I have a question for you. Were you on the agenda, or did you just do it during the four minute comment period?

Agenda. Okay. So I'll get on the agenda for that. We'll kick it off on the fifteenth. The major highlighted things are the important dates. Publicity runs January 15 through the tenth, and we'll revisit that category. Applications due by March 10. And this is all focused on the reason is when we present to the city council, which will be the April 6 meeting, which is the day after Easter. We didn't wanna push it back further than that. So that's our goal date, so everything backs from that.

So applications are due March 10. We would be judging these March. Everybody check your calendars to see if that's a conflict for anybody. And I would notify the winners and do the scoring by March 20 and share it with you all here at the meeting on the third and then, again, the presentation on the sixth. So scroll back up to the top again, if you would, Martin. Okay. Right there. Thank you. So there's several things I could use some assistance with. The first thing we're gonna do is our nominating committee.

I'm gonna have them be finished by February 28. So this is the committee we're coming up with via people in the community at large, and some of them will be members, I believe, of the garden club because we don't have an official buy in from them. Correct? Correct. Okay. So we're moving forward with that, which is great. I don't want them to be handing us or giving me applicate or people they think should be nominated because I have to go get their permission and their photos. So I need that deadline to be a little before our March 10. So it's February 28. And thus far, for that committee, I would like it to be some knowledgeable people with landscaping.

I have recruited from the Garden Club Debbie Coleman. She is one. And I had another idea that I wanted to run by you. Donna Patterson won for best personally designed last year. She seems very knowledgeable. I'd like to reach out to her to have her be one of the people that helps nominate.

Yeah.

Okay? It's a great idea. That way, we'd have two, hopefully. We listed Frank also, but I think it was her that did most of the design. Was that your impression? Yeah. Okay. And then we have two members, other members of the garden club here. Anne and Linda, can each of you tap one person from the garden club? And send the name to Martin.

To be on the nominating committee?

Yes, to be on the nominating committee, which would start their work January 15 through mid February. They can start looking now with their eyes. Take note of places that are great. But I'm gonna give them the categories and what we're judging it on so they know. So I'll be thinking You that would be

might wanna check with Chris down at the Island Garden Center because he provides people with a lot of I mean, he might have some suggestions of people who might qualify for nomination.

I'll stop by and ask him. Let me think of that. Great. Okay. So then we see the areas where we're doing a lot of promoting and advertising because we're not doing it with a budget. We're going to do it mostly with social media. There's some things here, I think, that would be well received coming from a person that has contact with those people. So let's go down this list. I put my name in City of Marco Island website. I'll be working with Joe probably on that. And then What's Happening Marco Facebook page, I'm not even sure what that one is. Is anybody on that? I've never heard of it. Okay. If anybody knows any of these, let me know. Next door.

What's Happening Marco used to be called something else.

I don't want to take too much time because we're going to run out of time in the meeting here. So let me run quickly. Chamber of Commerce, Linda, can you And do that then, Marvin, can you contact realtors?

Sure.

Thank you. All right. Cami, is that still the head of Cami, Molly? I can do that. Okay, Amanda. Thank you. I need help with the QR code. So the QR code is going to marry back to our I'll do that. Okay. Thank you. You did it last year so well. Yep. Okay. We also need to have a master gardener to help us judge. Two years ago, was Leslie Lander. And last year, who was it?

It was Well, they

got Andrew. He's

he's dealing with sick parents

Okay.

Out of town, so I don't know how available he

would be.

Yes, I think you know Leslie

No, but she works. She's she if you Google her you'll find her Also, there's one lady in the garden club who is a master gardener. Her name is Donna Kay

C a y? K a y. Master. Okay. I should reach out to her. All

right. I think Leslie Lander helped another year.

Yes. She did. Do you have Donna Kay's contact info? I can get that to you. Okay.

Thank

you. I'll get that to you. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. So that wraps up a lot of it. So please check your availability for March. Last year, did it on a Saturday. It worked really well, and I'm just gonna have medical appointments on those days.

We need a a vehicle. Right? Because we're gonna not do it separate this time. We'll probably do

two vehicles. Great.

We'll Probably two vehicles. And

we can talk about those details in January. All right. Very good. Let's move on to Leland Way then. Well, wait a minute. Let me see. What else do I have? On the Marco and Bloom nomination form, I changed the description just a little bit. I included myself to be emailed so somebody can email them to me, which I guess Linda did too. I also included my phone number in case somebody wanted to send photos, and she recommended that may not be the best idea.

I would say have them contact either you or the city. Like, make sure that you you can also drop off applications at the city. Yes.

And where do I tell them to drop it off? City hall. City hall.

Okay. But, again, I would make photos optional. K. Because I think a lot of people, I had people, like, taking a camera to Walgreens, developing photos, trying to figure out how to get a hold of me and dropping them off at my house. Like, it's there's it's a barrier.

Yeah.

Some people can do it, but there's a lot of people who can't. So if they can't, if you can come to the meeting in February with, like, here's a list of properties, we can all go, I'll take that one, I'll take that one, and we can take pictures.

And we don't want to create barriers. That's great. All

right. So We want to design a poster for this.

So you did this one last year?

Yes.

If you have a digital form of that, we can update it? Mhmm.

Yeah.

If you can get it to Jose, and Jose can get it to me.

Yeah.

Is it a PDF, or is it a Word document that I can alter?

So it's a PDF, but I did it in Canva. So I can make it a document that can be altered.

Okay. Do you know how to do QR codes? Yeah. Okay.

I made that QR code.

Then I think you should just handle the QR Yeah. I'll do that.

Okay. I'll work through Jose. Yeah. We'll just update this with the new QR code, and then the new QR code will come to me.

Okay.

I had a little bit of verbiage changes that we might put on it. I didn't make a copy of this. Let me take a photo or you take a photo of that. That's some of the changes we would make based on what we're doing. Okay. All right. Let's move quickly on then to the way. Thank you, Martin.

What is the link that that needs to go to?

So that's going to go to well, before we do that, I'll show you where it's going to go to.

The QR code? Yeah. It's going to go to the City Of Mark Wildland website, the beautification page, the Mark Wildland page within So if we

Which would be easy to find, hopefully.

We go to search. Oh, the drawer here.

Let's see where it is.

So if I think we'll tell them to go to search. And then if they end in Marco in Bloom. Uh-oh. It didn't give me anything. So if you do Marco in Bloom, you'll get the form for 2024 and 2025. See it here? And so we're going to add it for 2026, and that's where you'll be linking Okay.

Okay. Got it.

But it's not there yet. Okay.

I will check for that as it comes.

There's a convoluted way to get to it, and if you don't Google it. But if you you do the search, it's okay. Alright. Now on to Leland. Okay. You could bring those up, Martin. The first one you're going to see is a map of Leland Way. Where's my pointer? Here it is. This is oops. Let's go to the next one. Nope. Sorry. Go back. Sorry. There's one that's point two three miles, but we can yeah. That's not it. Keep going. Thank you. And going and going and going and going and going.

It's not there. Okay. There's not point two three miles. Alright. I'll put it on the overhead.

He's still looking. I know he got it, but alright. Just bring up the other one, the point 371 then. Okay. We'll leave it at that. I had three separate ones. Alright. So here, it's not really point three seven. This is sorry. Could you bring that back up, Martin?

All right. Here's my highlighter. So this is 0.23 miles from here to here. And to the left of this, you don't see it because I did an expanded one, is Mackle Park. And we took all the measurements here. And as you will see, there's several lots with stone. Okay? But look at the magic of this. Look right up here. That is the swale, typical size.

Look at the swale size here. And the power lines are on this side of the sidewalk. We have almost 50 feet here. So I think this is a wonderful opportunity to put in some large canopy trees. All right. And so go ahead to the next one, I think, where we have some photos, Martin. So this is looking towards Mackle Park. This is the edge of the driveway here of the last house. You're looking towards Mackle, and these are all Gumbo Limbos. And see that really wide swale. And then there's the electric pole there. Okay, next one. I guess I could do that. Okay. This is looking the other direction.

Isn't that hateful? So here is this beautiful swale. And there's really nothing in it. Down towards the end the street, there's a few palm trees. Okay. Next one. Okay. So this is how we could look. These are shady ladies. We've used these before. We've seen them on Marco. We've seen them on Bald Eagle. They are beautiful. That's a single one. And I'm recommending a couple of royal poinsettias also. We have some large spaces. They are stunning. Agreed, Marvin. There's a few times a year where they are not. But for the most part, the street would be shady ladies with these wows.

People love them on the I mean, they're just unlike them when they're in bloom. All right. There's the next one then, Marvin. Or or, sorry, Martin. It's another section. Where we were outlining the landscaping, the same one Linda used that I sent digitally. It's yes. Thank you. So if you'll look down here let me get that lower. I can't there you go.

A little bit more. Okay. So I don't know if you can read it from there. But this is saying, trees 40 feet high, you should plant 20 feet away. And both of these trees because I the I think this might be the next slide, shows the statistics of these trees. Oh, there's the one. Okay, wait. I'll show you this while it's here.

There's the soccer field, by the way.

Yes, it

is. That upper left hand corner is where the very first area that Yes. The trees would start.

So these are already where the Gumbel Limbos are. And this is the part of Leland Way we would add to. And let me point out a few places. Generally, we would not want to put a tree where they have stone. But in this case, look at the opportunity right here. See how far away these driveways are from each other? It's about 100 feet. We could put one close to the property line between them. Royal Poincietas kind of are so dense, they can kill the grass underneath. So if we can get one established there, it'd be quite beautiful.

We also have these corner lots here that are very large spaces that might be an opportunity for another one. And perhaps down here where our tree is missing, we could drop one of those in later, but not right now. So the locations are yet to be known. The information on those trees, I think you guys already know. You're familiar with them. I do have overheads on or digital slides on those, too. So what I would be proposing would be some shady ladies. Let's see. We would do one, like, in here. It'd be nine of them total.

We have to stay away from the front door, and we have to not have them too close to driveways. But I think we could get about seven shady ladies and two royals in there, giving us a total of nine. And with the average cost, that would bring us just under the 4,000 that we would have from Steven's donation. So if you guys like this, we could we don't have to rush to it now because we would plant in rainy season, but we all know it takes time. We could, ask our city to start looking at that location and see how plantable it is.

We could also, in future years, consider putting some others on the other side of the street, potentially. Don't know. We don't know what's where until we ask. But first, we have to be sure we're interested in before we do it. I think it's a perfect opportunity for some large canopy trees and a beautiful spot to do it, as Brian pointed out at the last meeting.

I I love it.

I have some concerns. So I just drove down Heathwood or walked Heathwood from Lily Court to Winterberry, where we planted trees. We planted the 60 or 70 trees. So I walked the section from Lily Court to Winterberry. There's 26 new trees there. Of those, four are on empty lots, two are on new construction lots, and three have rocks in the swales. And those trees look awful. They are not being watered. So if we put trees in swales, it's gonna be a significantly higher expense than any other tree because we are gonna have to water it because people with rocks in their swales don't have irrigation

Right. Justin mentioned at the last meeting, we could do the water bags if it's rocks.

Yes. And they're they're expensive to fill up every day.

The the only tree I'm recommending in the rocks is the one royal.

But so that would just be an added expense in that. Yeah. It's a significantly added expense.

And then the rest of them would be where there's clearly already water because there's greenery there. So we'll consider that before we put it in. But I only have one where there's actually rocks in the swale.

And I don't think on the corner there, that lady doesn't have

irrigation, the corner that you turn onto Yarmouth.

Let's see. Right here? Yeah. There's two big opportunities there. That's awful green. Do they have water?

You could

check it out, but I don't think she does. On the other side of the street, that's a new house, so they do.

On the left side here? This one here? Yeah.

The blue house.

Yeah. I don't think they do.

No. That house does not have This one, you think I do think.

Okay. Could we engage these homeowners of, like, the ones on Heathwood? Or for you know, you have a lot of options right there for where you which house you could choose against the tree. Mhmm. Could we engage the homeowner to say, could you run a hose?

Yeah. That's a good point. Just a little door knocking. Yeah. The this lot here has two The palm trees on it. Yeah. It's in stone. But like I said, I'm not recommending planting any stones or, excuse me, any trees in stone except for where the Royal Poinsettia might go here.

They are beautiful trees.

That's true. Yep.

And I love the idea of planting in the in the very wide swale that solves a lot of problems.

And I didn't know what to do with empty lots. So I wasn't proposing in an empty lots because you couldn't get them destroyed once That's right. Construction vehicles are all around. Alright. I don't wanna take too much time. I want feedback if you guys like this as a future project.

Well, I think it's a great idea, other than the one concern I shared about the added cost of watering. But we won't know until we ask.

Right. And perhaps we would get a bid from Joe, which group is it that does Parks and Rec because the Parks Maintenance? Because they were the ones that had the water truck.

Superior Landscaping.

So we could ask them for a bid, and they have water trucks.

That's correct.

Okay. And if

it's under 5,000, we only need one bid. Is that correct?

Yes.

Okay. Well, what's the chances, Joe, if you're only talking about two or three trees that our water truck could cover it?

That's an answer Justin would have to give because that's his crew. I I can't respond to that.

Okay. I'm gonna look into that too.

The answer last year was no.

Yeah. I knew it. Yep. It's a new year coming up. It's new year.

I think that's the other thing we want to think about as we talk about this in January, again, is how do we want to allocate our total $29,000 How much do we want to give to projects we approved prior to Mackle or to this, which I also think is a really good idea because a lot of people go buy Mackle Park, it kind of goes together with that.

It ties into the Mackle Park project. Maybe there's some economies if they're all planted at the same time. Yeah.

Okay. I think the goals were the the time frame is not conducive to getting into much discussion, but maybe we can pick this up on January, the the goals of the of the committee. I did wanna add one thing I forgot. I'm gonna be moving forward and getting some pricing to have the pole wraps for Christmas for the holidays to go all the way to the Savage Park. This year, I'm I'm not sure how it happened, but it's supposed to be every other one and then being everyone.

But I've got a contact of where we can get discounted decor decor, if you will. So I'm gonna be reaching him. I just got that information yesterday. So I'm gonna reach out and maybe make a request to to buy some, have it in the budget, whether for next year or for this year, to be able to take it all the way through the commercial part.

Every other one, all the way to the bridge.

Yeah. Yeah.

And it would wouldn't take as many. I think another maybe double what we have would take it using every other would take it to the bridge.

You know to talk to Eric Condie because he's the one that bought those originally.

I've already talked to yeah. He's given me the contact to to look for buying others. It's okay.

Yeah. Christmas Island sale is doing a great job raising money for that, and we had a lot of luck getting others. It is mostly a business district, and I would think they would be interested too in contributing to that.

Well, I think the city council has gotta make a decision that we need to be beautifying this community, and they need to spend some money on it. So enough said. You hear me, folks?