Trees and Parks Board - Regular Meeting

Okay, I got it now. All right, you can sit.

All right. I would like to officially call the meeting of the Trees and Parks Board to order at 4.36 p.m. Can we please go ahead and do roll call?

Sure. Can we can? Hello. Can you stand on? Present. Where am I?

Present.

Josephine?

Here.

You have a quorum.

Wonderful. We have a quorum. We have no public comments today. All right. Let's see. We need to approve the regular fusion parks board meeting minutes from our last meeting on July 1st. Do we have a motion to approve those minutes? Second.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

All right, passed.

All right, report from council liaison.

I don't have much to report. I do apologize for missing the last meeting. I kind of had an impromptu trip. I did get some notes from our city secretary from y'all. She kind of recapped what happened. So I feel prepared for this meeting and caught up. Other than that, Nothing really new has come from council. They're just still kind of working off the final budget for next year. And so once those numbers are solidified, we'll be able to kind of pass on to y'all whatever funds we have left over that aren't already committed into other projects for y'all to consider using or sending a recommendation for use to council.

That's wonderful. All right. Let's move into the regular agenda portion. where we are going to continue to workshop on parks master plan. I forgot to bring my box. Thank you. All right. So last time we went through each of the pages and we kind of did a familiarization for ourselves with the plan and talked briefly about what the different edits were that we think maybe needed to be made. What do we do next?

So the city secretary will make edits for y'all. Oh, sure. So she can manage the documents. She and I talked briefly about it. It really should not be a set of PowerPoint pages. It should be an actual kind of like report style document that it's okay to have a complimentary PowerPoint that goes with it, but we really need something that's a little bit more comprehensive and formal. So, you know, the format would change. I understand that y'all maybe have some questions about some of the items on it. The trail system, right away green space, interpretive signage.

Yeah, that's there a lot. But obviously this hasn't been updated in a while. It's a very long time. The triangle doesn't have to do. So can you talk? I think it's 2018 or 2019. We talked about that, like adding in all the

triangle and then recall i wouldn't do any of this now has a playground bathroom dispensary and skipping tables and all that so we don't need to we already talked about that so if she has that do we need to provide yeah well i i think that she is looking for some concrete directions right now so it could come in the form of like maybe you know if y'all have a discussion i can take notes or if y'all want to do it outside of a meeting in subcommittees you could basically kind of submit a formal update, meaning new pictures, because we likely have pictures. Or we can contact with the TARP to get more.

Yeah. We might take them on our tour, like when we go into our moment trip. Yeah. To make sure we're letting everything off. That's great. Yeah, we could go like this.

And we do have a comprehensive plan update coming. There are some questions that are TARPs related, like future recreation. But really that's kind of something that's lacking out of this plan is the future vision because that vision is older and then we've already addressed this stuff. So we really kind of need like a new vision, whether that's leave the parks alone or buy new park land or, you know, we think this park needs this or that kind of thing. I messaged Jill about this, but We, the council a long time ago said either the treating park or a dog park to consider. So that's going to come up on y'all's next agenda likely. And we're going to just be asking y'all to say, you know, essentially, yeah, we support this concept or no, we think it's a really bad idea and issuing a report to council on that front. So some of those kinds of things could be wrapped into this report in the long run. And there's no, there's no rush on this so if you guys don't you know in one meeting you don't get a lot done on it it's not a big deal um but it is one of the only major tasks at this board that needs to handle okay so the top part we're talking about is one down here it was proposed there um there's really only two pieces of land that could go on and we can't get too far into the weeds on that although it is relevant for this the city you know doesn't really own much more land that's one of the the kind of overarching issues. So city council last year did start a parkland fund where we take a little bit of money. It's a very small amount every year and put it into that fund. It will take a long time to accrue beyond maybe a deposit. So it's not like the purpose isn't to buy outright, but it would maybe allow us to buy a lot if it were to open up. because we did talk about it last time about here and how you know how difficult that would be to have the job prepared you know but i didn't hear that there was a little rush yeah the only other city on land right now besides this plot here you know that we're on is um by the exit off of um jacob's well it's called la roca it's like this little tiny ingress egress that's left open all the time now see one that says you should never go through here yeah because it used to be a lot of gain it was there for emergency and then it got left open and then has essentially stayed open um the city owns the lot next door but it's heavily wooded so so i just wonder about should we talk about the building park like a little bit probably in the next meeting would be best just because it's not cited on the agenda so if i didn't have a big opinion they wouldn't have known about it but why it's relevant is you are updating a comprehensive like I did on her. So, you know, I'm glad that we know that that's another psychological medium that you're saying we only have to go the way that we do now.

Yeah. Can I ask a question? At one time, I thought there was a part that had been designated for Jim Westbrook. Kay Westbrook, he died first, I don't know how long ago. But Kay, um, there was a and that has all time there one time that it was a memorial park for jim westbrook and um not for me personally but you know i only moved back here in 2020 and when i lived here previously i was a teenager in early 20s and child so you know i don't What time frame was that? I remember you brought that up one time. What time frame? I mean, was it 10 years ago? Probably. I looked here 14 years. Probably, yeah, 10 years ago. How did you find out?

I mean, how do you spell the last name? W-E-S-T Westbrook.

W-E-S-T Westbrook. She died either last year or the year before. And you said Jim and Kay? Uh-huh.

I can look in the Old City files. I mean, I've never seen anything on her.

No.

OK. Yeah. OK.

I have something to ask. Yeah. I have something to ask that Interpretive Science nobody talked about. Interpretive Science says graphics and interactive elements that was in uh they're supposed to be in all these parks yeah you know and uh augusta is the only one i'm really familiar with you know it's the one i've walked through so it's got some but i'm gonna try to level a little bit now it does i think there's at least one little clapper that talks about the warranty is there anything out there called parks

uh just a sign about the creation of it and there might be something at the bathroom for the lcra grant um if this is something you value a suggestion would be to say um you know interpretive signs not fully executed you know um include in a new plan as a action item or something you know okay so when we do ours too long back just i mean at the end i guess if i need some

so when we do our little tour looking like everything that's the one where real effort has been put into making an educational experience rather than just looking at these whole kind of things maybe not all of the parks need to have a digital interpretive signage like the memorial park you get what's already there i don't know how much foreign reaction is really wanted um i think we might have talked about this last time but Who would be the one creating the introvert site?

That would be open. We could, that you could make a recommendation to council to hire someone to do it. Okay. You could make a recommendation to council to like have staff do it. You, you know, staff would need support in regards to plant identification and that kind of stuff that's not there. Field of expertise. We have a company we work with for all of our little like things, so that part's done. We can just go to them again. You know, they've made outdoor signs for us before, but you know, if you wanted a certain style or specifically anything that's involving like nature identification, we will probably need help. And we are moving forward with our RFP. We had one person apply. Yeah, so the native plant, we only had one person, so it's just going straight to council. I mean, we're not bypassing y'all on purpose, but there's nothing to say. It's either we move forward with them or we know. So they might be able to help support on that. But if y'all are talking about interpretive signage that mirrors like some of the book walks or wildlife or even like what was done at the rainwater collection, we would probably need to find isolated professionals for that.

Is it safe with that signage?

The rainwater question one, I think, came from the rainwater company. From the rainwater company. Yeah, because it was meant to be an educational piece, so we, they helped us craft that. And then there is one, like, giant sign, I don't know if it was installed yet or not, that came from the county. Oh, right. Wow.

I know. I, like, almost guessed it a lot, I guess. Right. So the part of the reason why I asked that And I understand conflict of interest with myself and business and jobs and things like that, and that is not at all what I'm pitching. But I do help teach the interpretation class at Texas State, the nature interpretation, and that is one of my sidekicks, teaching interpretation. So I have connections with volunteers and students and master naturalists that would probably be interested in helping with that.

Probably awesome.

Yeah. Great. Probably volunteer work that you get, too. Yeah. My friend is always thinking about taking up their whole 40 hours. Exactly.

Right. Get some college students to help too. We actually really love student interns. We've had some the past couple of years since Jim got on. So that's awesome. He brings them in from the high school and they do a lot of very helpful work for us. That's fantastic.

Okay. So, um, So what are y'all's thoughts? Should we go through this and make our formal edits? Should we wait until we actually go and visit the locations?

I don't wait just because feet on the ground. I'd love to see that happen soon. I know it's hot, but if we get out there in the morning, and I think I mentioned my girlfriend sleeping on a weekday morning, but we already have all this stuff to do for a long time now.

Yeah, I think that would be a great idea. If we didn't do it now, I think we would end up still doubling our work later. We're going to probably mess things up.

So we could do it this weekday morning, meet here, jump in one vehicle, just go around.

The grand tour. Take a lot of pictures. Does that work to put this on pause for right now?

Yeah. Okay. There's no rush, really. Okay.

Do you think we'll be more off? If we, um, yeah.

Yeah.

Quick question. I was going to be another meeting, but I just looking at the tracks that you were talking about, the one inside that drive, does that make.

I would be curious what kind of, if any approval would be made from people who live in that house. Are you on the left or the right side of the road?

I am looking north towards Jacob's Well.

So the city property is on the right side of the road.

Right, the right side of the road, and they're facing west. So north of the road. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a wooded area, and it's right side of the driveway.

If you're sure, then I'm... I feel pretty comfortable. This looks very much like Parkway. That's awesome. If you're saying, do we need permission? Would we reach out to them and talk to them about it? Because that's what I seem to do. That would be best. Would there potentially be a part of the plan where we would build a privacy? A fence?

Well, you'd have to budget it. You can't have a dark party. Right. And we don't do chain link fence.

No.

Yeah. i was just curious i'm wondering about liability things like because we talked about that it's like this point and at one point having a dog harm him it's just you know when the attorneys looked at it and just like you know it's just an idea like one dog bites another dog and you know there's any does it assume any responsibility for that kind of stuff we do have insurance okay you know yeah i just want to there are there are a lot of cons to a dog park oh my gosh there's not i mean you know when we looked at it there was just a whole lot of thinking about you know so this is keep withdrawing their mind i mean unless they happen to live so i mean you can keep plotting so here you go road there you know you would need parking like me it's kind of like it's parallel parking um you know it's not a real reason i don't there's not proxy checks on do we have acceptance original avenues they're not city parks so technically you were supposed to live in the creek north That's what we need.

Whereas these are city-owned parks paid by taxpayer dollars. So they're actually open to everyone. You don't have to move here.

So there's a really good question because thinking about like, let's say in the future, the city were to purchase another green space to turn into a playground. It would be the same thing where you don't have to ask the people that live around it.

To rezone something, see that's already zoned city property. To zone it into a park, we have to notify people they could potentially, you know, complain. But given that that's already municipally owned and, you know, I mean, there's always kind of like workarounds, if that makes sense. But if we were to buy a new lot that's residentially zoned and to be turning that into a park, we would absolutely freeze out and go through the public notification process. Something to get kind of back more to the parks master plan, something that citizens have spoken to me about where the ones are, there are areas of our community with no parks, meaning a lot of our parks are kind of centralized into like one little kind of L shape. And so we have large parts of Wood Creek with nothing. I mean, our city is small, so it's not that large, that's something you have to consider is like recommending the city look at pursuing land in other areas or converting things to more public parks but we can put that on our field trip list um other future businesses actually naming that piece of land right there um across from memorial plaza uh we never finished naming that part no so we need a name maybe it's jimmy k westbrook i don't know paula king but she lives like a

Just as you turn on to champion circle one for NASA, you got to probably about five years ago.

With the naming, would that be like a survey that goes out to the community where people could nominate and then they're going to vote? You could make that recommendation to council as a way to do it. Or we can just carbon fast and just go with one. Both approaches have been used. Like the Creekside Park, that was just kind of an obvious name. The Triangle was already called the Triangle, so we never even messed with that. That makes sense.

There's no real, like, colloquial term for that patch of trees, is there?

That's what happened with the last parks board, is that's where it ended. They were like, well, there's no obvious name, and they kind of table head. Does that make sense? And when I say last part, this item is like two to three years.

Yeah, we can do that. Even if it's half of three's part. Fantastic. So do we have anything else for the master plan that we want to touch on today? Or can we bring this workshop to a close?

The only thing I can add just for historical context because i'm sure you all haven't followed the city business like i have with a lot of tigers but that park with no name um the reason why it was rezoned to a park is they were actually looking at putting adult exercise equipment there jeff just said that the other day he was like that would be great for adult exercise equipment the reason they didn't act is because it plugged back and water sits there but um however it's it's something that we i hope our council takes action on this year we have put it into our capital improvements plan we're moving forward with getting the management engineers so once we address that pulver over there council app in theory the water management problems over there will be reduced significantly though on that front i think that's an intriguing motion if it's right by the walking trail

Yeah.

The only walking trail really I think it's just, I'm gonna just have to make sure, I'm sure it is. So I think you got it. I'm sure exactly where it is. Like where it is so much. The park?

Yeah. So when you go into New York, you see the memorial on the way. That's it.

And the pastries.

Okay. That's it.

So there'd be a lot. Yeah.

So they're like, um, like LJ Wells. has a walking trail right and along the trail right if you stop and there is a chest person all right um are we okay to draw the first map of the workshop to those i am perfect Let's go ahead and close that, and then we're going to move on to discuss and take possible action to approve or deny the design and installation of the Community Bulletin Board.

If you want to take up items out of order, you can just go ahead. Thank you.

I will speak to the Bulletin Board. Yes. And I'll just kind of reiterate what I put out last time, and I'll put you back to the comments that have been shared. cost associated with that and i feel like if we're going to spend money on a bulletin board we find a better design basically put something that changed in one of the like squares of the gazebo that's already in the park so it would have some weather coverage and would already be part of the design and not really interfere with the visuals that much uh probably be cheaper than putting post holes in the ground It might draw less attention for graffiti, for vandalism, which I know is a little bit of a concern. I don't know if there's been any since the cameras went off.

Just not anything that I'm aware of or that's been major. I know that the one thing that was mentioned was there were voicings that that would be in my score. But in my opinion, it would be less so.

then putting up to those in the listen for right there on the drive that would need maintenance and would probably really quickly get some stuff drawn to me and yeah let's talk about who's going to make changes that was a big concern that we had about who is going to be responsible for maintaining it and if it was open to the public How do you control it? How do you keep someone from? Messing with it. Yeah, messing with it or posting their own personal strong opinions on the bulletin board. That makes it good to happen. Yeah. You can tell Debra's like, yeah, we're deaf. We're in there. I also have physical concerns about it, too, because I know there's the one that's right next to community pizza. That big bulletin board there. And I go there and hang our flyers for the brewery event. And getting that door open is an absolute beat. Yes, it's huge. It's heavy. And I just worry about the viability of what that means for our community members.

Forgive me because I did not watch the meeting. I just got a response from Carrie. So did she give you the history on this item? no no okay so this item originated in the community relations board um they wanted a way to communicate with more citizens because not everyone signed up for our newsletter and our text messages not everyone participates in social media so it's just another effort to kind of have a touch point their original idea was one at every single part that's Once we looked at the price, it became kind of cost prohibitive. Council came up with this, you know, design as, you know, there were just kind of some options thrown to them. And then they were like, I would like the more natural, the freestanding, nobody ever presented anything installed anywhere, kind of like you're saying. So that was never even discussed. Council, has remained kind of noncommittal on this item. That's sort of why I got punted to y'all. They couldn't decide where to put it at the triangle. They narrowed it down to just one at the triangle, and then they couldn't decide where to put it at the triangle, and the next time it came back to them, they punted it again. So there's not a huge drive for this. So, you know, if it's not something y'all collectively support, then it's okay to say we don't necessarily think this is a good idea.

If you cry, has there been 10 meetings?

Absolutely not. But if you're waiting for that to happen, it will probably happen. They don't like something. So you don't, not a lot of people attend our meetings or even follow city business regularly. Unfortunately, you know, the community relations board works really, really, really hard to throw public events and they're very invested. and getting notification of those events out. Right now, one of the only things we really have as an option for that are individual signs for every single event, which we do, which is we can keep doing that. There's nothing wrong with it. One of the concerns I heard from staff you guys already highlighted was who's going to maintenance this? Staff doesn't want to take it on. they see this as a community board meant for the community, and so it would be the community's responsibility to maintain it. When I say maintain, I mean taking flyers off, monitoring what's on there. Obviously, if there was something graphic, we would remove it, right? But we're talking about lost pet flyers. At what point do you decide? One of the only real positives besides communicating city events that we've seen for this board are our lost pet flyers. because we don't really have an appropriate place for them to be hung otherwise. Meaning we, you know, how do I explain this? It's illegal to post them on stop signs, period. You can't do that anymore. That has nothing to do with our city. Everywhere else, it's like, okay, if they were to try to put signs in yards, we have a sign ordinance. And the federal law literally says we have to apply it to everything equally. It's why garage sale signs cost money here, right? Because you can either allow no signs or allow signs and charge a fee or allow signs and charge no fee, which this city decided to charge me for signs to tour people just all the time, them everywhere. Like all the, we buy, you know, destroyed houses and real estate. So it was our, the city's way of like kind of, yes, but then it's negatively impacted things like, well, all of that to say, that's one of the only real outcry we've ever heard is, where can we post these sites? You know?

I posted for my one year thing for like a day and a half, and I was having a momentary heart attack, but like went on every Facebook forum, and I got huge amounts of responses. And not everybody's into using those platforms, but they are effective.

So that's one of the reasons why we've never really acted more on it, is because online have become kind of your community board at this point. Now, you know, that is still limited reach. One of the other things that's come up is, is the triangle actually the right place for this? Or does it make more sense at, like, the playground?

The most here.

Not really a need to put another one on the city hall.

Do you have an invitation?

If you know where to come and look at it.

See, that's what I'm afraid of. Spending the money and then literally no one else going to use it to have a look at it. I mean, it seems to me that the only thing that makes sense would be a pet, a lost pet. I mean, that's the only thing. Not necessarily the events, you know. So, did somebody put a lost pet here? I mean, we wouldn't say no, but nobody does that. And not only people who actually physically come to City Hall and when it gets pretty bad. Okay. Yeah. So I can see the benefit of being a parent for the young kids and being at the park and seeing something like we have a, a free holiday event this weekend. Um, I can see that being beneficial and I am a huge proponent of pets. I'm a big animal lover, but I have to kind of play devil's advocate. How do you set the limit on how long a lost pet can be up? Do you have to date it? I don't know. Right? When do you say this needs to come down? And if you don't, then you run the risk of your board just being completely full of lost debt signs because they haven't came home.

Exactly.

I have a question about the rules on signs and yards. I'm not trying to throw them in your box, but they put them on mailboxes?

That's illegal.

That's illegal?

I wonder if they have that.

The federal bench. Because you can't bring one. in theory they potentially had permission from the homeowner to do that a homeowner could take stuff to their own mailbox so that was what this was where i know which one you're talking about people involved Yeah, people volunteered to put that on their mailbox. So it wasn't like they were on their friend's. And on people's mailboxes?

I wasn't sure what the regulation was. Don't touch people's mailboxes. Fire on mailboxes. Can you close them as you walk by? They're open. I'll do that. I'll do that. I can't imagine anyone being mad about that, but if I didn't, who knows? I think with everything that we've discussed and with the price tag for the maximum cost of food products affiliated here, I don't see that being valuable. $4,500. That is so good.

That is so good. of $20,000, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you're, yeah, you need a motion. And really in this, we're going to be issuing a report to council. Well, well, I guess you could go down with rain or on that, but on this one, you need to basically approve or deny this as a report and send a report to council. See the end.

Yeah, I feel pretty, decided 22. well i'm sure you have a different brand than what you ordered within mine that sounds well we can just maybe not support do you say i can yeah what's the fourth prefer alternative i i think i think not support yeah okay well somebody's like i will i will make please all second all the favor all right sorry any opposed okay uh let me just do not okay okay maintenance um logistics concerns about yeah We don't want to talk about the negative, but it's going to be, who was your favorite? Ms. Conserva's engagement. Yeah, exactly. I was going to be over-engaged. Negative engagement. I'll feel like Val. Yeah. All right. So that covers us for two, three, and four. So now we're at discuss and take possible action to review and make recommendations on the purchase and installation of trees. Now that is exciting. All right, let's see. So we have, this is for three new trees. So a 30 gallon Cedar Elm Street Island tree on Brook Meadow between Shady Grove and Augusta. Okay, Brook Meadow, which means to go up.

oh there we go in that little section right there yeah there's well there's the egg which is like a butterfly garden and then there's a street tree island that the tree that was there died but there are two other volunteer mountain laurels kind of in it as well and the history on this item is the tree board actually took it up a couple times they originally recommended sycamore and then kind of reversed that decision because sycamores need um they prefer like a lot of water um and so then I went to Cedar Elm that went to council a council member wanted y'all's input um they cited some concerns with Cedar Elms they said I'll get with we love trees our um person so that's You know, the assessment from We Love Trees is cedar almost a good choice, but given the constricted growth space, a smaller tree would be better. Two possible suggestions are redbud or desert willow from them. However, desert willows grow very wide. So I was a little surprised to see that recommendation. I think you can train the willow. Because there's ones on Oak Creek Drive and lots of houses where they kind of wallop off it. little bit so it managed to move yeah yeah so that was one of the concerns with the cedar elm too is it needs a lot of maintenance to keep it lifted and the you know the the limbs can be a little bit weaker so you have to do more trimming when we asked we love trees about the concerns on weak limbs on cedar elms and he said again with proper maintenance that's not a concern so you know it's just one of those things where you just have to kind of weigh those costs and benefits, right? If you recommend a tree that's going to need a lot of maintenance, that's additional cost versus something that you can kind of set and forget.

Yeah. You know, but. Sorry, I'm looking up a native plant question. Yeah, I was going to say, what's a native tree? Mm-hmm. Oh, that's a, you know, that's supposed to be a little bit, you know. Is that native to our area? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

They all overstate it. Just so I'm careful. Yeah, if it's the Texas. Yeah. You know, so the person that you have hired or little hired, you know, that your garden's at, is that person, would that person be doing the tree trimming and things?

They are city arborists. Yes. So, we love trees. Yeah.

Okay. Well, that's helpful. Yes. From a space standpoint, I support the idea of doing something other than a Cedar Elm, especially if there are already two mountain rolls there now. I'm not super familiar with that space, but I imagine being in the middle of the road, it's probably not very big.

We walk by it multiple times a week. It's very narrow.

Yeah. Is that one of the new stop signs? No, that's a little, so if you turn right at the new stop sign and you go along Vesta, and you were to turn right,

where that little mountain or butterfly garden is, and you go down a hill, it's right past that, and you can get your shoes off.

Oh, yeah. So here's Brick Hollow. Here's Augusta. Here's Augusta Park there. You start here, you turn on Brick Meadow. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, my gosh. It's a cliff. So I imagine, like, even if you put in a 25- to 30-gallon root system, and it's all rocky that's on an incline, it's a pretty steep incline, actually, because of the logistics of putting anything in.

You don't have the option to not put a tree in. I think the mountain laurels that are there are the same speed. Yeah.

And they'll have to have the laurels on them, too.

Yeah.

Really nice. Yeah. It's not that they're

I mean, out of the work, I don't think that anything is necessarily needed there. I think there's mountain laurels over there, because they'll get run off when our friends and help out volunteers all the time.

There's a sprayer. Yeah. It'll be a mountain laurel teardrop on Brook Meadows. You can see it. Yeah. You have to be really careful about how much erosion.

Those mountain laurels are there to stay calm.

These are all set for like a fall planting. If you said plant a tree, we would not plant right now. If you said plant another bush or shrub, we would likely still delay.

all the better in time. I hate to be a Debbie Downer in all of these proposals, but I'm just like, let's go, let's make more shots. Well, that's why we have you here. Also. No, I am always very practical. Why don't we do something just to boost them, you know? It's a good question. This came about from, I believe that a council member that lives in that area, when the previous tree was lost, they went in there.

Yeah. I, to also be a Debbie Downer, I had concerns about the Anacacha orchids. Oh, yeah. Those. I just double checked it. It said they're native to Texas, but they're rare. And it looks like they're more in southwest texas and northeastern mexico i had never even heard of that in this area okay and they smell wonderful yeah they have they have pods big pods uh again i also have a mexican plum and although it's you know it has spread out pretty well and it blooms and it smells Yeah.

This person who submitted the RFP to do groundskeeping, do they have any qualifications as like an arborist or like a landscaper? So they wouldn't replace an arborist where you keep leaves of trees. They're literally just a native and plant like landscape management. I will say that their application was not very detailed on that front, so I don't I don't know personally, but really, um, I don't even know, or I should say the city doesn't necessarily need them to be an expert or to have a degree. We just don't have anyone qualified to do this. Like we have a land management team, but they're just gonna roll it all down. So if there's anyone with any kind of experience to nuance the plants, that's what we needed. You know, I obviously in the best case scenario would be somebody highly informed and trained, but it can be hard to find to do them. manual labor because a lot of them become the architect if that makes sense so that's just kind of a weird position it's also not very much pay or hours so the theater problems like yeah you know i just didn't know if we could get any kind of additional you could i mean everything i'm hearing here was recommended by the artists consulted mexican plum was in the original list Anacotra orchids came from an arborist in the area, Jacob, really. There's, you know, redwoods came from an arborist. So you can't really go wrong. And it's okay, you know, the two Anacotra orchids were memorial trees for residents that passed away.

Okay, that has changed a little bit. There she goes.

Yeah. So they were recommended, apologies, I didn't realize they opened on that street, so okay. um yeah so the two unaccompanied orchids at memorial plaza were meant for commemorative trees for nancy brittner who served on council for a long time was mayor mayor fraternal at one point volunteered on other advisory bodies as well and then randy renter who served on our ordinance review committee at one point but he actually worked a really really long time on the wow group which is the leaders of wood creek maintenancing the front entrance for years and years and years.

Wow. Absolutely.

And the other reason why we recommended Memorial Plaza, aside from it already kind of being a memorial area, obviously there's a Veterans Memorial there, and then the name is Memorial Plaza, but we also lost a whole, like, corpse of trees, coughs or whatever, coughs of trees over there. There was kind of some miscommunication with the previous tree board chair, and she directed We Love Trees to take out a bunch of trees. And it was just, We Love Trees shouldn't have taken that direction. It never even went. It was a mistake on her part. She felt very bad about it afterwards, but we lost a ton of trees. And then these the people that live right there put it in that privacy fence, because all of a sudden, their whole backyard is . Yeah, so it was kind of like, well, you know, if we were to plant these two trees and kind of direct the people to that general area, the only thing with anaconda orchids is we don't want to put them in beds anywhere, because you've got to mow over all the little saplings and things that sprout.

Um, and that's like, oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, they found it pretty awesome.

Yeah. So do you know, like, was there a specific length in this little park where they were talking about? We went and sold with arborists for best place. Uh, I was going to try to recommend them to go kind of into that area where they lost all the trees, like over. closer to Ranch Road 12. So like you're staring at the entrance and you'd be able to see them on the right.

Absolutely. Okay. Well, if the arborist thinks that they're okay to be in this area.

I mean, Jacob McElroy, he's a municipal certified arborist, certified arborist, all those things, not all the things. He gave me the original list because I was like, if we to plant trees in these places what's the best sign of trees so you know and armors can argue so it's like you know you could get other opinions like he recommended the cedar all we love trees said yeah you know yeah we go for something smaller so we can always go for more opinions if you want there's nothing wrong with that is 13 years old it hasn't been watered by me for

two two and a half years three years yeah and it's it's fine um yeah i was just reading it says that it's negative to like rocky outcrop areas so that would be good it would be helpful with drought conditions yeah they only as far as they know they need watering from the first like years yeah

We have one we planted, a redwood we planted at Carview. They lost, well, they had two trees competing and they were both kind of failing. So we tried to transplant one. It did not survive the transplant. The soil over there was too rocky. It was too difficult to get out and then replant. So we ended up planting redwood instead and it's doing really well.

Yeah, that's great. Well, yeah. So let's do A first. With the cedar elm, what do we think? Island towards no?

Can you agree with that?

Yeah, that's what I want. I want that. When we go, when we go, when we go. When we, when I do, when we go.

I'll be right over. I'll be right over.

I mean, given what we've just seen out there, it would be nice to see out there. There's no rush. All right, guys. But we can, when we do, I really figure we can see that. We have like a million elm. We're all hot, but we can just go side of there. I don't want to go out of there. so we would like the table a for now right and then it sounded like everyone approved yeah okay so so table and approved can we get a motion to uh we plant uh tube and cultural organs at memorial concert and where we work with the armorists from the best location size etc a second All right. Next we have considerations for agenda items for our next regular meeting. And so we've already talked about dog park and naming the little park, blood park. That's going to stick in my head. Do we have any other considerations that we'd like to include for next month's agenda? I guess, you know, in terms of how we're going to do this, you know, figure out if we're going to do this page by page together or, you know. Yeah, I think ideally, so the next announcement that we're going to do is talking about the date. It would be nice if we could do the date between now and that next meeting. Does that work?

Yeah.

September 2nd will be the first Wednesday in September. Okay, so you prefer weekdays. I know that your work schedule Well, school starts on the 24th, but I've got lots of stuff that's happening between there and then. So I've been thinking about before then, but I'm thinking. It makes a big work like during the day or weekdays, what do you say?

Morning or?

Yeah, it's gotta be morning. The way that my work is panning out, I'm working individual products that are general relevance. Okay, so weekdays are out. But for mornings on the weekdays. What about Wednesday the 19th? Is that open for any day? That works for me. Because the next week I may still run on there every day for just that first week. So I can't do it that way. So 19th? 19th, Blackwell Acre. Yeah. When you're here. Yeah, that sounds great.

Yeah.

All right. So Wednesday, August 19th at 8.30. I would imagine that that will probably only take an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Yeah, an hour and a half. And I would imagine that since there isn't, like, don't have, if we just don't get to every single one, we could resketch, you know, but at least that would be a beginning, right? Yeah, maybe we could go to some of the ones that are, yeah. Okay, that's great. Okay. So then for the next regular meeting, we can have another workshop for parks master plan. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Anything else that we did not include? If not, then do we have a motion to adjourn?

I thought you were going back to consideration. So the only other leftover business from the other trees and parks board is we just need a report to go back to council on painting the water tank. Oh, I did talk about this. It's not an area we want to paint. i don't know the history the overall history is that essentially uh an arts committee recommended it it did not have a lot of support from council council said hey trees and parks what do y'all think i don't remember what they said but they i guess said do something clean it council didn't like that i don't know so we got to the trees and parks twice somehow and the same time trees and parks was like we're not even going to talk about this again because we already gave you our input, but that was a different board. And there's still like no report to give to council. So it's like ending business. And since y'all are a new board, I thought, you know, we, I, we debated in house with staff on any of this, right. And we just let it die because there wasn't, you know, there it's just fizzling. and then um but i thought that would be kind of an injustice to y'all given that y'all are the new board and you will be sitting in this position for a while and that we might want to weigh in on that one way or the other so if it's okay with y'all it would come up on your next agenda if y'all are like let's pick no we can't let this block a tree

We're a community city. The Tree City USA. Yeah. Is there, in those discussions, was there talk about what they were going to paint it?

Yes and no. I think what happened, okay, so I think the tree board ended up recommending fencing around it. With the flats? Yeah. And County was like, no. Go back to the drawing board. It's just going to look like a trash can. We cannot discuss this too much in this meeting. I just want to stress, with everything, it's okay to say no. It's okay to say, well, actually, we recommend something different. You know what I mean? Generally, because somebody is sent to you, doesn't mean you have to approve. Actually, it's really important that you don't just rubber stamp things, right? Especially when money needs it. But yeah, don't be afraid of coming with fresh ideas and, you know.

I think that was fine, that I just wrote something. That's why you're on the show.

I can't promise that they're good.

All right. All right. So now, Do we have a motion to adjourn? I'm ready. Oh, all right. You're out of time. You're out of time. You're out of time. You're out of time. You're out of time.

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You're out of time. You're out of time. You're out of time.