Planning Commission, Cac & Pros - Special Meeting

the planning commission, climate action commission, and parks and recreation and open space commission. Uh my name is Matt Hayrick. I'm the chair of the planning commission. And I'd like to briefly recognize David Morell, the chair of the climate action commission. Thank you, Matt. And Charlie Tolbert, the vice chair of the parks, recreation, and open space commission. I will convene and call to order this meeting. And if I could get a roll call, please. Yes. We'll start with planning commission. We have chair Wyrick here. Vice Chair Nent here. Commissioner Barnett present. Commissioner Donbach here.

Commissioner Oberman Jenkins. Commissioner O'Neal. Commissioner Willers here. All right. And moving on to Climate Action Commission, we have Chair Morell here. We have Vice Chair Conlin here. Commissioner Baston here. Commissioner Hiderman, Commissioner McCloskey here, Commissioner Ward here, and moving on to pros, we have Vice Chair Tolbert here, Commissioner Cullinan here, Commissioner Donnelly

here, and Commissioner Miseraka here. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you very much, Mr. Meny, if I could get you to lead us in the pled pledge of allegiance, please. [laughter]

America stands for Thank you, sir. expertly led. So tonight, tonight's agenda contemplates one matter and it is an item for discussion and that is item 2.1 is to receive the presentation on the results from the citywide tree inventory and the urban tree canopy assessment and to discuss draft reports and provide any comments or questions. Staff report, please.

All right. Thank you. Jennifer Gates, community development director. I'm just going to do one quick introduction and pass it along to my counterparts. So, tonight there'll be three of us presenting. Um, we have Dave Jans, our parks and recck director, who some of you have met, some of you haven't. So, yay, we have one. Um, also part of the presentation will be Jacob Dunn, who is an associate planner for those um in pros that may not know him. So he'll be doing um a lot of the presentation of what the findings were. And then also I wanted to introduce two other staff members that are here. We have John Mazerve our city arborist as well as our new sustainability coordinator and Twinette. So I wanted to welcome them with that. Some of you are new to your commissions and some of you were here when we started this two years ago. I can't believe it's been two years. It flew by for a lot of us, I think. So, in January of 2024, we held our first joint commission meeting with all three of these commissions and started discussing tree policies and the commissions provided their initial direction on those priorities. Those minutes um and those meetings can be found online. Of course, in February of 2024, city council had identified trees in all caps as one of the priorities or goals um that they were that they set um during their goal setting session. Also in February 20 24 right after that um the joint commission we met again. We talked more about what we had discussed previously and you all as commissions we set out specific tree priorities. We discussed those and discussed which needed ad hocs. Um director Jans is going to go into a little bit more detail of the

accomplishments that we have had. But I just want to also note that in the LA what's occurred in 2025 is um we adopted the city master tree schedule and an updated version and then in April 2025 we did get an approved contract for Planet Geo um to do the canopy study and the tree inventory that we're going to talk about tonight. So we were successful in getting that budget um for that FY2425. So excited for the results. I'm excited that they're here for you. I know you guys have been waiting for them. And with that, I am going to hand it off to Jacob.

Well, good evening, commissioners. Larger crowd than usual, so this is exciting. Uh, so to start, we'll go over the work that was conducted for the tree canopy assessment. So, here's some background information about what is a tree canopy assessment. So this is a land cover study where aerial imagery is analyzed and determined uh determine a percentage of existing tree canopy which provides a baseline for future analysis. The key goals that were part of this uh included quantifying the tree canopy and other land use types, measuring the ecosystem services provided by the tree canopy to the community, uh identifying areas where tree canopy can be expanded, determining prior priority areas for tree preservation and planting initiatives, and then providing data that informs future planning and establishing goals. So the methodology for this work included using highresolution multisspectral imagery from 2022 and earth defined data that distinguished sixthclass land cover data for tree canopy and other land cover types. So these images here provide some reference to those land cover types and what they look like from an aerial perspective. Some distinctions between these includes the identification of trees as a darker denser foliage uh that have canopies exceeding 12 feet and have more uniformity. There's shrubs that exhibit lighter colors and are short and irregular irregularly shaped uh that blend with the grasses. There's also non-anopy vegetation like grasses and open spaces with no trees, bare soils where plant material is dried or died out, impervious surfaces like paved areas and buildings, and then areas with water. So, the analysis included identifying potential planting areas in spaces that were already classified as vegetation. unsuitable planning areas were manually delineated by staff uh and included recreational fields, agricultural lands, and stateowned properties. The results of the tree canopy assessment found that the city's boundary encompasses about 1,700 acres,

land acres, where about 25% of that area was covered by tree canopy and about 14% was identified as suitable for planting. And you'll see in the image there's all those land clo uh land cover types and kind of gives you an overall perspective of the whole city. So this pie chart provides a percentage breakdown of each land cover classification. And then something to note was that 21% of the existing tree canopy is currently overhanging impervious services. And increasing the tree canopy over those paved areas would help reduce urban heat, uh, storm water runoff, noise, and air pollution throughout the city. This image here provides a visual example of the potential planting areas throughout the city. I'll hold there just so you can take a look at it. Gives you an overall perspective. And now when analyzing the potential planting areas where specific uh there were specific locations around the city that resulted in really high and really low amounts. So high levels of potential planting was found in the north, northeast and south which totaled 252 acres of planting area. And the highest potential planting area was in the neighborhood north of east east Napa Street which you can see in this image which is displayed there. The neighborhood holds 23% of the city's total potential planting area, which is pretty high amount. The low levels of planting uh were found in the east and southwest. The neighborhood north of Sonoma Valley High School only has a potential planting area of about 13 acres, while the area in the southwest only has about 15 acres. So, it's approximately 06% of the total plantable space in Sonoma. and compared to the previous uh location. So, a number of assessment boundaries were utilized to make the informed decisions on how we would go about recommendations for the future. Uh these included looking at it from uh the scope of the city limits, the sphere of influence, priority conservation areas, fired hazard severity zones, city

properties, uh there's a hex uh hexagon shaped form, uh census block groups, and then we'll be focusing on the census block groups for this presentation. But the other assessment boundaries are further discussed in the report. So using the census block groups, it was found that the average tree canopy across all groups was 37 acres. And the groups with 25% or higher tree canopy were found in the north and east. The lower groups were with less than 20% canopy were found in western Soma. Uh the average plantable area was 21 acres throughout, but three census walk groups had 30 acres or more of plantable area and were found along the city boundaries on the north and southeast. And in regard to city-owned properties, the city manages about 175 acres of land and of which 75 of those acres were identified with tree canopy. This means that the average canopy cover on these properties is over 40%. Um but the total plantable area on these pro on these properties is approximately 65 acres. So an average of 22%. Um and as part of this review, it was also found that 40% of the city properties have more than 20% impervious cover, which kind of poses a um some limitations on future planting. And then looking at the u hexagonal assessment boundary, it provides a kind of like a unique characterization of the existing tree canopy as well as the plantable space using a uniform grid that kind of ignores the administrative boundaries that we currently have. Um you'll see that through the hexagon it represents approximately two acres. Uh and it paints a slightly different picture than the other assessment boundaries when it comes to the percentages and plantable areas. I'll hold it there so you can see the difference between the two. Um these maps kind of show a different view than what you would see in the other uh analysis. So next we'll go ahead and discuss the tree inventory.

So what is a tree inventory? Uh this is a comprehensive analysis that was conducted by ISA uh certified arborists on the ground. They created a record for each tree and compiled it into an online platform that could be used for maintenance in the future. Uh each tree record includes its location, a photograph, common and Latin names, the trunk diameter at 4 and a half ft, estimated tree height and spread, its overall health maintenance needs that it may need u and then any other recommend some other recommendations as well. So the key goals for this were to quantify the amount and location of tree canopy, measuring uh the ecosystem services that were provided by the tree canopy overall identifying potential planting areas um and confirming them also by having someone on the ground. It helps us confirm what's there. U also determining priority areas for preservation and planting and then providing data for the future planning as well. So the tree inventory resulted in a total of 183 species. the total or the top 10 species were found to comprise 60% of that total and with a 555 common crepe mortals taking up 10% of that total inventory. So the other species with the highest counts included the London plain tree and southern magnolia. And when analyzing the size distributions we found that the large trees with a diameter of more than 6 in made up the majority of all trees. And while the number of large diameter trees is consistent with the ideal percentages, the number of smaller diameter trees showed that it had um less than ideal percentage for ones that were between 0 and 6 in and then more than ideal percentage for those between 6 and 18 in. And I'll have a diagram for that in just a second. So this this pie chart here gives you a perspective of all the types of trees that were found in the inventory with 33% uh being other species. And then this is the graph that kind of gives you a visual representation of those diameters and whether they meet

the ideal percentage or not. And so you'll see that for the ones between 0 and 18 in, they're slightly unaligned with the ideal uh percentage, but the other ones that are larger do meet that uh expectation. There we go. So the inventory provided helpful details about the tree conditions and maintenance to further protect uh the city's urban tree canopy as well. This was found um that most trees were in good condition which makes up 71% or about 3600 of the trees of the whole inventory. So only 22% of trees were found to be in critical condition and then 3.41% were found in poor condition. This also coincides with the recommended maintenance that uh 96% of the trees were inventoried as needing pruning. Um and only about 1% were categorized as needing removal. So overall the information that was gathered during the tree inventory is going to help provide g uh key details for future planning and um help us with creating recommendations. So this report gave us a analysis of the um results and how that impacts the city. It was found that the existing canopy provides over 547,000 in an uh annually and avoided infrastructure costs and removes about 300 lb of carbon monoxide, 1500 lb of nitrogen dioxide and then other pollutants from the air as well. As discussed earlier, the uh total urban canopy amounts to 25% of the entire city with 14% of the city's area being available for planting. And then it was found that one of the challenges that we recognize uh is going to be the total area of unsuitable land for planting which makes up 60% of the total land area. And these are kind of the uh ultimate results that we got from this whole analysis. So, I'll go ahead and turn it over to the director of park

works. Uh, sorry, director of parks and wreck. Dave J.

Thanks, Jacob. Uh, good evening, commissioners. Nice to see all of you. Nice to meet some of you. Uh, my name is Dave Jans. I'm the parks and recreation director for the city of Soma. So, um, after you've reviewed the materials in front of you and Jacob's gone through the overview, we want to talk about what comes next. Right? Now that we have all of this information, all of this data, how do we put it to use? And so what I'm going to start off with is going through some of the recommendations that come directly from the report, working with our consultant, working with our staff team. Um, and then take that down a level of how we may implement that really on the ground both in near-term and in long-term opportunities. Um, so directly from the report, some of the recommendations are to target high priority planting areas. And so we have different ways that we can break down the data. As you saw, we have census blocks or it can be broken into different areas of town. And so what we want to look at as we look to replant is focusing on areas that have uh lower canopy but are in the prioritized planting areas. And so the intent as you'll see here is rather than us always looking at especially in response to a tree removal, if a tree is removed because it's not an ideal location, what we can now do is look at communitywide. So, we can say rather than maybe this area wasn't the ideal location for that tree, so we're going to replant um and increase our camping communitywide even if it's not specifically in that area. And we can also make sure that we're taking the look at things from an equitable um standpoint across the board. Um we want to expand and diversify the public canopy. So, we're looking at the recommendations of the various trees, utilizing our master tree list and other recommendations to make sure that we are putting in future plantings um that best fit our needs now and into the future for trees. Uh the third recommendation is to integrate these canopy goals into our city planning and and policy. And so, what we want to do is make sure that we are continuing to challenge ourselves, but that this is achievable. And so again, rather than be reactive, we want

to be proactive and set oursel up for goals for what we want to see as our overall canopy throughout the city and make sure that we set ourselves both up from a planning standpoint but a budgetary standpoint to be able to achieve those goals. Um enhance jurisdiction jurisdictional engagement and that could also be crossjurisdictional engagement. Um, so utilizing resources and organization and data that's already in place, we have the ability to work with our partners both in city limits, um, but also in our sphere of influence throughout the valley, um, to help achieve a more robust canopy, um, and impact our community members directly by by leveraging the resources that are available to us. And then an important component is continuing to monitor, evaluate, and report on this progress. We know this is a key step to get to this point to have this data in front of us. But this is a snapshot, right? This is a snapshot of the data that we have right here in front of us. You know, some of it's from aerial images in 2022 and we know as soon as that report comes off the press, it's already outdated. So, we have to continue to monitor and uh one key tool that we're receiving from this is going to be a GIS database. So what we'll be able to do is as we go through the process of planting more trees, maintaining trees and then since that we have to remove trees, we can document that in real time and that will let us stay on top of our management plan moving forward. So next steps now that we have the report what step one is here tonight. We want to present the information to you all. We want to present the information to the community. We want to hear your feedback. We know that this initiative started right here with you all as commissioners. And so um it's taken a lot of work to get to this point. So we want to hear from you. We'll incorporate feedback and then the next step after that is we'll take this to the city council. Um right now we're targeting u meeting in February to take the information to them and to hopefully with after we incorporate feedback to adopt both of these reports and start utilizing them as actionable tools. Once adopted, what we will do and as

we're actively doing is analyzing these findings and incorporate them into our ongoing tree maintenance um and management plans. And so right now we are already on uh we'll use the plaza for example, we've set out a tiered a tiered process to make sure that we are not only responding to to hazardous trees, but we're actively pruning and staying in front of uh potential risks and making sure that we're staying on top of the health of those trees. So, what we want to do is take the data that we have from working with our our contracted arborist, Mr. Mazerve, as well as our local tree companies who help maintain those trees and make sure that the plan we're on coincides with the data here. And if there's any discrepancies, we want to make sure that we sort that out and build that into our management plan directly. Um this report, both reports will be used to inform, uh future studies, uh budgetary decisions, project planning, um daily maintenance operations, and your commission work plans. Um I'll show you a document here in a moment that you all came up with as a joint commission back in 2024, and we want to keep that active and moving forward. And so we want to use this data to help you in your work as commissioners. And then uh finally, we'll utilize these findings, recommended actions, and strategies to create an actionable implementation plan. You've heard me say that a few times, but that's important to us. We want to make sure these aren't studies that we just reference five years down the road and say that was a nice thing we did in 2025. We want to make sure that we put the actions to use and these stay these uh reports stay fluid and that we are continue to update them. So, I referenced that document. So you may recall some of you I know are here for it others have joined but in January 24 we had a joint commission meeting um and this body came up with a list of prior prioritized actions. Some of those are in progress, some are um items that can be accomplished now that we have this data in front of us. Some of this will have to be more on the long range as we filter it into other

opportunities, planning opportunities and work plans. Um, but I do want to point out that there is a handful of things that have been accomplished to date. A lot of has to do with the work that you've done as commissioners. Um, so first and foremost, uh, following that, there was an interest in creating and publishing a master tree list that's been done. It's been adopted by council. I'll point out in a future slide, just because it was adopted doesn't mean that work doesn't doesn't stop. Again, we want to make sure that we are are planting the right species of trees in the right location. So, that is intended to be an ongoing uh document that has the ability to be modified as uh commissioners, community, and staff see opportunities to uh either add species or remove species from that list based on um how well they'll do in our ever evolving environment. Uh item number two, update the tree inventory and canopy study. Here we are. We're almost there. I put a check next to it because we're presenting it tonight. Um but we know we're not quite there adopted, but we know this is a big item to help move a lot of the other items forward. Um we continue to update the web materials. This obviously will become a larger task and more robust opportunity to update the materials once we have more data. Um but we intend to share the results of the study online, make that sure that these are accessible for the public and as I shared before there's going to be an interactive tool where members of the public can get online um interact with the GIS data database uh see the status of trees both in public and uh and in the public rideway in real time. And we're continuing, I would say, we're actively looking for opportunities to fund implementation of planting and maintenance of trees. And what I mean by that is we've we've worked with a few partners here in the last several months and we have the opportunity, a couple of organizations have come forward that are interested in donating some trees to help us with planting initiatives. Um, we are constantly looking for grant opportunities to support both the recommendations in this study as well as supporting things like our priority conservation areas. So, we'll continue to actively look for um grant and

funding mechanisms to help move these recommendations forward. So, next what I'm going to move to is a couple of slides of ways that um some concepts that we've come up that we can potentially implement some of the recommendations. So, taking them from high level and really start to utilize them. Again, we want to hear your feedback. Um we want to hear your recommendations. We know this isn't a comprehensive list, but this these are ways that we can take the data and put them into action. Um, so as I mentioned before, we want to compare analyze this data to what we already have on file. We've done um several tree reports. We know that there's been individual departments that have have worked on monitoring and managing our trees. So, we want to take this data, compare to it, and make sure that our our daily operations are on track and that our short-term management plans are in alignment with the recommendations of this plan. Um, and we want to incorporate that into our regular tree maintenance schedule. again prioritizing those high uh planting areas that have low canopy and uh again we're trying to reduce some of those those climate offsets by reducing heat um urban islands. Um we want to focus in on regulation and policy policy. So utilizing this data to inform standardize and update our our tree removal permit process. And so what we're trying to do is whether that's a a private tree, a tree on a public land, a tree that's part of a development, make it a very streamlined process for people um that would like to submit and also give a a key set of curriculum so that the the governing body that's deciding right now that lives with the parks, Rex, Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Commission, they have a clear set of criteria of how they determine whether a tree should or shouldn't be removed and then in turn what is the replacement process and then how we monitor and enforce that replacement process. And then as I mentioned before, we're going to continue to review and modify that master tree list as necessary.

Um just a few more here. Um again, ongoing planning planning and monitoring. And so um we want to establish as commissions, as a community, as uh as a staff, what our overall target is. Again, we want that to be challenging, but we want that to be achievable, our target of an urban tree canopy um citywide. So, what are our goals and how do we reach that? By building out um the proper proper budgetary resources and staffing resources to meet that goal. Um we're going to utilize the tools that we both already exist as well as this new GIS database to make sure that we are tracking uh plantings, removals, maintenance of those trees so we can make informed decisions down the line and making sure that we're reporting back to you all as commission and the council on the progress. Again, we want to make sure this doesn't stop here once adopted, but this is a continued continued process. A component of this if we want really want communitywide buyin is to get the community involved. And so, we want to make these resources available. We'd like to see community members um understand the importance of these tools, how they can utilize them at home, how they have resources available available to them on proper u tree care, proper tree species. um so that if they are looking to plant or replant they have those resources in front of them and I think a key component of that is not just that they have the resources but they understand the reason of why we're doing this of why it's important to look at our overall tree canopy why we're studying our tree inventory and that decisions that they make as an individual homeowner a business owner as a park user um impacts the greater community as a whole not just their individual property so we want to work to make sure that we have the proper education material on our website, but also that we're doing constant and regular outreach um hopefully getting involvement from our schools, service clubs, and other organizations in town. And one other element we want to talk

about is uh how we take this into the long term. And so one one opportunity that we have in front of us is to take this data and and build that into something um called an urban forest management plan. Some of you may be familiar with that concept. Um others may not. And so it there's a lot of details to it. Um, this is kind of a highlevel summary. Um, but we have the opportunity to take this information that's in front of us and either work with a consulting company such as Planet Geo to help build this out. Um, if not, we can tackle some of these uh initiatives in-house. It just may take may take longer and may take uh might not be quite to the same level as working with someone um like an outside consultant. But some of the benefits that I just want to point out of going down the line of an urban forest or urban forestry management plan is it creates a a communitywide standardized process of how we care and respond um to our trees as a whole. And so it allows us to look at our street trees, our park trees, our individual trees, and we have a set set of standards and criteria of how we manage them, how we handle removal requests, and how we handle long-term maintenance. And so from a staff operational standpoint, um it really standardized our process for pruning, removal, inspection, um really allows us to have a good focus on our long-term risk management, how we're looking at, uh managing our mature trees versus newly planted trees. Um and also provides guidance for years when we're dealing with drought or unexpect unexpected stress on those trees. It really sets a long-term plan for our tree system citywide. Um, it supports us with policy and planning. So, it takes the data that we have here and builds that into uh more defined recommendations, defined roles and responsibilities for decision- making again, which bodies will make decisions

on how our trees are governed and uh really will guide our updates to ordinances such as our heritage tree ordinance or our tree removal process. And finally, um, really brings once again the community into that decision-making process and that education process. Um, so it provides information to those communities to community members on the reasons for why we're doing this and gets buyin from them and hopefully gets them to support our process as well. So, that's something that we have an opportunity to take this as a next step is to take our information now and build it into a long-term u management plan that I think would benefit uh both staff uh commission policy makers as well as the community as a whole. And so, that's an overview of our our immediate recommendations um and potential ways that we can implement. Again, we want to hear from you. Um we want to hear your feedback. And so with that, the three of us as staff are happy to answer questions and we'll turn it back over to you to take any uh to field questions and any public comments you like.

Great. Thank you very much, Dave, and thank you, Jacob, for your presentations this evening. Um, and to Dave's point about community engagement, it would be my preference, unless there's objection from uh members of the commissions that we go to public comment first uh to allow the handful [snorts] of members of the public who are in the audience to speak. uh without undue impact to the rest of their evenings. The uh the balance of the room is a little um imbalanced, I should say. There's uh far more commission members up here who already have microphones than there are members of the public. So uh with that, if there's no objection, I will open public comment as it relates to this uh agenda item and welcome any members of the public to come forward who are wishing to address the commissions on this topic. Seeing none, Mr. Meny, come forward. State your name, please.

Good evening. Thank you for your presentations. Mike Meny, 380 Church Street. I'm just wondering, I just have a question. How does this uh replanting fold in with Calire's fire hazard zones? Good, good question. And that will be one of mine, and I have a feeling that that will be a discussion topic. So, I'd welcome you to stay. Um, and and my comments earlier were not intended to to force anyone out the door, just to give you the opportunity to speak before we all do. So, y I'm sure that topic will be covered. Perfect. Thank you all, Caitlyn. Thank you.

Good evening. Um, Caitlyn Cornwall representing Sonoma Ecology Center. Um, a lot of great work here. really fun to see this um just after all this time sort of you know rise to the level and have all these people looking at this information. It's great. Trees are really important for the quality of life of everyone in the city. Um and I think uh uh Richard and I were just talking about the report and really the the only um comment that we have is that there's a whole other set of benefits that trees can bring that seems to be completely missing from the report. Um and even the estimate of the monetary contributions that the tree that trees make to the city which is um the contribution of trees toward uh habitat for wildlife, birds and and the insects that create the entire food web that enables birds to survive here. So this is a whole additional set of benefits that can be had by the city in its tree plans with no additional expense. It really um the the point would be to um add uh some of the literature about those that set of benefits to the report. Uh Douglas Talamy has an entire huge body of work scientific work on this um the benefits of locally native trees and how much more uh how many more birds they produce for example um and pollinators, butterflies, etc. So, um, like for example, it's very interesting that the existing tree list does not include coastlife oak, does not include valley oak. Those are the most common, easy to obtain, fast growing, very tough uh, species that should be really near the top of the list. Um, and similarly, the tree benefits diagram on page 33 doesn't include any any of these habitat or food web benefits. So, we'd really like to

see that and also uh that you consider that when this comes around for policy that the city should have a target for a percentage of its tree canopy that is locally native species for all the benefits that that brings. Um, and there's no loss. You know, uh, you can plant a crate myrtle size tree that's native and it will do all the things a crate myrtle does and a bunch more. So, that's our main comment and we'd be happy to work with the city in any way on these topics. Thanks. Thank you very much. Is there anybody else in the audience wishing to Mr. Meny come forward question? As long as you're behind the microphone, sir. I'm feeling like I'm being misinterpreted.

Oh, Mike Meny again. Um, I [clears throat] grew up in the state park system. So, I'm like the Lorax. I love trees. I grew up literally from one month old until my father retired in 1988 in the state park system. I also work in the state park system. I love trees. I'm just wondering how this all interrelates with each other.

100%. Thank you. Any other members of the public wishing to come forward and address the uh commissions on this matter? Okay, seeing none, I will close public comment and I will bring it back to the commissions. Um staff, do you have any recommendations? uh what would be easiest for you procedurally as to how you would like to field comments and questions? Would you like to go by commission? Okay,

let's go by commission and then you can combine um questions and comments for each person and let's do one round per person that wants to participate through each commission and then if we have additional comments and questions after everybody gets one chance then let's come back around and do it again if that works. That way one commission isn't taking the majority of the meeting or anything. Understood. And maybe logically we would start with questions. You can you can combine them if I have a feeling some thoughts are part of questions.

Okay, that sounds good. Is everybody on the same page? Okay, let's go by commission. Um, selfishly, we'll start with the planning commission. Any members of the planning commission? Commissioner Bernett.

Thank you. Um this has been a long time coming and I'm delighted to see it. um discussions about the reality of our urban forest um have gone back well at least a decade or two and um so here we are both the technology has caught up with the desire of the city to do this and enabled it to do it in a way that we weren't able to do in the past which is great the idea of having a GIS interactive map that identifies everything is fabulous. So, I'm I'm delighted to see this come forward. One question I had was this um urban tree canopy study did or did not include trees um on in backyards. In other words, there was one study which was the aerial study which I assume was global and that one would catch all the trees and provide a canopy result. The actual tree counts however and the cataloging of the individual individual trees. Am I correct in understanding that that did not include trees in rear yards?

That is correct. It did not. So, we needed to um we had a what do we 5,000 tree limit that we were trying to stick to within a week. And so, we focus primarily on public rideway and adjacent to or backup sidewalk areas. And so, when the GIS when we make it live, you'll see a lot of dots. And that's where the focus of over 5,000 trees is. Okay. And and I would uh just broadly assume that that count of 5,000 is either 50% or 100% greater if we take in the area that wasn't specifically counted.

Correct. So the canopy study looks at because it's looking from aerial. Um, but I would say potentially even more than the 5,000 because we were at first doing within like the first 15 feet and we only got through one small zone and we hit over a thousand in like a day. And so they were like, uh, we need to step back if you want to actually look at your parks. So, um, we're going to be way over the double.

Okay. Thank you. Um, uh, just a couple of comments. Uh it seems to me that the the process that we've engaged in here uh essentially consists of certain segments that are connected to each other but that comprise a whole system of of how we work with this information and work with the public to implement it. Uh the step one is to for the city to clearly delineate and establish regulations, many of which we've already done in terms of responsibility for trees. Uh when um an individual property owner with a tree that is um uh impacting the public right away, for example, uh needs to have some work done. what's the responsibility of the property owner to and role of the property owner in that and and are the people who are going to do the work well educated as to what the city specifics requirements are. So you've got the regulate portion then you've got the educate portion which isn't just about you know the health of trees and how to preserve them and the best way to care for them. The other part of the educate is what are the regulations and how do we bring people's attention to the fact that there are regulations about trees. I don't think most homeowners in this city frankly if asked would be able to tell you what they're allowed or not allowed to do and we need to improve that education portion of it. And that then brings up the issue of communication. So there's the three-part regulate, educate and communicate. The communication part is um also challenging. It can't be just a matter of putting things on a website there. If this is going to become a real effort on

the part of the community, uh the communication is going to have to be broader than simply having an information conduit that the city tells people if you want to find out about trees and Sonoma, here's where you go. I'm not suggesting what the breadth of it or the construction of that communication process would be, but um but there is the opportunity for the production of printed pamphlets and guides that can be distributed for example to new homeowners. Uh a fair proportion of the houses turn over in Sonoma every year. New homeowners come in. they not they this should be part of a new homeowner package which is u some some information about what the responsibilities are. So I'd like to see effort and into the definition of what a communication program would be. The other two things I just want to mention um is that you mentioned uh heritage trees in your presentation. I've been talking about the heritage tree program for the 35 years I've been involved in city business. Our heritage tree ordinance is basically nothing. I I'm not even sure if we've even named one heritage tree, but if we have, it's just one. And the reason for that is it doesn't mean anything. So, I am a strong supporter of the idea of a heritage tree program, but only if it means something. And to me what it means is that an individual homeowner has a tree of such significance that they are prepared to in the deed of their property come to an agreement about the treatment of that tree into the future. That subsequent purchases of that property when they buy that property are subject to the terms

of the heritage tree agreement that is made. In terms of the kind of care that will be given to a tree and its preservation, I know we have a higher proportion of very large trees than are optimal, but not really. We can't have too many very large trees. We just don't have enough not very large trees. So the very large trees which comprise I think a a invaluable and irreplaceable part of Sonoma's heritage need to be included in this vehicle. My envisioning of a heritage tree ordinance is that the city would begin to look at the potential of allocating money to offset the costs of maintaining a tree properly that is the responsibility of a homeowner but is a heritage tree. that if the city wants to get homeowners to say, "We'd like to nominate this tree as a heritage tree and if they're willing to give up some of the freedom that they might have otherwise had," there has to be something in compensation to them for that. And my view is that what's in compensation to that is that a fund be established to help offset the cost of what it really requires to maintain or properly prune a 200 or 400 year old oak tree that's that's 4 feet in diameter and hangs mostly over the street and the city ought to be prepared to invest in the preservation of that tree through the air tree ordinance. Then the last thing I want to bring up is something else I didn't see in this at all, which is there's a lot of reference to uh planting more trees. Totally support planting more trees. I think it would be great and I like the idea of looking at where we need them or where we don't have them and and how we can accomplish

that. I'd like to see that intermixed with a potential for [snorts] what I refer to loosely as greenway creation. Looking at our circ looking at our circulation plan. Looking at our circulation element. Looking at the the areas of the city which are not just transportation corridors but recreational zones for people where pedestrians walk where the quality of moved dramatically by an overall greenway plan. that might even change the configuration of the street or the sidewalks or create bulbouts or do other things that promote opportunities to create and this is the key planting in these impermeable surface areas. I think if we address these impermeable surface areas as not void of any potential but actually uh with redesign and thoughtful configuration and opportunity to be a planting area, we can um offset some of the heat island effects in some of these areas, create a more pleasant uh pedestrian uh experience and biking experience in Soma, not just on existing bike paths, but looking to create greenway ways in areas that have been neglected that really don't have anything now and those are largely going to be impermeable surface areas. I think we need to examine that more tightly. That's it. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Any other members of the planning commission? Uh Commissioner Will, please.

Um first comment, uh great presentation. Nice to have the report. The one comment that I would like to make is maybe we can invite the public to participate in the tree count and identification. I know the canopy captured a lot of trees and I visited GIS. I saw the little dots and I realized that a significant portion of the trees that are even within the what I would call the public right away, not out inside fences but along streets along private drives um simply don't exist. if I understand the limitation, but I know, you know, for myself, the small community that I live in, I'd be happy to send in what those are. And I think there were a lot of people on their private properties that would participate in just saying, "Yeah, that's a walnut tree, and yeah, my backyard tree is a maple, you know." Um, so if you can get them, that just collects more data without any expense to the city and and lets people invest in the idea that we have a um canopy that promotes all the qualities that we that we enjoy. Um, [clears throat] I I want to second Commissioner Barnett's um uh uh comments about heritage trees. I think the largest trees that we have in our community are the most significant from a ecological standpoint. Um, and whether they're privately owned or in a public space, they were here far be before probably before Vallejo was here obviously. Um, and they should be treated as that and some kind of incentive for the by the city to that um tree owner now um should be provided to maintain its health. Um, and then lastly, the you know, the the as Caitlyn mentioned, the type of tree that we

choose to plant in the public realm. And I call the public realm, private parking lots, required to have trees that were required to have trees during their use permit. And then those trees have been neglected and no enforcement has been taken over time. I think we really need to re-evaluate our enforcement over it's great for us to require them during the use permit process. I feel it's neglect for us not to enforce the lack of care of them um during the what we would expect to be the lifespan of a tree to provide the kind of um not only visual aesthetic um element that a tree provides but the ecological elements that the tree provides the shading of the parking lot which is really the intent of it um and and the absorption of the water that then can nurture that tree. And so, as I mentioned two years ago, I think parking lots need to be a pay need to be paid attention to as potential urban forest land. And the way in which we have to drain parking lots currently provide a perfect opportunity to do those two things at once. to provide a stable environment for a tree to be planted in a parking lot to reduce the um effects of of the urban heat island and to provide a visual and aesthetic benefit for that um parking lot. So I see those impermeable areas as potentially significant areas for a reforestation of the community ran rather than leaving it as a defor in a deforested state. So those are my primary comments.

Great. Thank you. Any other members of the planning commission? Donna.

Uh yes. So, I I want to pile on on some of these comments and and ask that um the the city prioritize uh in their action plan this idea of greenways, of reclaiming some of the um current um urban areas like the parking lots um uh as well as realizing um that the um the PCA areas are somewhat limited. And so again, um, ask the city try to continue to expand those areas. Um, uh, so for instance, the trail, the walking trail that was a train, the the train track, that's not in the PCA area, but it's a potential for a greenway. Um, so really uh, put a plan together to prioritize those. And also getting back to native um species, I think a priority on planting native species because there's also a benefit with regard to those when it comes to fire safety. Um and so I would ask the city to consider those as well.

Great. Thank you. Anything to add?

Yes. Um I concur with um all of my fellow commissioners um the comments that they've made. Specifically um I'm asked every day by homeowners, what do I what do I do with this tree? What can I do with this tree? Am I responsible for it? And I don't have the answers. So I think that's an area that we could focus on. And I really like um Commissioner Barnett's idea of a new homeowners package. Uh it would be incredibly helpful as these um as these private properties uh transfer that we can then give them we can educate them. We can give them the tools and what they what they need to do um and for them to take responsibility um for the care of those. There's a lot of um there's a lot of developments um assoc uh developments with homeowners associations etc. that were required to put in x amount of trees and then we never looked back to see if they were ever taken care of. And we see that now when again when these these properties trade um it's like whoa who what can I get what is that and it's it's in disrepair and um what can I do with it? So that would be an area I think would be um very beneficial to the community uh for the private homeowners.

Thank you, Commissioner Nent. Um the new homeowner packet is is a good concept. Maybe we can do it electronically so that we don't have to kill any more trees in the process. Um, I'll just say generally that this this study is overdue and it's uh provides much more of a concrete foundation for decision-m than we've had in the past. Um, just beyond anecdotal assessments. Um, I think the documentation of the tree conditions, size, location improves transpar transparency and helps to inform decision making around these things. Um I appreciate that in this case the consultant didn't rely solely on generic assumptions but um evaluated you know pretty sight specific conditions um and it it definitely serves as a as a good baseline and a snapshot of current conditions um which is essential for future tracking um but it does naturally you know raise questions about how this is going to translate into policy and I and I'm interested to Mr. Meny's earlier point about the convergence of sometimes competing environmental and ecological um interests in wildfire mitigation, fuel reduction, um water conservation and reforestation and how all those things can harmoniously uh work, you know, work together and find find policy direction that uh that complements and and speaks to each one of those interests. So, I think I'll pass the microphone to um Mr. Moral to call on his commission.

Um do do you want me to answer part of that question? Absolutely. Thank you.

Okay. [laughter] And then I'll pass it to Chair Morell. Um so in the document itself, um starting around page I think I looked at it 25 26 um we had a whole section. And we actually asked for this section because we understand that that is important that you they have never done this in their canopy studies before. Um so it's something that they are um did some research on and added. I will say that there it's just a a highlight. Um and it it's really just highlighting what's the difference between the zones that we have within the city. So again, very high fire and then we have high fire and moderate. Very high fire is the area that really um has more of the considerations um and requirements around um defensible space versus um moderate and high or more like suggested um defensible space buffers and um especially around structures. I have requested that um the Sonoma Valley Fire District, specifically Trevor, um will do a presentation probably in um March, I'm looking at right now, where he will specifically do a um we'll do a joint uh presentation to for the community as a whole to talk about what does this mean for us since the fire maps are a brand new thing for our community And so he'll talk more about the defensible space. They have in here as well. We've linked to the documents that are on Sonoma Valley Fire District on defensible space um and their um recommendations around creating buffers around your house. Um and so we'll we'll highlight those and then we'll also talk about some of the

building code um aspects of having being in fire zones now. So I did want to highlight it is something that we are looking at. We are wanting to probably update more um in our fire our tree list take into consideration more of okay if you're in the very high fire definitely don't plant these you know those types of considerations will add into um when we look at the list and then some other qualities it is a like we were talking about um as director Jan said is this is ongoing so this is um right now this is what we have, but we will continue to work on it and um update it as we learn more and um create materials around it. Um especially around those that live specifically in that very high fire zone because as you probably noted, a lot of our plantable area is in that very high fire zone. So, we are looking closely at what that means.

Great. Thanks for answering that question and I hope my comments didn't come across as critical. I I appreciate very much that the that the study did contemplate that and I I I read it and uh I'm glad that we were talking about how these maybe sometimes competing aspects of um ecology are going to fit together. Thank you. Uh I will pass it to Oh, go ahead. Sure. R.

Thank you. Uh you won't be surprised to know I have a number of comments, but before I launch into them, I'd like to defer to my fellow members of the Climate Action Commission for their comments, and then I'll wrap up at the end of those comments with some notes that I have. Amber, would you like to kick it off?

I I appreciate this discussion between all of us. It's a long time coming. It's so exciting and I really like how much support we have in wanting to drive this to the community and get community support and community action in it. has been, I think, a sticking point for a lot of us in our commission of wanting the public to really feel impassioned and involved in different things that we are doing because they all love our trees too, but they don't really know what's possible, what's not possible, what these trees actually mean to us as well. Um, so I think it'll be great that we come up with something. Um, little plug that we are trying to work on something for Earth Day. So, I'm putting these in the back of my head, too, to see what's possible to come up with for an Earth Day resource day as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Others, Leo, comments,

Leo McCloskkey on the climate action committee. Uh, let's see. We're going to have some comments coming from Tom Conlin. We worked on looking at the tree list and we looked at the list of plant materials that were recommended um and no and no no offense but uh Miss Mazerka was working on that were uh brought to the parks and recreation department and uh one thing I can say is I I'm a PhD chemical ecologist from a plant group at University of California at Santa Cruz and what's happening with whether it's grapes where I have a lot of expertise uh or with urban forestry is we want to look for trees that are benchmarked in another region that is identical in temperature to what we have here and that's called the optimum temperature the trees that we have and the decorative trees that were brought in including the great Bernal uh which is a pretty adaptable tree but say Magnolia would be kind of an odd tree to have in Sonoma, but we have them. They're in the prevalent list that what we could be looking for are trees that are more coming from our identical temperature. One example would be Johannesburg, South Africa. In Johannesburg there uh the British have had an empire and they they have botanical institutes that are really well organized and trees are moving in from Burma and in South Africa and the former Commonwealth countries in a very organized fashion. They're arrived in the central valley of California uh for the nurseries and um for example podarpus icy blue is being used by one of the major uh companies that are landscape architects here in the area

and I've planted those I've replanted my garden to new plant materials with the optimum temperature of this valley and they really thrive and the amount of water they use is maybe less than half of what I had before. And so I think it's worth looking at this list and finding raising the bar and getting away from the old um natural history collections from that are at the University of California at Berkeley and at Davis which have been looking at the na the natural plants but they're not trees they're not uh permaculture which what is what we're looking for here permaculture uh And what happens [clears throat] when you get the right temperature, the tree from the right temperature is the amount of water used by the system dramatically drops. Grapes, which I know very well, use about a million gallons of water per acre. So you can imagine that trees are using on that order of magnitude of water. And as the water table's dropping here in the city, the amount of water that these trees are going to be able to tap into is dropping. And so it's really nice to to get the optimum temperature tree to bring into the region and and upgrade that list uh that we have so that we reduce the amount of water and we get the same amount of canopy cover for half the water. So I think that's what we're uh looking for. That's what's happening in the wine industry. We're looking for new varieties in California that will replace Chardonnay. How many people drink Chardonnay? Well, in the future, there's going to be another grape, but it's probably going to be Vermentino, which has a higher temperature. That's the temperature in Italy. And that temperature is the new

temperature in California. So, the old cool climate grapes, the old cool climate trees are going away. a cool climate. Um, you know, uh, live oak that here is here along the coast is no longer going to work in Napa. It will still work here, but we're going to see more valley oaks coming in here, things like that. So, just that kind of thinking and no criticism to anything. It's just we're relying on uh existing information from the past where the temperature is higher. say in 1950 it's about about three degrees higher now centigrade and so the most of the plant ideas that we have for California probably won't work the oaks are excellent and you know they have owls they have they would maintain the bird systems those are a really good tree for for Sonoma so just some some other thinking out of the box a little maverick thinking

thank you Leo John comments Um, yeah, just to double down on what Leo says and the ecology center, like I think it's very important to really consider planting native species that have the most amount of good for the most amount of native animals that share this area with us. Um, I know just I live close to where the Starling is over on the west side of town and I was a park ranger and guide for about 30 years and so I'm very attuned to what the sounds of the birds are outside my window [clears throat] and um just in the nine years that I've lived here the bird sounds have drastically changed. I don't know what the studies are that are ongoing in this area, but um you know we have changing populations of commonly seen animals going on around us all the time right now. So I think it that's something that's worth taking into consideration. Um, also want to say I don't know to what extent the study in terms of plantable space has considered like the damage to infrastructure to sidewalks and streets. Um, in terms of where to plant trees or how trees are removed because of damage to uh sidewalks and streets. Um, you know, I see that a lot in my neighborhood where I am. We have a lot of damage to the streets to the asphalt sidewalks, whole blocks of the sidewalks coming up. And, you know, they sometimes are never repaired. And I mean, I've tripped over the same bit of sidewalk over and over again um to my dismay, but uh and it's

all, you know, because of the kind of tree or how close the tree was planted to where the sidewalks were going to be. So, I don't know if that um fits into your calculus like in terms of plantable space like where our infrastructure is, including like you know, gas and electric lines and sewer pipes that need to be managed um with all the utilities. Thank you. Um, Philip, some thoughts on your part. Really, the conversation has been really good that there's very little to add other than I too drink Chardonnay and Vermentino and I'm anxious to hear what our chair and vice chair have.

I'm not at all surprised by that. Thank you, Philip, with your French background.

Thank you. Um, there's a lot of us tonight and a lot of comments and I want to agree with just about everybody's comments so far. It might be helpful to have the PDF of our agenda packet. Um, because some of the things I have to say might be helpful to illustrate with a picture and the maps that I found in the canopy study in particular are most uh interesting and helpful. Um, I have four pages of detailed notes that I won't bore everybody with tonight, but I do want to talk about high level things, some of which my other fellow commissioners have have uh touched on. Um, first to answer Caitlyn's question, I think the the Valley Oak and Coastal live oaks are about 10% of our existing inventory on uh page 11. Um it seemed to me that the inventory and the canopy had different objectives. The inventory struck me as having primarily like a public worksoriented uh cost containment cost fiscal management and liability management perspective and that's obviously something the city needs to pay attention to. Um but it um there are the other things that I think most of the commissioners around the table here have have asked for. Um I want to be sure we don't end up going through this exercise and then only paying attention to just the bottom line questions. Um the size distribution analysis in the inventory excluding the small diameter trees um that are even in the near zone um skews that size diameter result. My takeaway though at looking at that is that city of Sonoma has actually a very

healthy age grade of trees uh over the life cycle of trees and we're lucky to have that. Um so we what shows in uh the table um is is that that that threshold the only the smallest trees are the ones that we are deficient in but that's largely a factor or a an artifact of underounting those small trees just through our method. Um and so back to the concept of what objectives we're trying to achieve. How important is canopy equity? I I had a lot of questions in the inventory and I wanted to see the inventory parsed by ownership type and or and maybe geography. I see that that's more captured in the canopy study when I read that later, but I I question whether it wouldn't be too much to add to to add that those cross tabs to the inventory analysis. Um because then we would know where those current trees are of different sizes and uh species. Um and also to get back to that ownership responsibility which leads to is it the private land owner the folks you know on the planning commission have to deal with these things. Um when when an individual comes forward and says I want to take a tree down, we would it would be helpful to know where the inventory of of trees are by ownership type. Um the the clearance maintenance category that's described in the inventory is huge and I'd like to see some sense of

prioritization from our consultants before it gets turned over to the city. Um, how do you how do we propose attacking this massive problem of maintaining the trees? We've already got half the 2,300 2500 trees that need to be maintained on a continuous basis. And so, as a bicycle rider, I think about the ones that hit me in the face when I'm riding in the bike lane. But I know that there's sidewalk users, there's trees that could fall on me when I'm driving down the road. So, I'd like to see some sense of prioritization um recommendations in the final report. Um you know it do highways have a higher priority than arterials or is there a jurisdictional problem there? I don't know. Um Leo talked about and this is now switching mostly to the canopy study. um the Copengger uh you know the fact that Sonoma is going to be transitioning from warm summers hot summers and the trees that we have now may not survive that and we need to be planning toward that. Um, we'll be doing a a brief report at our climate action commission next month from our ad hoc committee that he was making reference to. Um to to the point that Larry brought up in his initial comments about private uh trees that are in the adjacy area, the picture, the map that's on page 32, I believe, might be most helpful for illustrating and it's in the uh presentation as well. Um, uh, that okay, maybe that went a little bit higher in the report. Not 32, but maybe more 20, 24, 26.

Okay, getting closer. Um, so on this one here, th this is this is where the trees are right now by census block, the can where the canopy is. And this does this strikes me as being as showing us that the upper north west quadrant of the city has the least canopy. Um but we're as we get to the recommendations, we're showing that we want to have more trees on the east side, northeast and southeast side of town because that's where the plantable area is. And that begs the question to me at least of are we continuing to exacerbate canopy inequity that we currently see in the city if we if we lean into this re these recommendations as presented to us in the draft report. So, I want to take a care more careful look than I was able to do um in just the narrative of the report at the algorithm used for the prioritization ranking in the canopy study. Um because it some of the other variables besides this one of where the trees are now is really driving that analysis. And you're jumping down to the uh the recommendations now. Is that what you're where you were headed or

the algorithm? Yeah, the picture of the algorithm. Yeah. Um which was pretty much illustrative I think. But um yeah, that is illustrious. But the sections that they're highlighting and talking about, these are all the variables that went into that algorithm.

That's right. And so the question I was having is what are the weights and and how were we um you know is is poverty rate being heavily No, probably not. But actually, I think it it there was a poverty uh study in one of those p one of those pictures and it did show that. So, I want to dig into that a bit better to be sure that I understand what's being recommended here and I encourage my fellow commissioners to do the same because uh we don't want to make continue to exacerbate the inequities of the city. Um to toward wrapping up, I'll just say um the there is a picture in here of the PCAS, the um priority conservation areas and I found it quite interesting that the northernmost PCA of course the uh built around the rail to trail program is um quite large and obviously there's a lot of available plantable area up there also in the high fire very high fire severity zone. But this this picture demonstrates to me that there are existing greenway passages through the city already, the Frier Creek Trail being a primary one that doesn't have a lot of area. And so what seems to me to still be missing in the connectivity map here is a connection between Sonoma Creek and Frier Creek and Nathansson Creek. Um that is not at the cross town. We need a a midtown or a southern crossing connection. And that doesn't need to be a whole lot wider than the existing Prior Creek path is in

my opinion. Um, so I'd like to try to work on that. And as you see in the uh inset expansion, we can get a lot of trees right at that periphery of the city uh ownership that that do hang over the roads. And I don't think the existing study it they call those areas um unplantable or um infeasible for for um new planting. And I'm concerned that if we write grants, we're going to end up missing those individual opportunities if we don't make sure that that's in our policy, that we're looking to stick a tree on private property that's going to grow over the sidewalk and capture some canopy over an important uh passageway space. And I know that the commissioner, I mean the city council members have talked about how hot it is to walk along Napa Street. there may be opportunities in the private businesses and and residences along Napa Street to do just that and to give our main thorough affair a lot more canopy cover. So, sorry to take up so much time, but um it it is a great report and it's it's wonderful to be able to dig into it at this draft stage. So, thanks for consideration my comments.

Thank you, Tom. We've come a long way from our early struggles to get trees on the agenda of the climate action commission. Uh I'm reminded of an early conversation that John Donnelly and I put together a grouping that uh some of the Brown Act issues were raised and so on because we hadn't fully noticed it to the members of the public and so on, but we really were pushing for some serious thinking about trees. And lo and behold, look how far we've come. There's clearly a long way to come. Still, we have ideas now. Now, we need implementation. We need action. Um, talk is cheap. Action isn't always so cheap, but it's terribly important. I was struck by the early comments about fire. We're in a high high fire zone. We all remember those years. They weren't that long ago. And uh we need to be aware of the tree canopy issues as they relate to fire. My own home on the east side uh we were cancelled by our fire insurance company because they didn't like the fact that we have large trees whose canopies extend over the over the property. We all need to be aware of these issues and uh to integrate thinking about fire risk in our thinking about improving Sonoma trees. Uh water issues from a climate perspective are critical. That water table is dropping. um it's likely to continue to drop given climate issues and the lack of uh in particular federal government activity in any positive sense about water and climate issues uh in these days. So yeah, I'm being political and uh didn't surprise anybody who knows me. Um,

looking at the study, there's a lot of good information, a lot of useful new information packaged fairly well for us. It needs, I think, from our point of view, a little bit more of a climate smart process of thinking this through. How do we relate these water and fire issues to being climate smart in our approach to trees, better trees, more trees, bigger trees, trees in the right places uh from a climate smart perspective. Comments earlier this evening about greenways, green links are terribly important. Uh there's been some recent work done. I'm hoping at the next climate commission to have a presentation on that topic and looking at where we stand already in terms of nent greenways, green links and where we could go as we think about trees and climate and and climate smart as a approach to all of this as an integrating phenomenon to pull it all together so that it's not just trees and it's not just water and it's not just worry about fire but it's an integrated whole of these issues. Um that gets us to a climate smart tree plan and policy implementation. Uh having taught at the university level in planning classes I would always start by saying this is not a course about planning a course about implementation. It's taking thinking and indeed plans and then implementing them, making a difference. So in that regard, I think we've come a long way. There's some excellent comments from our fellow commissioners this evening. I like the idea of heritage trees. I'm thinking about the mother oak at the Sonoma

Garden Park as one of our heritage trees and the need to uh keep her as healthy as we can that mother oak for as long as we can. and there are others in the city and having them recognized and applauded and cared for properly is a is a great idea. Uh and sort of earlier comments about enforcement strike me as something worthy of continuing attention. My impression about all the wonderful things that happen in the city of Sonoma and the uh processes we go through doesn't always put enforcement at the top of the agenda. Dogs on the plows is a good example, but there are many others. And uh I'm reminded of how important it was in my work as a an official of the US Environmental Protection Agency when I worked for a living. Enforcement was a critical piece of what we accomplished when we had an effective US Environmental Protection Agency and we'll have one again. But here at the city, let's keep in mind uh plans are nice, pictures are nice, implementation and enforcement become critical of moving us where we where we need to be. Uh in that regard and just to wrap up, we've had some interesting discussions. Uh there's a little bit in the report potentially about a a clustered for uh forest in small scale called a Miyawaki forest. These came out of Japan. There have been some interesting initiatives in the last two years in the in the Berkeley area in the east east bay. We have some opportunities here in Soma. A couple of our uh county uh city council members and I have looked at locations. I'd like to continue to push forward on that idea as well. These are rapid growing u

climate focused um forestry initiatives that could really begin to make a difference and to show everyone including all of our residents what we're doing. So with that I'll I'll conclude turn it back over to my colleague to my left morell. Thank you very much. And uh members of the Climate Action Commission, thank you for your um great input and commentary. And with that, I will turn the microphone to Vice Chair Tolbert of the Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Commission for commentary from your commission.

Thank you very much. Um I'd encourage uh the com members of the Parks, Recre, and Open Space Commission to speak. Um I want to compliment the city on doing this. It's a wonderful project and um so my comments are um that uh I think community community communication uh is very important. I think something could be done almost immediately sending homeowners information with their water bill um on their responsibilities for tree maintenance in their sidewalks. I think that's a very important thing. Almost no one I speak to understands that. And then they're they're surprised when uh they have to pay um for permits and all the associated um things to take out their trees. Um I was also very concerned about 27% of the top trees um are not good for sidewalks and I think that that's going to be an issue. of those would be um London PR plane which is soos so but um liquid amber um red maple these are these are trees that um push up the sidewalks and are potentially a huge cost for the homeowners and the city in the immediate future um magnolia of course um I live over on the east side where um there's a number of magnolia and the sidewalks are being pushed up and I know that the commission has gotten uh several um requests for change, you know, and I

think that the um the proliferation of crepe myrtle is because they are manageable trees and people look at that as no more sidewalk problems and they're um uh not no huge expense trimming the trees. Um I think education is important and I one of the things that I'd like to suggest is that arborists um be educated and um perhaps there can be a community certification program that assures the the uh public the um the city that the trees are being pruned right because uh there's some hilarious um samples that happen around town and um that they're just quite amazing. Um since I have the microphone, I I want um to uh remind people they think of trees with uh are associated with wildlife. Uh there's a proliferation of uplighting of trees. People think that uh now that they have a tree and it has a trunk that they want to uplight it, but it's devastating on owls and all kinds of insects, other birds. You know, there's a whole night crew that's out there uh when we're peacefully sleeping that are um uh providing us with uh insects and other and there owls are out there looking for things. Imagine those headlights that are coming at you. Um if you were looking for food when instead of driving that that would be um pretty unsettling. Um so I think that um also um I think there should be awareness of so solar

panels that in when people choose the size of their trees that that could be worked into this um the suggestions because it's an education process for everybody. Thank you. Well, I am also very excited about the study and incredibly excited that we're all meeting again after such a long time. I would love if we could figure out a way for our commissions to be able to communicate much more often because as I interface with various commission members just out in the public, there are so many concepts. There's there's work that's being done. We don't know that the other commission's already doing it. um a lot of the brainstorming that needs to happen. So, I know we talked before about having different ways of commissions being able to communicate with each other, but I think it's to me it's urgent and maybe we also need to be educated on how we can gather in accordance with the Brown Act. I mean, I think we we were thinking that if each commission had less than a quorum and we we can have that group gather that we were within the parameters, but apparently we were not. And so I think it's it's fairly urgent that we know how we can gather together. I was a little bit um surprised for some reason that we didn't have a planet geo representative this evening. Um I'd like to know if we can ask them any specific questions about the science etc. For example um echoing the concept of the micro forest the miwaki forests which could be quite interesting for the for the lowexisting canopy areas places where we can have greenways cannot have greenways in imperous areas. Um, part of

that concept is to get each community where the micro forest is going to be to have some skin in the game in which they help with the planning and that gives them an investment in the outcome of these micro forests. So, but what I couldn't tell by the maps is what is the square footage of some of these smaller areas that are considered impervious or not feasible. I mean, how big does a Mwaukee forest have to be in order to fit into some of these areas? I think we could get really creative. And one last thing I'll add is that um for what it's worth, uh at one point I did a a quick study by contacting surrounding municipalities of what these municipalities are doing with their own tree ordinances because our tree ordinance has some numbers from 1992. that's 34 years old. And um it the language is such that to me it's urgent especially for these tree replacements um that we update those numbers in a in a way that at least comes up to a standard that these other municipalities have. I mean our numbers are way off. Um they just don't compete with the standard. So that's it. Good evening. Um, I too am very pleased and welcome the progress we've made with this. I want to especially thank Jennifer for working with us all through this process and getting us to this point. And I appreciate the comments that have been made by the other commissioners. I'd like to I mean there's so many wonderful ideas here, but I'd like to focus a bit on the costs and benefits of this. Uh looking at the report I see areas of cost that's m the

maintenance of what we already have including a lot of pruning that's recommended that we haven't been doing on most of the tree canopy. Then there's the enforcement cost. And then secondly, there's um the recurring inventory assessment that that the planet go recommends that not having done this inventory once, we should do it maybe annually or every other year to check on how we're doing in terms of progress and what needs to be adjusted in terms of priorities. And then there's the recommendation of new planting of trees in which we all welcome that to expand and diversify the canopy. So, it hasn't been really addressed. How are we going to pay for all this? And I think the other [clears throat] side of this is the benefits and we've seen the equal benefits that are detailed in this report and the estimates even leaving out the backyard trees that Larry mentioned that um the annual benefit of our tree canopy is estimated at five 547,000 plus and each additional acreage of new planted trees is to add about 13 um $100 per acre. So, it seems to me that we should focus on the benefits, build this outreach, communication, education community and see why we can hopefully raise money for this. And in that spirit, I've advocated before and I think we should really look at this as um re reactivating that former city tree fund that we used to have. Now, what pays into the tree fund now is basically the options to pay in le by developers or homeowners who don't want to pay for the replacement of a tree. That's that's fine. But also, we could also have an Arbor Day and even a um Earth Day special focus on education and communication and tie it into raising money for the city's uh tree fund to cover these costs that we've just

identified. Um, we would also um ex explore the possibility of I don't know if other cities do this, but memorial tree fund possibility for people who want to honor their loved ones with a tree, planting a tree or several a number of trees in their honor. Um, we could also approach the city tourism department. There's an ample opportunity here to try to have sustainable tourism in this town. And um we know that greenhouse gas emissions from a lot of air flights that airport celebrates more and more flights being added to this area. Sorry. um that um we could um ask the tourism bureau to work with us and members of this commission and the community to develop a way that we might either um solicit contributions from tourists to add to the um tree fund so they could help expand this tree canopy and maintenance that we've been talking about. So that would be my hope that we could work on um reactivating a city tree fund along with um the other points we've been addressing here tonight. So thank you.

Well, I'll start [clears throat] by saying how gratifying it is to see this high level of interest in this topic. Um [clears throat] the um parks and rec open space commission deals with requests for tree removals at every meeting. And what we're lacking is a consistent uh set of standards in making our decisions. It's it's pretty much a casebyase basis. And I think th this report moves us light years ahead. uh because if you set goals you you have to build a map and to build a map you have to know where you're starting from and this would be very instrumental in helping us uh deal with this and I think the um the concept that if you're removing a tree and your area is not suitable for a replacement uh you could do it in another area that I think that's just a great idea. Um otherwise [clears throat] everybody's input was uh really insightful and um I think uh future looks bright. So thanks.

Could [clears throat] I could I say one more thing miss rocket? Yes. Thank you very much Jennifer. Can you comment at all on um the feasibility of or not of commission members to be able to gather from various commissions in keeping with being less than a quorum for each commission?

Sure. There's a couple things going on. There's not just the the less than a quorum aspect. When we create ad hoc committees, you have a specific direction. You have been created for this thing and you have a certain time frame in which you're doing it in. So if we were to do more of that joint, then all those commissions that would participate in such a thing then would um appoint at their meetings who would be in that role. and you would all have the same direction. So, let's just say we do move forward with doing um an urban forestry management plan. Taps into a lot of the things that you guys talked about and some of the missing I would say information that was commented like in our canopy study and the how do we take that tree inventory and take it to the next level and utilize it. Um let's say we said okay let's do a joint subcommittee of ad hocs of representation of those. We can do it two ways. One we could say hey city council these commissions would like to participate in a subcommittee specifically focused on creating an urban forestry management plan. We would like two representatives from each commission. Here's the resolution and we create that similar to what I did with the general plan task force. um or we create ad hoc subcommittees within each one with the intent that they're going to participate together with staff and we would hold meetings around that. The the thing about Brown Act and ad hoc committees and things like that a lot of the times we've been having ad hoc committees they are open to the public if public wants to participate or they

have questions and things like that totally fine we just don't have to do agendas sometimes with the subcom with the subcommittee we do do agendas so the they are they have to adhere to the brown act we have to do agendas we do minutes things like that so those are the two different types of opportunities that we can create. Um, we just need to be all on the same page. Now that you have a parks director um and uh we have a sustainability coordinator. We've got more people than just me and Jacob. [laughter] Yeah. To kind of help with that. What about casual gatherings? So you all are

So we all want to meet in the plaza and chat. Yeah, you are all Yeah, you're all a representation of a commission, which is an appointed body. So, it's hard to say, "Oh, we're going to get together and chat, but I'm only inviting these people and you know the rules. Like, you can't then talk." So, there's right now there's four of you. So what if you three were meeting and now your chair is left out of the whole conversation until you come to an actual commission meeting. Then you can all talk about that subject matter. So I don't I would recommend I would recommend no casual gatherings. If you want to have a joint then talk to us staff. We'll we'll have it. We'll make it happen. We I know that if there's certain topics, we've talked about it in climate action. We have it in planning commission too. Um we have specific ad hocs that are doing very specific things. We meet with staff, we have meetings, in some cases climate action meets without staff and then comes back to staff and says, "Okay, this is what we talked about." And then we come to the whole commission as a these are all the things that we talked about. So that all commission knows what's going on. Um, so those are the different uh ways that we've done it with the two different commissions that um I'm responsible for. Um, and I'm not going to talk for Director Jans on how he wants to manage those kinds of communications. Um, but we do have some restrictions under the Brown Act that we just just need to be cognizant of. If some people just don't know if they see the three of four of you, three of you talking, they don't know that you're just friends hanging out necessarily sometimes at the plaza. That's why at the the meeting that we

just did on Sebastiani, I knew I was going to have more than um the requisite what is it three uh commissioners for planning commission. So, I just noticed it. I said, you know what, there's going to be more. I'm just gonna notice this as a meeting just to cover our basis.

I'll just I'll just add to that that I think, you know, spot on with what what Miss Gates is saying, but I just I think there's opportunities for us to meet um either as a commission or as ad hoc. I recognize Pros only meets once a quarter and so especially when we have topics like this, there's a lot of work that can be done in between meetings. And so there's definitely avenues to do that. So let's talk. I'm all for let's get some work done in between those meetings. Well, maybe we can have um more frequent joint commission meetings.

If there's an interest and there's topic matters, then yes, we can. And it may be that it's just climate depending on what the subject matter is. The reason why all three of you are here, as we talked about in the very first meeting two years ago, was you all have different roles to play in the trees world, right? So, we've got planning commission that's going to look at development projects that looks at tree removals. They also do the um a lot of the development code ordinances, not necessarily the tree ordinance, but other ordinances. And they have a component of the tree ordinance that they would um make recommendation to city council on. Then we've got climate action that has a specific interest around climate sustainability as it relates to trees. And then the pros also has a role to play that's identified in the ordinance with tree removals. And then with that also you have parks, recreation and open space which a lot of our trees are in those areas. So that's why we have all of you three of you here. But we may be having a specific conversation around something. Maybe it's not even trees. I don't know. But um that we have maybe two of you, two commissions or different groups. So there's always opportunities for that. Um I like joint commission meetings so that you're all hearing the same thing from each other. Um it's just can be a lot of meetings and so that's why it it really needs to have purpose.

I have can I add one thing? You know, when I sit here and I look at it's a project, right, that's about to get going, a plan. You talked about some we want to become actionoriented and it's a democracy here. This is my first time really working with city government. And I think it feels chaotic and ad hoc. And one way to fix this is to reach where this is already happening. What a landscape architect I think would do with us is take what we did and they would grade it. They would see that we knew what we were doing in one area that we had some sense of using the native plants and the existing and sort of offtheshelf ideas really commodity ideas not cutting edge and they would know that about us that we didn't know. whether we're feeling like we might know soon if we kept working on this and having more committees. So in the area here being in the wine industry I've seen a lot of projects underway and here in the valley we had Andrea Cochran landscape architect probably the one of the greatest landscape architects in the United States based in San Francisco and they came in to Stone Edge Farms and they did a multi multi-million dollar project and when they were in the valley I knew they were here and I knew that the craftsmen were here and the all the material materials were here, the lighting, the landscape lighting, the the uh deep night lighting so you don't light up the trees too much. And so I scrambled to do a project at my own property and I used one of her plans for uh a property in Palo Alto and I plugged into that the new trees, the optimum temperature and I replanted

every single plant in my entire backyard in front. I removed all the lawns and I reduced my water in the back. I I had no trees. I had lawns and things. I reduced my water to about a third and I used this landscape landscape architecture planning process and I think we might benefit by pouring our information through some of which we think is very valuable. But I'll I'll assure you a landscape architect would say, "Oh, that's naive. That's where they're naive. That's not where they know what they're doing. That's where they're scrambling trying to find information. And this person has done um you could go to ACLA online, but she's done a project here uh in the valley and they do civic projects, cultural workplace, hospitality, hospitals, huge private residences, and they're just beautiful projects and they're very natural. And it's right here. You can just drive over on the other side of Arnold and get a sense of what happens when somebody takes a massive project, big piece of property, and they do trees. What what you would end up with is a trees type environment. And I think it might be better to pour it through that because then the regulatory agency aspects of this will feel very familiar because she's a landscape architect. She's an architect and they're going to pour it through planning and they're used to working with plans whereas we are not even close to fig we're going to you know kind of go forward in some way maybe fooling ourselves we might need a structure that's all so I think uh what's available which I trust are the landscape architects when it comes to doing something new something innovative something bold and something that you could turn your back on and you just

it's really a matter of whether you could afford to engage a landscape architect possibly to start with a Soma Plaza the buildings there and then you just move out to all the public lands and all the parking lots. Parking lots is something that they have massive experience with and heat sinks and of course they do it all. They do all the cutting edge in climate change. So anyway, I thought I'd throw that in. ACLA San Francisco. Thank you, Commissioner McCloskey, for your thoughts. I'm going to call a uh we'll call it a 7 minute recess uh to 7:55 by Apple's time. Thank you.

the record here.

Okay. Are we missing anyone? Okay, back on the record. So, at this point, I will turn the microphone back to city staff to uh let us know at this juncture what more they might need from us as far as comments, concerns, or questions and um we think that can help to inform us as to how to proceed with the rest of tonight. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. So, moving forward. So, we heard a lot of um great comments, some great ideas. Um what we typically do and we'll do on this one as well is we'll take all of that information um put a little summary together and it'll be presented to you at your individual commission meetings that will be coming up. Um we will send it ahead of time also just to let you know kind of where we were at. We do. If there's other things that you think about and you look at it a little bit more, um, feel free to send it to any of us three or four or Antonet. Um, and you know, send it to us. Make sure you put in the subject line that specifically about the tree inventory or the canopy master plan and um, and we will incorporate that to when we present to council. So what the next steps are going to be after we create that summary is we are going to reach out to the consultants um and see what is feasible for based on what our budget is what the canopy study actually is intended to do in the inventory. See if there's any components um edits to address some of these comments we can incorporate. Then from there, this will be presented tentatively on February 18th to city council um as these drafts with updated recommendations. So, a lot of the things that we've talked about today are already in what was presented to you for recommendations, maybe maybe not those exact words that you use, and then there's some things that weren't. And so, we would look to to update that. And then what um Director Jans and I were just talking about is looking through um the budget as it stands right now around

our um tree maintenance and other types of ongoing costs. see how some of those goals kind of fit into our ongoing um budget needs and then see what additional asks we may ask for direction from the council on you know as we all know I think you all know by now uh January 30th is the new city council goal setting session so we also are going to look to that to see what the goals are for this fiscal year because that as we know helps identify what our work plans are and where we have potential funding opportunities to ask for for this next fiscal year uh to help implement their goals. So, I think that covered all of those components. So, again, any additional thoughts, comments, send to us. We will individually work with your commissions.

Question for you, Jennifer. The city council goal planning, is that a daytime event like they've done in the past?

Yes. And it's going to start at 12 o'clock and end around five maybe, but 1:00 is the public comment period is going to start. So 12:00 they're going to rehighlight um where we're at with the 25 goals, which will be um at the city council meeting this Monday. If you didn't know, city council meeting Monday 26. Um, one of the items is to talk about um, progress on the goals from 2025. Kind of set up what we're going to talk about on Friday the 30th. It is going to be at the community center this year in um, the main multi-purpose room that we all use. Um, 110, room 110, um, the one that has that immediate access off the back. Um, so again, starts at 12, public comment 1 p.m.

Thank you, Jennifer. You're welcome.

And I think I'll conclude tonight's meeting by thanking the members of the public who are still in attendance and for uh caring enough to be here and for all the thoughtful comments we've received from the public tonight from from the time that uh all the the various commission members have spent. Um, you know, we've talked a lot about the strengths of what was presented tonight and we've talked about maybe a handful of limitations which, you know, in my opinion aren't flaws, but more uh boundaries of what a technical assessment can reasonably provide and kind of provide a direction where policy might go in the future. Um, we've been able to have a pretty clear snapshot of what exists today and the next step is as a city how we ensure that we can implement these plans going forward. Mr. We just one out.

I'd like to offer a quick public service announcement since we're all here about trees. On April 3rd, uh Suzanne Samard, who wrote Finding the Mother Tree, the wisdom of the forest, is speaking at the Point Rays bookstore on her new book, uh the when the forest breathes renewal and resilience in the natural world. And I think most of you probably know about her first book where she discovered the underground uh internet web of microisal fungi connections blah blah blah. It was very exciting and um she was also featured in the overstory by Richard Power. So it's a be a real opportunity to hear her speak in Point Rays. So for your information April 3, go to the go to the website.

Excellent. Thank you for that announcement. Um, a last final thanks to city staff for their time this evening and for their expert presentations. And once again, thank you to our uh fellow commissioners. Meetings adjourned.