Tree Board - Regular Meeting

OK. First item on the agenda is, well, she's handling the attendance. Approval of the minutes from the March 4th meeting. Anybody got any additions or corrections?

One second. March 4 minutes.

Yes.

I do have a question, if I may. Sure. So it's under comments, Roman numeral 7. It's after the Tree Board annual work plan. It says Debbie Evans discussed a new area possibly being annexed by Wellington. Is there some point where I could know what that's about? It's not a correction in the minutes, just an understanding of what she's talking about. Is there a better time to do that, John?

I'll ask the question now.

I mean, well, we're doing corrections on the minutes, so I don't know.

Okay, we'll pick it up later.

Okay, that's fine.

Any other corrections?

No.

Motion that we approve them.

I move.

Second.

Second.

Third.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Okay, moving on, staff updates. Will, you're on deck, or no, you're up.

So we've got a few projects we're waiting on to start. We got the email a couple months ago. They got some roundabouts and some miscellaneous projects that will have some landscaping. But just kind of waiting on that to start. And we've got some grant work coming up. So we're kind of in the middle getting ready to start doing a bunch of our plantings, getting into our busy time of year right now with the rain getting started. So we've got a few recent plantings, last couple of months up there. Just a handful of trees. couple of memorial trees and some stuff that we did earlier this year. So really just getting started on some of this stuff for the summer and probably have much more of an update in the next tree board meeting as far as plantings go.

Anything else?

I've got a little bit to say about Earth Day on the next agenda item.

Okay, why don't we move on over to, if you're finished on that, let's move on to the Earth Day event.

I think we had a pretty good Earth Day event. Gave away a few seedlings and had a pretty good turnout. We had two of our three flower award winners there. We gave out the awards. They were happy to be presented the flower awards and I posted them up in their yards so then we did our annual giveaway to the schools you got some of the numbers you should be able to see there on your screen not quite as much participation as last year where some schools did some didn't we're trying to find new contacts at some of the schools some people have left it's the same you know it's the same story every year sometimes you'll make contact with a new person sometimes they'll miss a year so we did pretty fair gave away a few seedlings to the schools, and gave another couple hundred away at our event.

Question, please, about the schools. When you do the giveaways, I have a vested interest, especially in Palm Beach Central High School, as we manage the garden there for the high school students. And they specifically asked me how we can get the seedlings. Because they wanted more this year than they got previous years. So I connected her with the appropriate people. I think you may have been on that contact. Is there any way, I see that you did give them?

I gave them, we gave them some. What does it say? It was toward the end. A hundred? Yeah.

And how do you give those seedlings to the schools?

You actually go to the school? Yeah, we deliver. You actually deliver them to the schools? To the front office.

Okay. To the front office. Excellent. Okay. Thank you, Will. No problem.

Okay, anything else on that?

So this is all like vegetable seedling?

Tree seedlings. There was two types of trees. There was the cypress. We had the Simpson's stopper, which is just medium-sized to small. And then we had the beech sunflower and tixie, just something that was blooming, some native stuff. People like the stuff that blooms.

Do you know what you gave? I'm sorry. Go ahead. Do you know what you gave Palm Beach Central specifically of those 100? Was it no idea? I guess that's a hard one.

Probably the Simpson Stopper and the Cypress.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah, we took most of the leftover tick seed and beach sunflower to the event to give away.

Simpson Stopper, I'm sorry. What was the other? Cypress? Cypress.

The bald Cypress.

Do they ask you for advice on where to plant those? I mean, do they?

We usually give them a little advice when we give them to the school. We give them like a little handout that goes with it that kind of gives them an idea of where to plant it.

Okay, because I'm going to follow them up on that and see what they did with them, make sure, see how it went.

Usually we recommend putting them in a smaller container until they get a little bit bigger. Instead of putting them right in the yard, that way you can keep track of it. And once it's a little bit bigger, it's harder for the landscape guys to hit them or they accidentally disappear when they go in the yard too small. So usually we recommend going into a small container for a couple years.

Oh, okay. All right. Thank you. I have a question about Earth Day, and I wasn't paying attention. But I wanted to ask you, Will, were there pamphlets that were given – That had to do with the benefits from the I tree eco assessment an Earth Day I Have a bunch of pamphlets. I know you did tree trimming pamphlets. I remember those but I don't remember specific one I'm not sure if there were additional pamphlets on that.

I don't okay Okay We want to move to the annual work plan I So was this under yours, or I thought we had approved this last month, didn't we?

No, no.

What we did is we said we would table it until this month, and if anyone had any recommendations for any changes or any updates, then that would be discussed at this meeting. I'm glad you did that. I have a couple of things.

Okay. Under B... Partnerships work with Wellington Garden Club to participate in National Public Lands Day September again as I mentioned previously I forget when we did this but the wording is just to be a little bit modified. So the wording should actually be I Think it's work with Wellington Garden Club for their annual tree planting on National Public Lands Day and In partnership with the Village of Wellington, of course. Well, that would be a redundant because it is a partnership at the heading. So we don't need to say in partnership. So I'll repeat. Work with Wellington Garden Club for their annual tree planting on National Public Lands Day. Because the National Public Lands Day is kind of inconsequential. That's just a day that I chose to have the tree planting because it was a good day to remember, for people to remember, at the end of September. And so, because actually it's a public lands, like state forests and things like that, but... It's a convenient time to do the tree planting. It is not a National Public Lands Day tree planting event. In fact, the tree planting event does have a website, and Lisa, you're the one who showed me that, where you can go to and you can sign up for it, but that we wouldn't... You can register your event. You can register your event, but we don't do that because that's not what we are. So really it needs to be corrected. And then at the end, too, under goals, if you want...

Cathy, what do you mean that's not what we are?

This is not a public lands. It is not a public lands event.

Because it's not a national public land?

It happens to be occurring on that day.

It happens to be occurring on that day.

I understand that. But you can still register it if you want to. It doesn't have to be. Does it have to be on a national?

It's a national public land, yes.

It has to be a national public land?

Yes, that's what the event is, national public lands. If you look at the website.

I just thought it meant that nationwide there. No, it's not a national. Honoring public land for people to enjoy.

They are honoring it, yes.

It doesn't have to be national publicly.

You can go and check the website and correct me if I'm wrong. I'll check that out. That would be fine. Is there any question on that sentence, that part? Then to go to the goals for 2026, same thing. It's just a small edit wording thing. So it would be participate in the annual tree planting in partnership with the Village of Wellington on national, on, the key word being on National Public Lands Day. So I'll repeat, participate in the Wellington Garden Club. I think I left that out, sorry. Participate in the Wellington Garden Club annual tree planting in partnership with the Village of Wellington on National Public Lands Day. That's it. That's all I have. Okay.

Anyone else have an amendment to it?

To the whole plan, the annual work plan?

Yeah.

Okay. I had some questions about the urban forestry management plan specifically.

Know it's Where are you looking at?

Where we're in that? That's in our in our work plan. It's section C under planning and management It says It talks about the urban Forestry management plan. Okay, which I actually looked at and there are some sections there that I think we should review and It's extensive actually so Specifically the section that is six point one. It's a summary of existing tree ordinances and policies it has to do with Existing tree management guidelines Pruning guidelines for trees I think that we should be reviewing that a little more further in detail to give better suggestions because that has to do with our existing tree ordinances and policies also 7.1 tree maintenance based on prioritization categories I think we should be looking at also one of the other things I looked at in the urban forestry management plan had to do with It had to do with basically what it was said in there, and I don't know how old is this this is from 22 22 okay well it said said 35% of properties in the village of Wellington have greater than a 26% chance of being affected by severe floods and What it proposed is that we should encourage flood tolerant trees in lower-lying areas of the city so Is that something that we're doing? You know, because this is from 2022. Also, the study that was done, it doesn't say in the urban management plan when that was even done.

I understand, but you're discussing two different things.

Let me finish.

Later in the agenda, we have the urban forestry management plan under new business. okay what we're talking about here is the the annual work plan which are two different items and the fact that it says we're going to work on it means that if in a further meeting we're going to sit down and redo it or go through it in detail and to be We can clear about that.

I think but this is not the time to do that I understand but we can't approve then Part C of the annual work plan where it says Wellington to continue with its ordinance of the urban forest management plan if we're going to talk about edits to it later How can we approve it if we want to do edits to it? That's part of our so we have to we're not approving the plan and

We're approving the annual work plan, not the urban forestry management plan. They're two different things.

But that's within our annual work plan, to approve the urban forestry management plan. That's what I'm trying to say to you.

Not to approve it, just to work with it.

If we pass this, we're not approving the urban forestry management. To continue with it. We're going to continue working with it.

Can I ask a question? Has Wellington adopted this urban forestry management plan as part of their official?

Yes.

Okay. Yeah, we're going through. I mean, it's some of the stuff that it lays out a timeline. Some of it depends on what's budgeted. We do as much as we can with what's budgeted, and we go through the plan. And we've been trying to remove some of the big invasives and go through some of the parks and replace them with natives and some of the stuff that the first steps of the management plan. So, I mean, we're working on it. It's just we can't do it all exactly like it's laid out just because there's budgetary constraints. Of course. Of course.

OK. The reality is that the plan is so long.

It's extensive.

It is extensive. In fact, it's more extensive than it needs to be. It's way more wordy than it should be. And that's the product of consultants earning their money. Let me finish. What I think we need to do is that we need to go through the appropriate things, have a workshop meeting, where we take just for the plan, where we take the plan apart. Everybody agreed to study it ahead of time, come in, and let's go through it section by section by section. I think when I first looked at it in 2022, I had 10 pages of notes on it. And I was going to get them to you and talk with you about them, but it never happened. But I think we need, if we're going to look at our urban forestry management plan, we need to have a workshop where we go through it in detail. We don't have time to go through 372 pages, which is what I think it is.

Yeah, it is.

372. 372 in our normal meeting.

Is this what code enforcement uses to make their determination on who to cite for infractions? Or is there something else that they use?

They have their own set of the code that they, when they go around, that they look at.

There's something that's separate from this urban forestry management plan.

This management plan cites, it gives reference to some of those codes, but they have another big set of codes that they So this is separate from the code enforcement stuff?

Correct.

This is a small piece of what they look for when they go out, but some of the ordinances are listed in the management plan for reference.

Secondly, we also need a workshop if the down in or is it no we're going to look at the ordinance make recommendations planning and zoning building department This is under C, proposed changes to the vegetation.

We need a separate workshop for it.

What I'm talking about is about four hours worth of work or more. And I don't think, even in this setting, I don't think this setting is, and I don't know how workshops work here. But we need to be sitting around a table with the projector and the thing up there, doing the edits as we go along, and then sitting on that, and then come into one of these meetings and say, OK, let's approve it.

Yeah, so there's, you know, there's two facets. You want to work on the recommendations of what's in the plan, and then you can add with canopy study with that to kind of influence some of the things that we may want to change. You can address some of the things that came about in the canopy study.

So what we're doing here, what I'm trying to say to you is not approving that plan. We're approving that we will work on it, which is what this is about. So going into those little detail points here, is they're just going to get lost.

Okay. Can I ask a question? Is there any way we can increase, it's very small, on the screen?

The size.

Oh, yeah. It's okay. Thank you. Font bigger.

That's better. Thank you.

The planning, zoning, and zoning department, they're proposing changes to the vegetation ordinance. When are they supposed to be finished with that?

It's in progress.

It's in progress right now. So if we're going to hold a meeting, then we want to give them some recommendations. It should be done pretty soon, right?

The timing is right to do that now.

John, maybe you ought to set a date or something, try to get something planned. I mean, there's no point in doing it if they've already approved them.

It's in progress. It's in the beginning stages. Right. Okay.

Well, the... What are the rules about setting a workshop?

I'd have to get that from the clerk's office. OK.

Right. So the attorney or somebody, right? Do they do? Do they? Does the village do joint planning meetings? Like you see how she's saying that the planning and zoning is doing vegetation stuff, and then we would want to make recommendations to that board, right? To do certain things? Do they ever do like a joint meeting?

I've never heard of one. What's really happening, the committee is really not doing it.

The staff is doing it. The recommendations would be carried to that meeting.

The staff is doing the rewrite. And the rewrite would go to them. And I would think likely they would send it to us too. But the reality is if we have issues with how the thing is put together, We'll sit down and work those out in a workshop. And it's extensive, too. I forgot how many pages that is. I've looked at it twice.

Well, then you guys can review it. And when you do the rewrite, you can pass it over to the planning and zoning to review also. Right. Correct.

It goes back and forth a bit.

It's going to have to go back and forth. But to me, that is a separate workshop meeting. And this dais is not really the place to do it. We need to do it around a table. I've spent years doing that with federal regulations. And sitting at a dais, you'll prove But you need to be face-to-face.

We're not facing a crowd If somebody wants to be a visitor, they can stand on the outside of the room and do it Are we gonna get any Center maybe you know if you want to sit at a table So it's will someone get back to us as far as the workshop.

That's right. Yeah we

There are certain time periods where they have to be advertised so the public can be there. I don't know what those are. So you all have to go to the center.

There's a whole set of rules that go along with that.

OK. So let's finish this first.

She may have an answer for us soon.

OK. Anybody else got any other recommendations to the wording in the work plan? OK. Motion that we approve the work plan?

I move. So moved.

Second?

I second. I second.

OK. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. So moving on to the urban forestry management plan. We started talking about that. Do you want to talk about what you were having there or do you want to wait for a workshop? Yes.

I apologize because I didn't have the agenda.

Okay.

I didn't know that was the next item. I went ahead. All right.

So it's here on the agenda.

I know.

I didn't have a copy of it.

That's why. And I'm looking at the screen, but it's not always in front of us. All right. So, yeah. So I did look at the urban forestry management plan. Some of the things that I was concerned with. I think that we should take a closer look at, perhaps in a workshop, would be item 6.1, which is a summary of existing tree ordinances and policies. Since we are the tree board, I think it's important that we look over the tree ordinances and policies for our village, especially when it comes to... you know, existing tree management guidelines and, you know, pruning guidelines, removal things for trees, invasive trees. I think that that's important. The other thing that I noticed is I think that we should also take a look at 7.1 when it talks about tree maintenance based on prioritization categories for trees. Currently, the priority guidelines have to do with, you know, the removal if it's a critical tree, if it's disease. I wanted to ask Will because there's a point in here where it talks about the percentage. It says the tree cover in our village is 93 point whatever acres, but then it says that 42.3% of the trees in our village are less than six feet. So I don't know that that's accurate because I know you did a recent tree canopy study, right?

Yeah, the canopy study is much more accurate. That was probably some data that they included. That was really all they had back then.

Back then, though, we were really only managing the city property, which is the 93 acres you're talking about. And so that number is based on that 93 acres of city property.

Most of it's shrubs. I mean, they probably used some LIDAR data and they got a certain height that they stopped at and said it's a certain percentage of this, and then they go to the next data set, it's a certain percentage of this height. So it probably includes all the landscape material. That was from an older study. We had an older study done. The new one is much more accurate.

Yeah. The new data is...

The new data adds a lot of good things to this. And when we go through it, we can make changes. And that's what the plan is. It comes together and you make changes in it as you find out new information.

Right. And the other thing is, too, things are changing as far as the heat waves that we're having in the summer and some of the freezes that we had happen that destroyed many of the palm trees. The other thing is in the urban forestry management plan, it talks about this first street foundation study. But one of the things I noticed when I was looking over it, it doesn't say when that study was done. It references the study, but it doesn't say when the study was done. And then it says like 35% of the properties in Village of Wellington have greater than 26%. chance of being affected by severe floods. That's a big deal. 35% of properties in the village is a large percentage.

Yeah, they include a lot of those sea rise projections and all that stuff in this too. So some of that is happening a little slower than they said. So some of the stuff like that we may not focus on first. We're working on some of the other things like the invasive removals and trying to improve native canopy, plant, you know, wind resistant stuff. So, you know.

Well, I don't know that I know where the low-lying areas are in our village.

You can usually tell by the amount of cypress trees in the yards, some of the lower areas. I know the south part of town has a lot lower elevations than the northern section. Some parts of town hold more water.

Okay. Great.

The reality of that also is that when we did the Stoneman Douglas, most people don't realize that that really is a water management facility. It's not a park. Its function is to take water that used to be dumped into the canal on Southern and move it west and then move it into the Everglades system. And that water was coming out of Wellington. When I first came to Wellington on one of the big rains, I had water up into my driveway. I haven't seen that in years, and we've had the big drains because we're moving the water. We're managing the water better than just simply dumping it in the canal beside us at the rate the water management district would let us. So I'm certain that those numbers are not good any longer. Right.

Yeah.

I don't think they are. They've done a lot of pipelining. I mean, a ton of infrastructure work. This place drains pretty well now. I don't see flooding being a problem unless there's some kind of major issue.

Right. I mean, I know we're filling in, though, areas like by – south shore down by pearson we're filling in those canals that were there so is you know i don't know is that there's a culvert yeah they put large culvert pipe water still moves through it it's it's the water is being moved the the reality is that forest hill used to flood

I remember in October, the church's pumpkins ended up in Forest Hill, out of the front lawn.

That was after the New Year flood, I think. I remember that year.

And the reality is that the city has looked at that and corrected those problems. They redid Forest Hills drainage. They redid the drainage over on Big Blue.

Our surface water drainage is pretty tough.

It's been... Where it probably lacks is south of Lake Worth Road.

It's a little hard to get the water to move from that section just because the elevations. It's a lot slower to move.

Also, they don't have the road structure development that has occurred here. And so that's likely where it is. I don't get down there, so I don't see that.

Most of it's pasture. Yeah.

But also, you know, drought-tolerant trees is something, you know, that I think that might need to be updated. Certain things like that I think has to be updated because, you know, that's very important. The other part also I noticed that I do think we should review is Section 6.2. It has to do with public relations and education in this urban management plan. It's talks about having public meetings and going over findings from the I tree eco assessment So it to encourage private property owners to better manage their own trees and plant additional trees where possible and Then it goes on to talk about us giving recommendations to give out pamphlets. That's why I was asking you. I didn't remember at Earth Day if that was done. But I know we did the tree trimming pamphlets were provided. But it talks in here about providing additional pamphlets on tree ecological and financial benefits determined by from the i-Tree echo assessment, which the new assessment that was done, was that using the same system, i-Tree?

No, it was all done through, like, LIDAR data. Okay. They took existing data. That's newer, yeah. They piggybacked off the county had a bunch of data, and they used that. So that's what they used for there.

The technology, when this was done, is still very expensive.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

He's talking about light or light detection and ranging. Basically, they fly over it. And I mean, we had it done on our transmission lines. And it's like taking a piece of wet tissue paper and laying it over all of this. And it all sort of covers it. And then you get a computer program that comes on and says, okay, this is a microphone. This is a computer screen. And then someone has to go out and ground truth all that to say that the AI system that's doing that is correct. And those systems have come along.

Just a few years they've made leaps and bounds.

Even now. Huge runs in those systems.

Even just the last year.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I would have slices of our transmission system that would show the trees. But I mean, you literally saw the three wires on the transmission poles. And as they came up to where the pole was, you saw the pole.

And all that has come along since this, and it's radically different.

And the I-tree was just taking satellite data

Oh, okay. I didn't know. That's a big difference, yeah.

Just in the couple of years, three years it's been since that came out, it's obsolete already.

I mean, my main point really is that I think we can give some better recommendations for drought-tolerant trees, for different things that could be used in the village, which we can do during the workshop you suggested. Yeah. you know, which would improve this forestry management.

There's a lot of heat island stuff like in that new canopy study. It shows all where the heat islands are and you know, temperature variations and where we need to put trees. So it's a very good study.

Is that that's available online?

Where is it available? We added it to our GIS. I don't know how, if you can see it from the public side. I can't remember if they made it accessible or not.

Yeah, that's actually one of the things on here. It says, consider making GIS tree inventory data available to the public through a web-based interface. That's one there, too.

So it's on there now. We just have to see if it's available for the public to view. But it is on the GIS software now. They added it maybe about a month ago to the GIS software.

OK.

So unless it's actually happening on their computer. At FPL, I had an $8,000 laptop. in order to use GIS. It had two 500 gigabyte drive, hard drives in it.

Yeah, they don't make every layer available. Right.

Right, yeah, yeah.

They only make a few layers available. So, they have the tree inventory layer available, so. Yeah, that's what I really want to say. Yeah, the tree inventory shows locations and all the types of trees. Now, this is just another layer to that, so they should be able to make that available, too.

Okay. So, Will, you're using the tree canopy study with all these different zones and things. Is that what you're using to make your decisions on where you're going to plant trees?

Now that I have the information, yes, it does help identify some areas we need to focus on.

Well, the other thing that we're going to need, hopefully it will be able to tell us the non-city-owned property that lacks. Correct. Show us the holes in the system.

It's separated into publicly and privately owned. So they did separate that out in the study.

And then we can say, okay, we need to be over on South Shore at this section of the 30 and let's encourage some planting and do some mailings and some things of that nature. Try and encourage people to plant trees on their property and what kinds of trees they should plant. That's the kind of thing I think we need to do. The other thing is that we need to... We need to convince the city that we need to be more aggressive in our tree removal permit Enforcement Is what one of the things we need to do a lot of trees that are coming out without permits and I Don't think we are being as aggressive with it as we should as a city

as far as fines and things like that? Because basically nothing happens.

I mean, we're talking about tree removals.

When I first came here, I had a friend that had Alzheimer's. And so I would go take him to lunch and that sort of thing. I showed up, and the lady was out in her yard. She had a tree company taking down all the cypress in the yard. And there was no reason to take those down. She just didn't want to see the trees. She was afraid they were going to fall on the house. Well, the cypress aren't big enough to fall on her house.

Yeah, but a lot of people took down pine trees, too, because the needles were falling on the roof, and they were getting cited by code enforcement for having needles on their roof. So that was like self-defeating.

Yeah. And, you know, we need to look at those kinds of things, and I think we're losing more trees to illegal cutdowns than we are to disease by a large margin. And One of the problems that occurred was that there was a state law passed seven or eight years ago that basically took the tree, took the cities out of the enforcement process if the guy hired a certified arborist. And there were people who were selling their certified arborist license to get past the city ordinance and the city inspections. And when I was on the ethics board with the ISA, the people who enforce that, we would have four of those a month.

It's still a law, though. Huh? I think it's still a law.

It's still a law, but they changed the law. And the way they changed the law means I can't just before the law wasn't when the law first came into effect we could sit down in a restaurant and I could give you a authorization to remove it on a restaurant napkin and that would be all the city needed I didn't have to go out and inspect it I didn't have to go do a report I didn't there were no requirements on what I had to say it just said if I'm certified I can do this

So now what, they have a form?

I passed the city ordinance system. And so the cities all had to back off, because legally they couldn't touch it. When they changed it, the cities didn't fall back in and say, OK, no, you can't do it on a dinner napkin. You've got to have a actual field study plan. You've got to follow these 18 or 19 rules. And so it got very complicated. But the city didn't react to it.

It's a tree risk assessment done by a certified and tree risk assessment.

Tree risk assessment done by a certified person. That's changed back. So, I mean, I took – as a board member, I recommended a number of people lose their certification over it. But anyway.

I mean, with hurricane season now starting, I think it's very important also to focus on trimming, pruning. I think there's many trees that – just for safety, for line of sight, that need to be trimmed. Or like one of them that constantly comes up in my mind is the areca palms. They grow out of control. They're like 30 feet high. And the trimming and pruning, it becomes unmanageable. It's almost unmanageable. So I think that it's kind of a borderline invasive. And, you know, certain materials that are in our village I think we need to look at because it creates more risk during a storm when there's certain plants that are here.

Yeah, the last few grants that we did, we planted wind-resistant type trees.

Just as a... point here. When you're talking about trees, are you also including palms or palms separate?

No, we're including palms.

Because palms and trees are different. For all intents and purposes, we're including trees and palms. Correct.

Yes. But that's the thing, too, is that certain cities, I noticed when I was looking, certain cities are certain cities include certain palms into that category. I know where you're getting at with that. Certain cities include that in the categories, depending on the certain type of palm. And others don't. So it goes really...

But in hurricanes, palm is far better than woody plants. Yes.

Right. Well, the reason why I'm bringing this up is I have a personal experience with a neighbor who was cited by code enforcement because she had a sable palm that had dead fronds on it. And she's being told that she has to remove those dead fronds. Now, they weren't a hazard to anybody or her home. It was away from her home on a driveway. To me, that's overreach. That's a little government overreach, you know, because a palm, a sable palm, actually, you know, they like the dead fronds. They fall off. It's not like they're going to stay there forever. They'll eventually break off. So, you know, I mean, just for aesthetics, you would get cited by code enforcement. I don't like it. Because it's worse if you trim that tree wrong because you don't want to be dealing with some, just like the problem with the palm trees and the needles on the roof. You know, I'll just cut the tree down. You know, that way I won't be hassled. This is, well, I'll just cut those palm fronds up so that there's hardly anything. There's a bud there, and that's it. So just the point. Things can go the other way on code enforcement.

If you drive down Southern now. One of the things when you over-trim palm fronds is that the guy wants to do all of them he can first. Hurricane pruning a sable palm is a bad thing. If you ride down there, they've got a ton of sable palms on Southern. And what happens is the trunks thin in. They call it penciling. It pencils in like you would on a sharpener, and then it'll go back out, and it'll thin in. Those are all weak points. Those palms are at risk.

Right, exactly.

So... Pretty much a palm should be doing it itself unless it's dropping on the sidewalk. And then you need to be very conservative about which you're only supposed to take off the dead frond. You're never supposed to take off the green frond.

So if we do go and make some changes to the vegetative ordinance in Wellington, I would like to insert that information.

Well, that's why I think we need to have a workshop. We need two workshops. One we need on the tree plan, and the second one we need on the tree ordinance. I don't know which one we want to do first. I think we need to do the... the ordinance first to tell you the truth because that's that's going to move on a schedule and if we're not careful we're going to the schedule is going to outrun us and we're not going to do it and um the vegetation ordinance you mean yes the yeah the tree vegetation ordinance i think we need to work on first okay all right Just so you're aware, there's a thing in weather called a fresh gale. A hurricane is a classification.

It's a Samson Simpson.

And there are classifications. A fresh gale is 47 miles an hour. The description in the National Weather Service is that at 47 miles an hour, these are the things that happen. And one of those things is that trees start falling apart. So a hurricane is at 70. When you start getting 120 mile an hour, you got major hurricanes. And you get an Andrew where you got 150 miles an hour, trees end up being stubs like this. And it is very difficult to trim for a hurricane, given that the tree is not an engineered object. A power pole or a telephone pole, if it's not wood, is an engineered object. Someone has tested it at this wind, and it falls over at this wind speed. Well, a tree is created by God, and God created it on the weather it experienced, and it falls over based on going that tolerance from what it's used to being hit at.

But there are trees, I mean if we're going to make recommendations, there are trees that are definitely more hurricane resistant because of their root systems.

We all love mahogany and mahogany come apart first.

Yeah, we cleaned one up this morning. Huh? We cleaned one up by the high school this morning.

They come apart first. Tree landscaping and maintenance, are we covered on the plan? so michelle can you get with the city clerk and find out what we needed about a workshop and then let's pick a date uh sometime before our next meeting and let's do a workshop next meeting is september september yeah okay um but do we want to do the the urban forestry plan first, but we do want to do the tree ordinance.

Tree ordinance first. Yeah, we can work on the tree ordinance.

Whatever you suggested.

The vegetation ordinance you suggested, right? The vegetation ordinance. Ordinance.

You're the one I would listen to.

Okay.

Yeah, plus she said that the planning and zoning is doing something with the vegetation ordinance, right?

Yeah, the planning and zoning is starting their thing, and I think if we sit down and go through it... We'll move.

And is it under the Muni laws for the plant? Is that where we find it? Correct. Yeah. You can look up Wellington Muni code. Community code. All the sections are there. And there's just a bunch of different stuff when you go to the landscape. Okay.

You know, Matt? As an aside point, AI would be very helpful with the wordiness. You said it's a little bit too long and too wordy. If you use AI, boy, that really cuts down on that a lot. Just saying it would help, possibly. I've used it for cutting down reports and things that are just blah, blah, blah.

You can do a keyword search on there, too. Pardon me? You can do like a keyword search. Yeah. It gets you kind of close.

Well...

Okay.

All right. So then we'll get an e-mail concerning the dates.

We'll get an e-mail about a workshop.

Maybe have a couple of dates. That way, you know, we can try to figure out who can be mostly at.

Right. But it's going to be, I'm sure there's at least a two-week public notice for a workshop. So there will be several weeks out from when we send out the note. Okay. Anything else on the management plan? All right. Let's move on to tree trimming landscape maintenance guidelines. Was that what was it we want to discuss on that? I thought you had put that in the agenda. Okay.

I was going to say, is that something that I sent? Okay. But I kind of discussed it a little already. But the reason this was in here is because I noticed that on the website for the village, it just kicks over to the Florida statute. guideline for pruning and trimming and removal of residential property. And I felt like each city, each village is very different in their specific needs for us to just have a general.

There isn't a Florida standard.

Well, this is from, this that you're looking at is from, it's a Florida statute.

Okay, that's the ordinance that we were talking about.

Right.

That's the one we were talking about earlier, where they passed it probably seven or eight years ago, maybe nine. And then it got amended in 25.

Yeah.

So, but basically, if you look at this, It says the arborist, in order to be that, has got to go through the tree risk management system, which is an adopted national standard. Not a national standard, but an ISA standard. And the certified arborist has got to follow that, as opposed to sitting down in a restaurant and putting it on a dinner napkin. So he's got to have an actual tree risk assessment, which is probably 15 pages of information.

Where can I get a copy of that tree risk assessment? Is that something through the state?

No. Get it through the ISA. ISA. ISA. I have copies. It says on here. I have a copy if you want it.

It says outlined in best management practices tree risk assessment second edition 2017.

Okay.

So that's online? Can I get that? No. You have to get it. It's a book.

You have to buy it. Oh, you have to buy it. Or borrow it. I'll borrow your copy. It is an ANSI standard. It'll cost you about $50. Well, it would cost me $50. It might be online for now.

What I'm interested in is the forms that have to be filled out. I'd like to see what those forms are.

The form was a couple bucks. I had to pay for it when I got mine. I think it was $2 or $3 for the form or something.

Well, the form's one thing, but the standard itself is different.

I know that, but all they need to do is fill out the form in order for the homeowner to be satisfied not be liable for anything.

Take someone trained in tree risk assessment to fill out the form.

So do they have to be certified, like a certified arborist?

They have to be a certified arborist to do it.

Yeah, you have to be a certified arborist and you have to go through the training for tree risk assessment. No, you don't. So it's also a separate, you just have to take the test.

Tree risk assessment exists. It is not stated in the law. Correct.

Correct.

Okay, the law says a certified arborist must do it, not a certified tree risk assessor.

There's a difference. You have to be a certified arborist to do it.

You have to be a certified arborist to do it, but you don't have to be a certified tree risk assessor. You don't have to have the merit badge, which is... Is that a polywag you put on your... Yeah, it's essentially that. It's a merit badge to a Boy Scout.

Oh, okay.

So but the law does not say that. So I am no longer certified because I don't use it. It cost me a couple of thousand dollars to do. So I gave it up in December. But I could do one. And I've probably done more tree risk assessments than people who do it professionally. Because you have to do every tree on a transmission line.

These tree risk assessments, Are they for individual trees? So you need this assessment for each individual tree. So a developer couldn't say, okay, I'm going to develop this property. There's 500 trees on here. I got a certified arborist to tell me that. These trees need to be removed.

No.

You can't do that.

You cannot do that.

So how did the guy on Paddock Park get away with taking all those trees down, clear-cutting that lot and building a house?

They just did it and paid the consequences.

And the consequences were? Did he get fined?

They ended up paying fines. They ended up paying fines. I think it was to the tune of $15,000 or $18,000.

Okay. So sometimes I guess a developer might say, I'll pay the fines. It's worth it to me so I can get this thing built. Yes. Okay.

So what I wanted to ask is where do we have guidelines as far as, you know, On properties in our village, we can't have, you know, line of sight over six feet, you know, for this hedge or that hedge.

Are there... That's outlined in the landscape portion in the muni code.

That's in the muni code that we're going to be reviewing.

It goes into that detail, yeah. Okay.

You know why? Because that's really where I was going with this. I think that, like, I hate to re-say it again, but the Eureka palms, those are just out of control. And I think that that... should be, that's something that needs to be amended.

Yeah, we're going to the list of the five approved hedge materials for major thoroughfares this year. By the end of 26, everyone has to be in compliance. So most of the Eurekas along major thoroughfares are going to go away.

But the height.

Some of them have.

The height of them is.

Not just the Eurekas, but the Klusia. Klusia. Some of those Klusia hedges are away over 10 seconds.

I've seen some people that are growing them higher. I always cut six feet, you know, nothing over that. But because of its line of sight, its safety, there's like a whole thing that really I think needs to be in there. And I need to review the municode.

If there's hedge material in the pathways and blocking line of sight, code enforcement will go out and make them trim. They do that for us all the time.

Do you know offhand what the height is supposedly?

It's eight feet on a major thoroughfare.

Eight feet on a major thoroughfare.

On a major thoroughfare. Now, if you're in the neighborhood and you're not on a major thoroughfare, you can have it taller.

But 30, 50 feet? Unlimited height? Personally, I wouldn't do that.

You're talking about a corner, aren't you?

Corners, yeah, line of sights, corners, anything in a public right-of-way that intrudes into the public right-of-way, that kind of stuff. So all the hedges that are on a major thoroughfare with sidewalks and that sort of thing have to be one of the new approved materials.

What most people don't realize, especially if you're on a corner, is that the corner where, if you go to the corner at my house, I'm on a corner house, the corner itself doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the city. Because there are no curbs in surveying. so to speak, and the pin comes down here, and it's 15 feet off the sidewalk, and then the next pin over here is 15 off of the sidewalk, and so there's this big triangle that literally belongs to the city.

Yeah, when you pull up to the stop bar... The hedge material can't come right to the corner. The corner is cut off at an angle so that you have a line of sight so you can see traffic coming. That's right.

Okay.

There's setbacks for the hedges, setbacks for fences, and all that is outlined in the muni code.

But, I mean, if you put in a fence, there's even a requirement that you have a hedge on the fence that will reach four feet, which I disagree with.

I guess there's a requirement, too, that your hedges have to be mulched.

Yes.

Yeah, but there's some hedges that are like 50 feet. There's some plant materials that people have planted next to the fence that are 30 feet, 50 feet. It's like there needs to be, I feel, a limit. I guess it does.

Now, Caloosie I wouldn't let get that big because they're just going to blow over in a storm. I'd keep them at six, maybe eight at the most. Okay.

All right. So that's all in the muni code that we're going to review anyway. Okay. Okay.

Anything else on landscaping guidelines? Okay. The next item on the line is election of officers. So we have a chairman and a vice chair.

I would like to make a recommendation. Go ahead. I would like to recommend reappointing John Tamsberg as chair. Okay. Would he be so inclined to do so? That would be great.

I serve at your pleasure.

Okay.

If you want to trade, we'll trade.

I'll second that motion. So that shows you where I am.

Any other comments? Any other? Someone needs to make a motion. You want to keep both of us, or are we going to do one at a time?

I didn't want to hog it and take both recommendations. I thought maybe somebody else might want to say something. That's why I only did one.

No, I think we should keep it just as it is for another year for sure. I'm fine with that. I'll make a motion.

I think the elections are every two years, aren't they, or are they every year?

The two years? All right. Well, for the next two years.

What is it, Michelle?

Oh, it is every year.

Okay, there you go.

Okay.

All right.

I agree with that. So you made a motion for both? I'm making a motion that, yes, as Lisa suggested, that we keep both for another year. I second that motion.

Motion is seconded. All in favor?

Aye.

Motion passes unanimously. OK. Comments? Didn't someone had some comments they wanted to add to this?

To the election? Well, you were going to talk about this. It was in the minutes. Something about Debbie Evans discussed a new area possibly being annexed. Somebody had some concerns about that. Oh, yes.

I did have that question. What was she talking about? Does anyone remember?

What the, where was that now? Might be some place over off of Southern. Was she talking about, Debbie, I was discussing.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. A new area possibly being annexed by Wellington.

It was in the paper. Arden was, they were in a discussion of either annexing Arden or writing a contract to govern Arden. Oh. Do we have the services?

They're in talks. I'm not sure. What? It may come about. I don't know. She must be.

Is Arden, does that have a Wellington? That's not in Wellington, though, right? It's in Loxahatchee.

That's what I thought. It's west of Loxahatchee, but Wellington goes fairly far west. But it doesn't go all the way to Arden, so I don't know how you would annex a separate parcel as part of the city. I think there has to be some contiguous piece. So I don't know what's going on there. They'd have to take line country in order to do it.

Oh, that would be a challenge now that we have a new owner.

Well, I don't mean the country. I'm talking about the estates in front. They just pencil out the, they leave line country out.

Yeah, white fences and fox run in that section. Fox run, white fences.

So what is that now? Unincorporated? Unincorporated. Okay. Hmm.

Any more discussion about that?

Well, I wonder what the benefit would be to our village to annex that.

More tax base.

And you've got to provide more services.

With a brand new infrastructure.

So I know we had talked about the wildflower plantings and in the work plan it says that we're going to you know, try to get that done this year?

Yeah, I have a couple areas. There's actually tick seeds starting to grow in some of the areas, too, so.

Oh, in those basins along the canal? Yeah. Okay, good, good. That you seeded, or they're just coming up on their own?

Volunteers, it's already starting by itself, so I think they'll work.

Oh, good, good. Yeah, definitely the Tickseed, I think, is a good choice. And a couple different varieties, too, because I think one blooms earlier, maybe, than the other. Florida Tickseed, I think.

I think so, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of varieties.

So the stuff they put out on the turnpike. Just a blend of. It's a blend of stuff that's not necessarily native.

Not 100%, yeah. So why is that so bad? I mean, it's not really. I'm just kind of a stickler for 100% native stuff, so.

You know, that lyreleaf sage also, it's basically a weed, but it does look real pretty with the tick seed when it's blooming in the springtime, the purple and the yellow. So if you have some seeds for that, that kind of seeds itself, too.

I'm not that opposed to it. I mean, if you pick out a seed source, we can definitely use it. Yeah. Even if there's 80% native.

Well, that's native, I think. The lyreleaf sage is native for sure. Yeah.

There was some liatris and some other stuff that was from, like, the Texas. There's some Texas, you know. It wasn't all from Florida, so.

Mm-hmm.

Anyway.

Okay, good, good. So it's started. We started.

We can order it and we can get it going. So, yeah, I think it's going to work.

I'm wondering, Will, would some of those milkweed, the swamp milkweed, do you think that those seeds would grow in those areas? Do you think they'd stay wet enough for some of that, like the –

I mean, there's a little algae in the bottom. They hold a little algae in the bottom. They stay fairly moist in the bottom. If they stay wet. They're only a foot above the elevation of the water in the canal.

Okay, maybe we could try some of those because I do have seeds for milkweed.

I have some too.

Yeah.

We need lots though. We need like tons of it. Pounds.

Right, but I mean like on State Road 7 by the mall, all those swales that stay wet, don't get mowed in the summer.

No, they mow those maybe once or twice a year when they're drier in the fall and into the later winter.

Other than being destroyed by the utility companies, especially FPL.

There's a lot of duck potato and pickerel weed and stuff that grows in there when they start to get good and wet in the summer. But, I mean, that would be another area we could consider throwing some in. It's not really village-maintained. It's DOT. The spots I had picked were maintained by our contractors.

Somehow DOT is doing it on the turnpike and 95, why don't we talk to DOT? It's possible.

Yeah, they could wonder what their source is, their seed source, the DOT.

They do it on the highways.

I know they were using that. It was a Texas mix, I think.

Southeast. Whatever they grow for seed. We'll do those couple of key areas where you can see it from the street.

How are your orchids blooming over at the wetland?

Beautiful and nice. Yeah. All the butterfly orchids are in bloom now.

Yeah, they're going crazy now, so good.

Probably going crazy. Oh, yeah. I mean, have you been out to the garden?

Stoneman Douglas? Yeah. Yeah, not too long, a couple weeks ago. Beautiful blooms. Oh, yeah.

Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. No, everything's blooming nice.

Okay, good. Good. And did you see over at the Meadow the Florida insidiums that we put in? They haven't done anything yet, but I think they need some time to get established.

Yeah, sometimes it takes a year or so.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. Any other comments?

Announcement. Okay. I have an announcement.

Announcement.

You ready for announcements? You're pregnant? Are we? No.

Oh, that's a big announcement. Does that have to be on?

As my former secretary used to say, if she made that announcement, there would be a star in the east.

I think I'm actually blushing. And I never blush. Okay. So you're ready for a tree-related announcement? Yeah. Okay. So we know the annual tree planting is coming up. Mark your calendars, please, for September 26th, 8.30 a.m. Usually lasts about an hour and a half or so. Rain or shine. And our Will Gurney there announced that it will be or told me that it will be at the Wellington Environmental Preserve where we'll try to plant at least maybe.

We'll try another 1,000 pints.

A thousand, about a thousand pines, seedlings. And he gets beautiful ones. So that's the 12th annual tree planting.

Yep. Oh, cool. Yeah.

Really nice. It's a Saturday. And, you know, since we are the tree board, I would love to see the support of the tree board members there this year. We have good advance notice. And if you think it's too hard or it's too hot or you can't do it, even if you can't plant one, you can hold one up for the picture and you can just walk around a little bit. We'd love that, too. But if you can plant a few seedlings, that would be nice. So thank you.

That's all.

Okay. Thank you, John.

Anything else? Do I have a motion that we adjourn?

This just came to me right now. I've been getting emails about West Palm Beach doing a tree giveaway for the residents of West Palm Beach. All you have to do is prove that you're a resident. There's like a variety of trees. Can Wellington, would Wellington be open to doing something like that?

for the residents of Welland.

I know that, but I think this is a little bit more extensive than like little tiny seedlings.

Yeah, there's been talks about some kind of like a grant program where we, especially with this canopy study that came out, we provide you know, small trees to residents.

Well, especially because you said that there's certain sections based on your tree survey that certain neighborhoods might be, like, lacking trees. Well, if you had a giveaway.

That's a good way to inspire people to come and plant trees.

Right, exactly. A giveaway for those people that need to plant those trees. It wouldn't cost them anything, you know. So just a thought. I mean, if West Palm can do it, why can't we? We've got plenty of money here in Wellington. Absolutely. Okay, good. It might be something that we can, I know it's not on the work plan for this year, but something we can think about maybe and continue to, you know, try to work toward.

There may be grants available and stuff for that too.

They give big plant. One time they had a big, big plant. People were lying like anything.

Yeah, they'll line up to get them. I mean, because they don't have to wait. They don't have to repot them.

Seven gallon something that wouldn't be too big.

Right. Something that they could carry away, but they could plant it. They wouldn't have to worry about the mowers running over it. It would be big enough for that.

Something seven-gallon would be nice.

And only for West Palm Beach, not Wellington included, I ask. No.

No, it would only be for Wellington. Only Wellington. Nobody sneaking over from Loxahatchee. Sorry. Yeah. Oh, they do.

The survey, what's the expectation on being able to see that?

I just have to send an email to IT and see if it's available from the public side to see if that layer is on there or if they can put it on there for me. Okay. If it's not currently on there yet.

Yeah, that processing will have to be done on their computer.

Yeah.

And we may be able to just send a link to the tree board so you guys can view it and then sort out the public interface later. At least you can get a look at it. That would be great. I'd love to see it. Yeah, we've discussed that. So we should be able to provide you at least with a link so you all can view it.

Is it... A lot of maps in it, or is it all words?

It's like interactive. There's a couple reports, and it breaks down the data, and then there's a couple interactive maps where you can add certain layers, and it kind of shows you a few different things. It shows you the overall canopy, shows you the difference in public and private, and then kind of goes through the different breakdowns of what each category is.

If they're not sure how to do that on the open public, off their websites, tell them to look at the Forest Service's fire mapping, fire and permit mapping. Because they have a GIS system that is available through the internet. Right, for people to view.

It's slow, but it works. Yeah.

It's very similar to the layer that you can view that the actual locations of the trees are surveyed.

Okay. I hear a motion that we adjourn.

One more thing, just for information, there's apparently a third edition out, 2025, and it'll cost you $90. You can buy it online. What? The Best Management Practices Tree Risk Assessment, third edition, 2025. So you can get yourself a new edition, John.

Well, I want to buy one.

Pardon me? What?

The state law only approves the previous one.

Oh, okay. Well, whatever. I don't plan to buy one tomorrow, actually.

Right.

A weekend reading. Yeah.

A little light reading. It didn't change that much. I can tarnish you that.

No idea. Okay.

Motion to adjourn?

I'll make that motion.

Second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Thank you for a very productive meeting, even though I thought we weren't going to have it.