Ann Arbor Environmental Commission Meeting 5/26/2022

001welcome to the may 26 2020 electronic media 2022 electronic meeting of the environmental commission this meeting is in accordance with executive orders from the governor to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the covet-19 virus we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be by a telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call 877-853-52 or 888-788-0099 which are both toll-free numbers and enter meeting id number nine one five eight three four three nine one seven six this information is also available on the published agenda in the public notices section of the city's website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 htt channel 99 and online at www.a2gov.org slash watch ctn

002all one word all right um thank you everybody um [Music] i call this meeting to order um at 702 um galen do you want to read the land heritage statement and then go with the world world call sorry okay um the land here the statement i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinaabe including otawa ojibwe and bodhi wadmi and wyandot peoples i've heard i further acknowledged that our city stands like almost all property in the united states unless obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous peoples the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807 knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this

003has can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals and that is the land heritage statement thank you again okay i'm letting kathy griswald in and edie is saying she just sent me an email and i'ma let her in just one second please oh sure okay she says she's having trouble signing in to the meeting okay i'm sending her this link but you want me to move uh move ahead or wait a second um let's see uh why don't we wait um just a minute yeah i just sent her the link again okay um okay um i sent a link twice okay well why don't we go ahead um we'll see when she joins us okay uh i'm ready for roll call i just let

004her in okay great all right roll call uh commissioner needham commissioner needham councilmember dish here commissioner graham here councilmember griswold here commissioner kylie ward commissioner callaward um chairperson brown uh president ann arbor vice chairperson mitchell president right uh commissioner of vandenberg here commissioner oriole here in ann arbor okay uh commissioner gibb randall hearing ann arbor commissioner martin commissioner martian all right commissioner gruber here in ann arbor commissioner commissioner need rich all right we have a quorum okay great thank you uh thank you galen so the next item water agenda is election of 2022 officers other two elected positions chair and vice chair i'm currently held by myself and leader so um are there any nominations for um election of chair for 2022 oh i don't want to nominate myself i nominate steve brown okay um

005is there a second second okay segmented by chris vandenbrock um uh let's see um now are there any other nominations for chair okay i hear in cnn so um um so let's have a vote um all who agree that stephen brown should be the chair for 2022 raise your hand or say aye hi hi okay any uh nays uh any abstentions nope okay um so so any all those who approve rita mitchell uh as continuing as the vice chair for 2022 raise your hand or say aye hi okay any opposed no any abstentions no i hear in cnn so um so they both pass unanimously okay thank you everybody um uh next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda um let's see um are there any is there a uh a motion

006to approve the agenda i don't know and uh is it seconded i would like to make one small change on the formal agenda uh we had an item that was a new business reading of sustainability millage i think that we're not prepared for that so i would like to formally delete that from our discussion yeah i uh thanks for you i uh uh let's see is there uh so there's there's been an amendment to delete that item on the agenda uh are there any more um suggested amendments yeah i don't hear or see any so um is the uh let's see do i have a second to do i have a do i have a second to approve of the agenda as amended okay um shannon um seconds it so all who approve of the

007amended agenda please raise your hand or say aye hi any nays i don't hear any no abstentions so the agenda is approved as amended striking the uh um under the new business category reading of sustainability knowledge so let's move on the next item is the approval of the minutes um the minutes from our um april meeting are there any um let's see i have a suggested change um that is just at the very end it says that the next meeting is going to be june 26th but it's um or june 23rd i believe that it's may it's today may 26th so the april minutes should be changed to reflect that um are there any other suggestions to amend the uh the drafted minutes yeah here in cnn um so kaelin would you make those changes

008to the minutes and then submit them so um all who approve of the minutes as amended please raise your hand or say aye any nays any extensions um i can't see none so will they approve the minutes as amended or approved um so the next item on the agenda is public commentary this is the first of two comment public comment periods um during our regularly scheduled meetings this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-009 and enter meeting id 915-8343-9176 this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press

009star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there can be a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established so is there anybody on the line yet kayla there's no one currently on the line okay well we'll wait uh we'll wait 30 seconds um um okay lynn is there anybody on the line as yet there's no one on the line okay then so this ends the first public commentary period there will be another at the end of this meeting um so the next item on

010the agenda is special presentations the first one who is up is um is the city forester uh will give us a presentation on the urban tree canopy and how the city manages the trees under its responsibility hi everyone hi yeah let's see let's get you um let's see tiffany let's get you uh uh you can manage the presentation yourself yup i'll pull that up i may pause periodically during my presentation i've been home yesterday and today i have the flu that i got from my children um but i didn't want to push this off for a third time so i think i should be able to get through and answer your questions would you prefer us to ask questions as you go along or wait till the end either is fine if you wanna if

011someone can just interrupt me because i'm gonna have my presentation up galen if you just let me know if someone raises their hand maybe it'd be better to ask while the stuff is on the screen okay we'll do get mine now sometimes when this presents and let me know if you're seeing like the next screen that comes and i'll try to rework it yep this looks good for my phone here okay okay so for those of you who haven't met me um i'm tiffany jackabazzi the urban forestry and natural resources planning coordinator i'm an isa certified arborist and tree risk assessment qualified arborist through isa i've been around this city a little over three years now you probably already remember my predecessor carrie gray um so it's been a fun ride since i've been here

012three years ago and i'm here to talk to you today about um just give you an update on our urban forest since now is the time that we're really looking at comparing our data from our 2020 inventory compared to our 2009 inventory as well as updating our urban forest management plan i want to first start out by saying that this was not all created by me this was not created in a bubble we have some great consultants working with us on this project um the main one being jv resource group they're the ones that helped are helping lead this project and pull a lot of data together and doing a lot of research on similar communities of size and scope to ann arbor um smith group is leading our engagement our all of our engagement

013activities with this project and fair force consulting uh we have engaged with them to make sure that everything we do is through a lens of equity and inclusion and making sure that we are reaching as many people as possible and removing as many barriers as possible through this whole process and then urban dashes um we're working with them on creating a urban wood use program that's going to be piloted here in the city of ann arbor um that might actually end up being a hub so not only ann arbor wood coming in but potentially washington county um some other things so we are working with urban ashes throughout this whole process on potentially redirecting our wood waste from the waste stream which is exciting so we'll start out by taking a look at our at

014our 2020 versailles 2009 inventory and i sent this to you guys ahead of time um i won't read all these numbers out loud but um our all our benefits are increasing overall if you add them all together all the benefit increase and and everything we're about 34 and a half percent um higher value than what we were back in um our replacement value if we had to replace our urban forest and i put an asterisk on this if we had to replace the publicly owned portion of the urban forest so the street trees and the park trees would be about 92 million dollars if we had to replace that so it's good news we're seeing increases and we're looking at what we can do on the back end to see greater increases next time my

015thing is locked up apparently okay so if we take a look at a comparison side by side of our street trees park trees stumps and bacon sites we see a great reduction in vacant planting sites since 2009 that kind of makes sense because we've been going through and planting a thousand trees a year um we have so fewer more trees fewer bacon planting sites um which is what we would expect to see we would expect to see an increase do i raise yeah um is the number of planting sites a static number can that increase like that number stayed we you mean from like the first inventory have we added like vacant planting sites yeah i mean so it's i mean you could potentially say there's a lot of open park land that could accept

016more trees as an example so i'm just trying to understand um if we're talking about the same denominator number of tree planting places with the vacant planting sites those are really strictly for street trees because it's hard to go into the parks and say okay well there's room for trees here when i might not know the use they might need that space open for whatever recreation purposes so we don't update like vacant planting sites in parks we it's strictly along the streets so the thousand trees a year that's what's impacting the bacon planting sites okay and that couldn't increase amongst very well could could um planting sites increase along the streets yeah we we had them um i wouldn't say every day but when we're out there during our planting cycles we do add significant

017number probably 100 200 sites every time we plant because we go into an area and if even if there's not a vacant planting site in our inventory we have our field arborist who's coordinating everything on the ground he goes through and adds sites where there is room for trees and field verifies great that's exactly my question thank you okay and we also saw a change in the makeup of our size classes which is good we had a predominantly heavy medium-sized class urban forest in 2009 we saw an increase in our large diameter trees as well as our small diameters so that's good we're seeing um trees in the medium size move into the large and we're seeing a greater influx of small that will eventually hopefully move into the medium so we want to see

018uh we wanted to see that we wanted to see an increase in the other two and it makes sense that there's a decrease in the medium as they as they move up into that large size class so take a look at the top 10 kinds of trees predominantly unsurprisingly our main um top specie is maple um that includes norway sugar silver red we saw but we saw a decrease uh 12 decrease in maples and happily we saw a 33 percent increase in oaks being planted um we reduced the number of crab apples that we're planting sycamore so london plain and sycamore we saw a 27 increase in that we saw a great increase in our elms um and then we saw a decrease in the pear um that would be the calorie pair now while

019we aren't planting any of those we're start we're just we're starting to see them leave the urban forest we don't plant any nor do we allow any to be planted in the right of way so that you'll continue to see that go down as they're removed now to break that down into the species so norway maple is still our um top species in our urban forest we saw a reduction by 18 sugar maple was down by 27. um we saw like i said an increase in the london planes in our oaks red specifically we saw a good increase in that um so these were our top ten four oaks or excuse me four maples make up that large percentage of maple in our in our urban forest so we continue to um very limitedly plant

020maple um and then the ones that we do are um really by resident a strong resident request yes question i'm your muted yeah tiffany it's steve um first of all i'm surprised that there are so many elms in the list here because of dutch elm disease which species of elms are you planting um we have uh princeton and we have um i'm drawing a blank but we would do the the dutch home resistant varieties um is what we're planting and are those native trees or yeah of yeah they're of they're a mix and i don't know exactly what they're mix of but yeah they're they're a variety of native but they're they're a variety of american and they're spliced with something else i can't remember what but they are resistant to dutch elm disease thank

021you great and um i had one other comment i think but um my understanding is that the state or the state uh classifies norway maple as the moon invasive yes invasive continuing to plant norways or really no no we don't plant any they're on our list that people can't plant them you can't plant cultivars like and stuff no okay great thank you and then we're looking at the overall condition of our urban forest we want to see the overall condition increase and we did see that um trees are slow growing so we wouldn't expect to see like a huge ginormous jump in the overall condition um but we did see an increase and we're very happy about that and then the overall tree condition of our population is fair and i just wanted to put

022out there the the definition so when that we sent out the arborists from davie resource group to go out and do our inventory fair condition class means it has minor structural problems or mechanical damage so there's some storm damage in the tree or significant damage from non-fatal disfiguring diseases so think of tar spot on maple where it's not exactly great to look at or um the nipple gall on hackberry again it's not great to look at but it doesn't hinder the tree and what it needs to do really um minor crown imbalances or thin ground um maybe some a little bit of stunted growth compared to some trees nearby or trees that have been topped so think of some of the trees that have potentially had some pruning done to them that are somewhat close

023to utility lines but they show reasonable vitality and no obvious science decay yes could you just explain the numeric score where the trees for the two yep so they took the whole condition class and date this is a um in part of the report that davey sent and they're updating that and i plan on forwarding it to you guys as well as um elizabeth dean fund committee and the natural features committee um once they get it to me they're updating it uh but that's from the summer report from the 2020 inventory what they did is they took all of the average score from the first inventory so the tree health score and then they they took the average score of the 2020 inventory and just divided it by the number of trees and then this

024is what you've got so the average score the mean has gone up i'm not a i'm not a statistician i'm sorry if i'm not explaining that well no that's okay but but it's just across all species for one thing right it's across all species all size classes everything okay and so the condition um for each tree each tree has its own numeric score based on the definition of the condition good fair poor yes yes okay thank you yes so anyway fair condition is trees that are doing average they're doing all right they're holding their own they're not in poor condition um so uh most urban forests most trees are in fair condition so ann arbor's is not unique that the majority of the trees are in fair condition the majority of the trees in grand

025rapids and lansing in all the other cities average condition the one that has the most trees in it is always always fair condition a lot it's really hard to find an excellent excellent condition tree out there so take a look at excuse me the breakdown of the trees again i showed this earlier but um 52 percent of our trees are in that fair condition meaning minor structural defects um decent canopy 31 are in the good condition uh and then we had uh trees in very good um and then the we had nine percent in poor one percent in both critical and dead uh so uh we had about 85 86 of our trees um in fair condition or above which is good um the priority this just breaks down um what we are maintenance categories

026every tree that is in our inventory is assigned a maintenance category um the majority of them are in large tree routine pruning which makes sense um we're working our way through our routine pruning cycle and then the next thing would be the training prune which again makes sense because we plant a thousand trees a year all of those trees you know get put in as a will need routine pruning and we don't do that for the first three to four years of its life unless there's obvious crossing branches we do take care of those right away go ahead oh yeah tiffany it's steve again um so i noticed that under your column part trees it's the mode areas so does this mean that the the area around the tree completely around the tree is mode

027or and what about the uh trees that are not in the mode areas how are those how do those enter in here they don't um the the trees that are large and kind of sit forward a little bit and have some lying around part of it they're probably they're included in the inventory but any of the trees in the native natural areas we couldn't inventory those um they're just part of our natural area they aren't included in this okay you um do you um uh do you have an estimate of the total tree canopy area in the city or the zero is your office to do that or not yet no um i have uh sat with the natural features committee and chris graham can and rita probably speak to this more than me but

028we did have the c students that are pulling that uh data together on doing the updating our natural features layer to include turf grass and native forest fragment canopy cover and stuff like that right and you went when do you expect to have that publicly available than information rita or chris do you know has rit folks gotten that data yet there's supposed to be a data transfer happening between u of m and us and i don't know that that's taking place i don't know it's taking place either but it's imminent it will take some time for them to incorporate it we're hoping they incorporate it not only in your databases but into the natural features layers on the website okay all right thanks thanks tiffany oh one more thing sorry um there was a question

029uh that was sent to me about a breakdown of contracted versus versus in-house work so i thought i'd give you a little snapshot into our urban forestry program here so on staff we have excuse me 10 sometimes 11 folks there's myself one urban forestry specialist we sometimes have one intern working under myself on projects and then we have eight full-time employees and one supervisor and they're the ones that handle all of the in-house maintenance the actual physical maintenance of the trees in our urban forest including myself and the full-time staff we have six isa certified arborists uh two track so tree risk assessment qualified arborists and one oakwell qualified arborist we handle and house all of the reactive pruning storm damage the president calls in and says something broke off in the crown there's a

030hanger that kind of stuff we handle all of that we handle all the removals and we do all of the stump grinding on a limited basis there's some tree planting that takes place in house and any cabling bracing we don't do a lot of it but what we do have done we do it ourselves contracted forestry i manage all of those excuse me in-house all of those contracts for the contracted work that we have done that includes our routine pruning cycle that contractor is um davie tree care company by david tree experts we also have our annual tree planting that's right now by margolis and then any tree fertilization we don't do a lot of that either we uh reserve that for a very large what might consider heritage trees um we do contract that

031out and that generally goes to guardian tree experts they're local here to ann arbor sorry i tried to mute i couldn't find my new button so how do we use this information we prioritize removals prioritize pruning selection of planting sites and then diversification of tree species we take a look at what we have too much of and try not to plant it we take a look at what we don't have enough of and try to plant it um and then when we get into an um a community a neighborhood we look at what's growing nearby and try to diversify yes uh kathy griswold um i'm wondering if there are branches that are covering a stop sign or blocking visibility is that something that your staff uh monitors when they're out doing pruning or is that

032something that needs to be reported through say a to fix it or how would we report that condition yeah if you find something it's best to report it um you know we we have two crews so we have say we have eight people you know nine with our maintenance supervisor maintenance sufficer is not out generally doing that work he's going and responding to service requests if you see something please um submit a ticket because there's no guarantee that we'll drive past where an issue is so we also rely on folks either physically calling in or submitting that ticket oh okay when you say a ticket is that through eight you fix it yeah oh okay great thank you very much and is there any other staff within the city that monitors for say trees that

033are blocking signage i'm sure i get calls from our traffic engineer folks our traffic engineering team yeah they reach out each year and say oh you know tiffany this tree is starting to encroach on this intersection at this stoplight could we get it added to the list here to be taken care of oh okay great so growing the urban forest by the numbers um i took a look at this year's tree plantings and um every year um the program that i manage the the annual street tree planting we target hitting 50 we normally hit 60 or more however lately we've been finding a problematic to find native trees this spring we hit 48.2 percent native this is um basically coming down to what our our nurseries are able to find the supply and we've i've

034talked to ann arbor or not hannah um novi grand rapids and lansing and they're all facing the same things um they're having trouble finding certain certain species so um we've been working with um missy's team um to talk about potentially trying to start up a nursery here that the city would own and that we could control what we put in the ground and we're in the very early stages of that but um we do try to target that our resident street tree planting program is 100 native that's bare root trees um that that residents can sign up to plant in front of their home they do the planting themselves we assist elizabeth dean fund um this year was 71 percent native and the 10 000 trees initiative i reached out to sean um who manages

035that program and they're at 73 native so far other questions i see hands up um you're you're muted yeah um it's steve brown again um there's there's a public perception that comes up periodically that um a lot of the newer trees that are planted you know in the uh adjacent to the streets um died within the first year so i was wondering if you might how you monitor um you know survival uh one year out five years out things like that and what you uh and how residents can minimize uh you know the loss of the recently planted trees yeah so the first year a tree is under um warranty so that first year if the tree dies the contractor has to come out and replace it so after that at that point we have

036a hundred percent like 100 of the trees are alive because they've come and replaced any that have died um i checked two years ago and uh we had ninety two percent of them were alive i think eight percent of the trees had died in the course of that first year so eight percent of them were replaced after that we honestly haven't been able to track we haven't been able to keep up because we plant so many each year um forestry staff used to be a lot more and you know when all the budget cuts came back in the day you know the levels were never restored and that is not unique to forestry you know the the city staff level is not where it traditionally was and so we haven't been able to to adequately

037get back out there and care for those trees and that is further in the presentation too about some of the challenges that we're facing and what we are trying to do to try to combat some of that yes thanks tiffany for this presentation um i'm wondering if there could i think that um you know when something is planted in front of my house in the right-of-way i tend to think of it oh that's the city's responsibility but i'm wondering if there's a way um to kind of invite the homeowner to share in some of the care by just saying like a little a little door handle thing that goes over say you have a new street tree that like you're not obligated to but would you consider watering it if it you know something just

038to kind of like invite people that they're not responsible for it necessarily but just to kind of let them know hey we could use some help here that maybe there's a way that we could reduce those numbers of survivability of of them dying off um if there could just be something simple not again not like getting everybody's email and training and all that kind of business but just something that's like a simple standard thing that you kind of leave off just to let people know that you are short staffed and that it's something that would be great if people could step in and support things yeah right now we um we have a door hanger um i'm thinking of turning it into a mailer this year that just says you know hey there's a new

039street tree here this is how much water supplemental watering if it gets real hot and dry you know we do have that right now and we and you can tell i mean the trees that survive they're the ones that are adjacent to somebody who's watering it um and so we're looking at ways to um engage with residents we've talked about you know putting out weekly or bi-weekly facebook bumps hey you got a new tree planted next to your house this recently you know if you could go out and give it a drink of water that'd be great you know things like that like but yeah any ideas on it on the engagement and um getting residents more involved that would be great because right now you know if we plant a thousand feet a year

040in the contractor waters the first thousand that first year that's 2000 trees that need to be watered for two additional years you know it's there's we don't have the capacity to go out and water that and do that and um so yeah okay just for questions and kathy i just want to reinforce what shannon said and i i think this is an important discussion because while the trees are replaced if they die within a year uh this is going to sound crazy but people become emotionally attached to their trees and when they die they're they're upset about it and so the public perception is that many more than eight percent of the trees die so i don't know what you can do about that tiffany but it's just and you probably experienced it already yeah

041we get folks reaching out and i encourage them to reach out to me and um usually the ones that reach out are the ones you know that that they're like yeah i'll water this time you know i water i didn't realize you know and and then they and they do um but yeah i'm always open to suggestion on on ideas um and that's it's one of the topics up for discussion with our steering committee and um our public engagement all it's one of the questions we're asking folks you know like what are some ideas on this because we're hoping to get some um goals and recommendations that come out of this plan to implement um moving forward oh okay great thanks yeah another question i see a number of hands uh it's chris graham tiffany

042i'll speak i you'll probably already have noticed in the proposed changes to chapter 40 we added language that is extremely explicit that residents the adjacent property owner is responsible for care of the street lawn and what happens there i hate to use the word street lawn they're responsible for the care of what happens on the planted part of the right-of-way it's not just snow it's watering trees it's collecting leaves it's keeping the gutters clean it's keeping the sidewalks clean it's not putting stuff in the street when you mow the lawn or blow the leaves [Music] it's my guess and the reason that we put that language in there is that the great majority people have no idea they're responsible for what happens on what they consider to be public property and so i think a

043serious education program may be associated with communicating a new version of chapter 40 will help a lot um case in point neighbor across the street um all of a sudden a tree appeared in her front yard and she wrote me an email and said what's this tree and uh i said well i i'm well aware of the city is planting trees in every available space and you got one and it's on the right way and and it's hoped that you'll take care of it and like it well she said uh it's a surprise to me and so is where the right-of-way is a surprise to her it's on my street anyway we don't have sidewalks and sidewalk buffer strips most places do so it's a little less clear but certainly where there are sidewalk buffer

044strips and sidewalks trees on the sidewalk buffer strip are considered public property they're taken care of by the city it's their problem not mine and i think that's the majority opinion in the city thank you i show one hand up i can't see faces it just tells me one person has a hand up that's me um yeah thanks um i just wondered if you could give an explanation for the of native species for the bare root tree planting oh it's because it's very limited we only get about one to seven participants of this program and so we only order a very small amount of bare root trees um and so i get two small varieties two medium varieties and two large canopy varieties so that no matter who signs up i'll have a couple of

045trees for them to select from and so i select trees because i only order uh six species i just order um native so no matter what they choose they're getting native it's a small program but the the residents i think i've had one person this would be her this fall will be her third time participating so it's popular amongst a very small niche okay so we talked about some of these already um but some of the challenges of our run floors today um one that i think is just going to carry through indefinitely is the difficult growing conditions the urban environment is very hard for to grow a tree um limited growing space above and below multiple times a year i'm writing appraisal assessments on our trees for insurance because they've been hit by cars

046things like that species scarcity a lot of municipalities like i said are having trouble finding certain species um conifers hickories especially can't find hickory to save my life so um and then climate change uh we're changing conditions we're having to look at species migration what maybe we should look for um plant moving forward to adapt how we foresee our conditions changing development's a huge one removal of our urban free canopy it's a challenge to make that up in our public space when you have vast swaths of trees come down on the private side during development um it's i think it's unrealistic to expect we're gonna be able to make that canopy up in the public space um the right always we only have so many of those parks parks are great spots for planting trees

047but we have to remember that they're multi-use meaning there are some areas you don't want trees um just for recreation purposes so it's not like you can see this big open area in a park and think okay we'll just go plant and forest that um that might not be the traditional use of that park so and then invasive species um really it's the we we always we're trying to watch to see what's coming um myself and some of the other isa certified arborists were in webinars every month um on asian longhorn beetles spotted lanternfly like all these things that we see has potential to get here we're really watching spotter lanternfly right now it was recently seen in ohio that's not good i mean they border us we anticipate that it could come it's going

048to affect a number of our hardwood species if it does get here so we're constantly on the lookout our staff are in our trees all the time um daily every day they're up in our trees and they're driving around and they know excuse me what to look for if they see something out of the ordinary they know to report it to their supervisor who then can report it to me we no longer offer protections on um invasive species so when someone wants to remove a calorie pair we are not charging the canopy loss feed if they want to remove that pair while we don't have the budget to go out and remove all of the invasives we don't want to put any kind of barrier to residents removing invasives um so we're we're cognizant of

049that um we're very careful in the non-native trees that we do plant that they have a strong um history so that we don't uh plant and have another calorie pair um that's always the concern when planting non-native plants is that you know back in the day they didn't know that that was invasive and it was a tree that did well it was a tree you know that that flowered it was popular and now we're having um like pear deserts up along our interstates you know in the spring you can see them they're flowers they're just growing in everywhere so that's that's a real concern and we do watch for that and then obviously insufficient or insufficient resources for proper post planting care as we discussed we're really challenged in providing that just the capacity we

050don't have the equipment to be able to do it the watering trucks necessary to be able to do it and then we also recognize that that could place a burden on the adjacent homeowner to tell them that well you're solely responsible so we're we're getting um we have an rfp out right now uh to hopefully try to get a watering contractor and we're trying to see if maybe that can't help um get these trees to help them get established in this tough environment and give them that critical care they need within that first few years i see there's a hand up again i've got two questions one um could you provide us the information that's on the door hanger that you use for the the things that would be so good to see um and

051the other one in terms of a challenge um i hate to bring this up but um when we have power outages and he comes back and um removes a lot of wood uh in living trees and i just wonder if there's a way that that has there been an assessment of the street trees following trimming following we haven't done any assessment of any trees following outages um quite frankly we're we get um dte sends us spreadsheets and they come to myself in our parks areas because you know they go power lines go through parks and natural areas so myself scott spooner and becky hand with a nap and they send us a list and other than the removals where i have authority to say yes or no on removals i there's nothing i can do

052um they're just they're gonna prune the trees so uh we haven't done any kind of study on whether those trees have since died um but they're certainly contributing you know to the fair and poor ratings of our urban forest for sure um i'm open to ideas i just wonder yeah this well i don't know about fixing it but just understanding it maybe there's an intern who could dovetail the the inventory with the spreadsheets to see how many you know and what species or whatever you know the age of the tree that kind of thing might be useful just for information and then figure out what to do it's a good idea another hand someone want to unmute yeah um two things one is i'm wondering if you're starting to see oak wilt in ann arbor

053or not i've seen it in some other places not that far from here and so i'm just wondering what you all are seeing we haven't seen any in ann arbor yet i haven't heard from the dnr that there's any here i do know that it is on our borders i know that it's close um any time the only calls i've gotten were from residents that were trees on private and i can't go look at trees in private so what i do is i give them kevin sayer's contact information and he reaches out um to them and i'm always i always make sure that they cc me on it and the dnr sends somebody out to take a look um but so far we haven't had a positive hit within the city but we do know

054it's coming and which is why um when i got on one of the first things i did was get one of our guys one of our isa certified arborists qualified through the state great um and so there he's responded to a couple of different um things but it hasn't been oakville okay that's i'm really glad that you all are on top of that because it's pretty devastating um the other thing is just an anecdotal thing i noticed which is um uh going down gettys i'm noticing a big area of tree lilac that seems to be just starting to go nuxoid in some of the forest the adjacent kind of hillside forest going down gettys where i probably saw i don't know 25 of them all blooming clearly naturalizing in the woods there so um i

055know that you all are so limited about what trees actually work under power lines and all those kinds of things but i just wanted to note that um that it may be one to watch in terms of it's starting to spread um on its own have you heard other than that have you heard anything about tree lilac because i haven't heard anything i haven't heard anything i just saw it i mean i'm happy to point out to you at another time where i saw it yeah please do if you might send me a google map and circle yep i'm happy to do that thanks it's down there dave shipman's house at the bottom of getty's near arlington yep and um in june i i guess maybe it's a little early but no yeah july is

056usually when i like late june early july it's usually when um calm evening or night the smell down through there is absolutely fabulous i hope you're not i hope you don't have tree lilac on your wacket list i it's a wonderful plant even though it's japanese not suitable for a street tree yep edie you have your hand up yeah thank you um uh two quick questions for you tiffany uh the first is since the city has you know such a kind of exemplary and um advanced urban forest program um i'm just wondering is do you collaborate or have you considered opportunities to potentially collaborate with other communities in the surrounding area to kind of you know share some of these best practices and and how it's been successful and just kind of you know build

057that resilience in surrounding communities yeah um i have an open email thread with the city of ann arbor uh there see a grand rapids um city of lansing city of novi and then um i think it was washed on summer they just got a new uh county forester and her name is summer roberts but anyway she's also included in on it and we're constantly what species are you planting what are you finding hard to find what are you trying um things like that uh i asked about um watering trees and ann arbor is not alone in this struggle and uh grand rapids lansing and novi all said no you're writing a contract for a watering contractor let us know how it goes send us the language we you know if it works for you we're

058going to try it because they're running into the exact same problem they're planting the trees but there isn't the infrastructure or resources in place to then maintain those trees for the three years watering that they really should get and so we really have an open collaborative process with other communities this is what we're doing what are you trying um and we do that i also go and speak at michigan state university's urban forestry class um to talk about urban forestry and urban forestry programs and what we're doing here in ann arbor i also this year did that for eastern michigan university um to talk about programs here in ann arbor and then we're working with urban ashes like i said um about a pilot program here in ann arbor for urban wood reuse and trying

059to build like a regional potential hub to pull wood from the waste stream and the cities of ann arbor um there are a few cities outside of michigan who heard about what's going on and have reached out to urban ashes and have gotten on a waitlist to potentially get a program mimic after what's going on in ann arbor that's awesome thank you i'm glad to hear all of that and then my second question is um does the city currently or intend to use the um american forest tree equities score in any of its prioritization and planning on street tree plantings you know kind of the neighborhood by neighborhoods or does that factor in to your decision making at all at this time with our huge street tree plantings um we go into huge areas and

060yeah we do take a look at where trees are needed we really are building that the program kind of program you're talking about with the elizabeth dean fund we have gone and um my intern is actually leading this charge jamie she has worked with osi so missy's team and it's been using um the true equity score and coming up with um planting packets so neighborhoods that um it's got the equity score and it's got like canopy scores it's got all these different things and really rising to the top the areas that truly um need the trees the most and then the dean fund is prioritizing those and they're going to go in and plant entire neighborhoods and we're actually going to run a pilot on that i think this fall is the is the plan

061so um it really is overhauling maybe not just a street but like a neighborhood that's fantastic thank you so much okay so i was asked about educational opportunities for residents as well as maintenance staff and contractors within our city that does work that comes near any of our trees each resident who receives the tree does get a door hanger and i'm looking to send that out as a mailer instead like an informational mailer rita i have a note i'm gonna get that sent off to if not galen and then he can share it with you all um to see what we give away but and then we also place trunk guards on each of our trees and we've gone back to our small trees and put trunk guards on for like the last eight or

062ten years worth of plantings um so we've gone in and we've done that and i have to say the elizabeth dean fund has funded a lot of that um a lot of the tree guards and it's been a lifesaver we're seeing a lot of reduction and mortality loss um to the string trimmers we're seeing a lot of that um and then our park staff um our parks maintenance staff when they're first hired on they're instructed to stay away from the trees um especially with the wheat trimmers and mowers anytime a park steward or someone sees that there's an issue and it gets brought to my attention it always gets brought to the park maintenance supervisor's attention and they re-educate their staff and make sure that they understand the importance and stay away from the city's

063trees give 365 um with some of their uh staff um we do tree id young tree training pruning and fourth forest health education as requested so when they get a bunch of new staff on sometimes they'll reach out and they'll ask us to provide just some basic training for some of their folks and then every year minus that big covid year there we do our citizen pruner training um citizen pruner is a volunteer program that works with resident volunteers uh who sign up to go through a training with myself and some of our forestry staff on pruning young trees we provide all the equipment all the training all the safety gear they they don't donate their time and they come and sign up for this program um we have training days and then we have

064work days and they come out and they hone the skills that they learned on pruning small trees and the city gets the benefit of one not only like interacting with our residents and giving them an idea of what we do but two um our trees our young trees are getting pruned and it's a great you know networking event um we've had people from the very beginning who've donated their time every year for the past 12 years so program is i'm hugely popular i get people on the waitlist you know that are that sign up every year i it's it's great and then our mowing maintenance contractors i talked to the public works supervisor um he said that there really hasn't been much of an issue but they do tell them to stay away from our

065trees but again since we put those trunk guards on our smaller trees we really haven't seen much of an issue we haven't had apparently reports of any issue within the last few years and none that have been brought to my attention yes it's your hand hi this is such a great presentation i really want to thank you for it um i have a constituent who is quite vigilant about the weed whacking issue and who has actually found or at least last season when it was green again so not yet this year i haven't heard from her but she has definitely seen damage in city parks from weed whackers so the way to do it is is how exactly does it get brought to your attention what's the most way for her to address that she

066can either submit a c like a c click fix thing right or you can pass for my contact info and what i would do is get a right to scott spooner um he's the maintenance supervisor um deputy manager under parks but you can always pass my info on if it's not something that i personally i i can't almost like contract out to parks i don't really have any i don't know authority maybe it's right word over part trees strictly street trees i go and assist parks as they need um so i would get that information to them so that they could address their maintenance crews and make sure that they are maintaining appropriate distances from the trees so is that better coming from you or is it something that it would be just as effective

067for her to go straight to scott spooner with she could do either okay go straight to scott if she wanted to to cut out like a middleman type thing but i also bug scott and sometimes you know his office is like right outside of mine and so i always say hey did you reach out to that person i forwarded on to you and so good no all right there's always that aspect scott's really good at getting back to people but i really appreciate that thank you yeah of course so if anyone does see anything concerns um i can't get out and look at all of our 50 some thousand trees you know almost 60 000 trees so if someone's seeing something absolutely get it to my attention and and i can get someone out to

068look at it and try to stop whatever's happening i'm going to try to fly through some of these um this is just comparing our what we've done in the last eight years since our last urban forest management plan i'm sorry i can't see your faces is there someone else with a hand up that had a question no i don't see one company yeah you can pretty much skip over i'm sorry i failed to lower my hand yeah pretty much skip ask over these things they're all they're in the public record and uh yeah they are it's just kind of what we've done in the last you know eight years i don't want to take up all your guys's time um so here's the second to last slide this is again the planning process we're here

069what do we want we're reaching out to people um i'm meeting with you all i've um we've had our steering committee meetings we have our focus group meetings we had our first community-wide engagement meeting um we're taking in information having folks look at our past objectives recommendations what's still a priority what's a new priority that's maybe bubbling up to the top um that kind of thing um and we'll work our way through we anticipate getting a final um like we'll get a draft here this fall and we'll send the draft out in bulk like to you guys to everybody to comment on we're gonna go and have public meetings and say this is what we heard this is what we've done did we get it right did we miss anything give folks a chance to

070respond back to the draft plan and then in about march of 2023 we should have a finalized plan to take to city council for adoption just a couple things first i wanted to um remind you all if you haven't um there was a survey sent out to your group um it was also sent to the natural features committee as a subcommittee of the environmental commission we wanted to hear their thoughts as well um that if you could just fill that out and give us your thoughts we would really appreciate it um i would also appreciate it if you had any additional comments that you couldn't put in that survey feel free to forward them on to me they're all being captured um for our consultants to make sure that that we're we're taking in all

071of the comments and really seeing what rises to the top and second i wanted to thank you for your time and interest in our urban forest and what we're doing with the urban forestry program and our urban forest management plan update so if there are any other questions i'd be happy to take them now and thank you so much i will stop sharing unless anyone needs my contact info still well thank you very much tiffany you know you've been a you've been a real soldier here talking to us today um i just had one comment but i don't expect an extended response to it that is that i don't you have a good web page the city's forced forced web webpage is pretty pretty complete but you don't say anything about invasive species so i

072think a lot of you know a lot of um there i i driving around town or riding around on my bike mostly i see a lot of properties um that have uh you know glossy buckthorn going right up to the sidewalk um things like that so i was wondering um where does the city um where does the city you know uh uh um you know express some concerns about this or this as a potential problem um which which website handles the invasive species information our natural area of preservation so nap they have entire sections on invasive species but what we could do is add a link on our page that would you know concerned about invasive species in the city and link right over to the nap pages about because i think they have like

073glossy buckthorn and some other things up there um they're really the ones that are handling the invasives right okay thank you that's a great suggestion um and sarah nedrich you have your hand up hi thanks tiffany uh that was an excellent presentation and i love like all the data you guys have collected recently um that was really a cool comparison um one thing i was wondering about um we've had a lot more big storms lately that are knocking down trees um in our neighborhood we had some uh that were in the roadway um and the response time was quite slow to come out and clean them up so i was wondering like how you're set up if you have enough resources to react to these big storm events where you have lots of downed trees

074all at one time or if your program needs more resources in that respect well if we get a big storm event like a really big one we have two crews so if there's a number of trees in the roadways and stuff there will be a delay we we have to prioritize so getting the big arteries open first roadway arteries um after that we we make sure side roads and roads that in this subdivision things like that get cleared then we go and do sidewalks when we need additional help that's when molly the director of public works that's when she steps in and she pulls people from parks and she pulls people from our other work areas uh i can't speak hugely to our staffing level need she would know that more than me um i

075can tell you we we don't get a ton of storms where we have multiple multiple trees down all over the place um luckily those aren't real frequent um but when they do um molly does have a plan in place you know where she starts pulling people that do have experience because not everyone we can't just grab anybody to go out there and do the work that these guys do we can't just hand a chainsaw to anybody um and expect they're going to be able to run this chipper and in all the specialized equipment but there there is a plan in place and while i don't know the details of it um i'm sure if you reached out to molly she would be able to give you that awesome thank you of course yes uber you

076have your hand though yeah i have one what i think is a quick question um you mentioned the dte sort of topping off the trees and and doing their pruning but i wonder what you think or if you have concerns about dte that they're currently doing the natural gas lines and digging up a lot of sidewalk and i've seen a lot of roots exposed during that process and i wonder if that's a concern of yours or if you have conversations with dte about it or coordinate your work around what they're doing yeah i always have concerns when anybody is going to be doing any kind of excavating um they had their uh right-of-way permits come through and i'm on the um review for anything that might impact a city tree so any utility installation of

077any kind if it has a potential to impact a city tree root i'm involved we keep track of what they're doing i can tell you in the past dte went outside the scope of their permits damaged a number i think it was five or six large landmark sugar maple trees uh you may or may not be aware sugar maple does not handle root disturbance well and um we ended up needing to have those trees removed and they had to go back and pay um all the removal fees uh huge canopy loss fees um a whole bunch of other stuff so we do watch them we do monitor them um to make sure that they are staying within the the parameters of their permits however if they do step outside of what has is allowable under

078the permits again i'm not always on site to see things if people are noticing things absolutely shoot an email um is the best way to reach me because i get my email on this this doesn't always have signal but it has enough internet and email gets through um so reach out um yeah thank you i see two hands uh it's me uh christopher graham tiffany um [Music] we had the rachel go through ann arbor in july of 1980 um the destruction of trees across the city was monumental um streets in anne or hills through the native forest fragment areas were completely impassable a lot of us went out to help um we got within a couple days one lane open it took weeks for the city to clean up the mess and um when these

079things happen it's just genuinely a lot of time people just have to be patient thankfully there's not been a direction to ann arbor or a tornado that i'm aware of that's been that's caused any sort of widespread damage since then so that's what 40 years the hope is it continues we have had some wind windstorm events where we've been locked up like even myself i'm in a vehicle looking for downed trees and getting service requests in and stuff um we have had that where we've pulled where the the director of public works molly is out in the vehicle assessing damage and stuff as well um and i think our response time is pretty good but we still it's just a matter of time it takes those trees are huge and they're heavy and um we

080can't just take anybody and and give them the tools that we use to do the work that needs to be done um so while we have backups there there will be some time the only thing that we try to to warn our residents against is just be aware when an event comes through you get a lot of people that show up who say that they're experts and know what they're doing and they are insured and residents don't know that and they get themselves into a tight spot because you know the person causes damage their property or something and they're not insured and it falls on the residents so we always want to make sure that they're hiring reputable companies if there's damage on their own property for their own private trees um and if we

081contract anything out you know we have contracts in place if we had to fall back on that we could you know davey tree um the same contract the parks uses mitchell tiffany thank you for hanging in on this um one more uh question about the the dte and the underground work um is there a time frame um for evaluating uh a tricky condition following work for example i had our neighborhood had the dte lines replaced last year um i expect actually that there will be some response by the trees because of the the roots i saw exposed and cut um so i just wondered if is is there like a two-year time lag or something where they're responsible oh on the right-of-way permits you mean yeah sorry um i don't know if there is or

082not normally it's we're out there and we see they're outside the scope of their work if they're doing work within the scope of their permit and the tree can't handle it then i don't i don't think so okay it's usually when people go outside it's um but if if you notice and sometimes there's not a lot i can do and sometimes there is it's going to be a case by case like you know the other times they went outside their scope they went outside where they were supposed to be and they went right up they were supposed to be putting line down the center of the road and they went and put it right up against the curb and excavated the curb out they were supposed to do so they were right up within like

083a two feet of these trunk you know clearly outside of their scope of approved work area and so yeah we could nail them um other times no it's not like a um like a site plan you know like when a tree dies within three years on an approved site plan they still might have to go back and mitigate that's what i was um for okay no but it's it's something for discussion isn't it though like moving forward is maybe there should be something um like that or they should put in for request for removal of the tree ahead of time which i stuff to mitigate for but i don't know it's a it's something i think about isn't it i'd be happy to have further conversations about that and whatever okay i have some photos

084from last year any other questions i think i went over my half hour allotment tiffany this was really great yeah now this was important and thank you so much tiffany for uh you know for uh bearing up here and i think we and the public have a much better idea of how the city is managing its forestry and how we can help city staff okay so so much and uh and take care of yourself we'll wait i promise we'll complete the survey and i'll get my favorite too yeah it'll be up until june 15th so you know you don't have to like rush right out there and do it but um june 15th we'll end up closing the survey so that we can download the results and go from there but um thank you for

085having me okay so um let's see the next item on the agenda and we're uh we're we're running late on time um so the next item on the agenda is uh municipal electric utility greg woodring is going to present uh to a presentation of the ann arbor for public power now my understanding is that this presentation has uh has is identical to one that was already presented to the energy commission and um i think and uh you know the the total slide deck is available for public records so i'm gonna i'd like to ask mr wooding if he would consider just covering slides 27 and 28 which are you know uh and field questions from the environmental commission these are the slides that uh deal with the process of creating a munis uh municipal utility

086and the comparison of seu versus municipalization and um i understand that i know the city council approved a feasibility study so we're already um we're already at the first or second step there outlined at page 27 so um mr woodring are you are you happy to do this or um kathy you have your hand out as an alternative could we postpone this until the june meeting because i think it's an important topic and it is very late yeah it is important so why don't we yeah why don't we do that um do i have a second um segmented by uh shannon gibrandall um all who approve postponing this presentation until the june meeting raise your hand um any um any opposed anything i just like to offer my apologies to mr woodridge and uh he

087stayed with us and i just think this is a more respectful approach to to have a full presentation in june no yeah i agree i agree kathy that would be the best job this does deserve much more time now than we have available today so um um thank you mr woodring for hanging on we will definitely have you on the agenda for next uh you know for next month which is june 26th 23rd june 23rd okay well uh sounds good thank you all for your time sorry sorry about that so um the next item on the agenda is unfinished business um we'll be uh i'll talk about there'll be a presentation about gilman ms4 notice a violation an update um is uh let's say i believe um hi steve dan vicknell yep hi again um

088is it possible for me to share a few slides well of course um we have uh we do have a permit we do have a yeah please um uh galen can make you the host so you can manage your own presentation uh but i'm hoping you can you can you can uh you know be brief and just cover the cover the important topics in the asks yes i think i can well i will yeah i know it's a complicated subject uh but uh we we have a document posted on legistar which is uh pretty pretty thorough in explaining the case right um galen can i share a few slides lisa you have your hand up yeah i just wanted to echo that indeed there is a very clear and thorough document posted on legistar so

089if we could uh cut to the chase which is i think very clear and self-explanatory and figure out what we are being asked to do other than know about this that would be excellent because it is already 8 26 and i think i don't know how much time is anticipated for the chapter 40 discussion um but i for one will not be able to stay longer than 9 30 as i had a 6 30 meeting this morning and have another 6 30 meeting tomorrow morning so i am i i just i can't this will ruin my health so um not that you all you all can stay on but i'm gonna have to well well steve maybe what i could do is just kind of uh summarize the uh the review because as as lisa

090was saying i had a chance to send out on may 17th to everyone the elected officials you all of course included uh the summary of um really kind of where we are as you all will remember um there was a resolution passed by ann arbor city council and the city environmental commission asking the water resources commissioner to please send a notice of violation uh to gelman sciences which has this uh four mile long one mile dioxane plume moving through the city uh which is entering into ellen creek drain and ellen creek drain is regulated by a federal municipal separate storm sewer permit ms4 permit and the water resources commissioner is responsible for administering that permit so in january 2021 uh he sent a notice of violation to gilman that you're not allowed to have dioxane

091enter into the allen creek dream and uh over the last year or so uh gelman and the assistant attorney general with support from the water resources commissioner has looked into what needs to be done and on february 1st of 2022 gilman sent a letter to the water resources commissioner and the state environmental agency eagle saying that the problems of the ms4 the federal ms4 permit will be addressed within the current court order remember there's a court order that covers the remediation of the gelman plume that's a state law uh that governs it it's a part 201 state law and so what that agreement says is essentially that you will have be able to have yemen will be able to have dioxane consistent with what's required under state regulations comply with this federal ms4 permit the

092rub is under the state regulations you can have up to 280 or more parts per billion of dioxane in the plume that goes into this allen creek drain but the federal permit says no no no you have to be below background levels and so the re the review and the evaluation and the agreement between the assistant attorney general and gellman is that you do not have to clean up to background levels before it enters this allen creek drain again the the problem is the assistant attorney general's view precipitates a situation where you have a state law that is less stringent than the federal requirements under the federal clean water act municipal separate storm sewer system permit okay so sorry sorry steve so so in short that's kind of where we are in the status and

093matter of fact the assistant attorney general has directed the water resources commissioner to essentially put aside the notice of violation yeah yeah uh yeah that was a very good document you forwarded to us and that we posted our registrar um so what's what legal remedies do you suggest are open to us well this is the problem we have isn't it i mean we're local citizens local government trying to deal with a problem that was created by a state attorney assistant attorney general and so my thought is that the best course of action is and really only viable regulatory option is they asked the federal government to come in and start an enforcement action against yellman on this federal clean water act ms4 permit violation and my thought is is that such an action will rightfully

094have the federal government manage the correction of this federal permit violation and not put the onus on the local governments to continue this compliance oversight responsibility i mean we it's just very similar to the the court order and the proposed fourth amended consent judgment it's a very bad deal that this assistant attorney general has put forth and it's a clear violation you cannot have a state law have less stringent requirements than that under federal law it's that simple but yet here we are yeah so i think the the recourse is to ask the federal government to come in and you know enforce what's required under these this uh federal uh ms4 permit okay so um in other words um we may we may draft a resolution and forward it to city council after we've had

095more discussion about this and uh we'll see staff and try to see what the options are you know okay yeah absolutely the other recourse is you know this was just the assistant attorney general um you know making this agreement we could ask dana nessl if she agrees with it as a matter of fact in in one of the card meetings a couple months ago we asked the assistant attorney general if the actual attorney general understood the situation that he's agreeing to have a state law take precedent over federal law and he said he didn't know whether uh the attorney general knew about this or not so that's another avenue is to ask dana whether she agrees with this okay those are both very good suggestions so i think we will be taking this up over

096the next month or two okay thank you are there any questions for dan let's see lisa dish and then um kathy i think kathy's hand was up first so i want to let her go first okay um first i just want to thank dan and and mention how uh valuable he is and we have someone in this community who is not only an expert in this area but has been very tenacious and that's what we need and has gone to the federal uh government so um a couple of things that i've done we have a new lobbyist at the federal level dikema and so i did mention um then that that you had a meeting with the congresswoman staff so that they were aware i don't think they're going to be able to help you

097and the congresswoman because i think you're more than capable of following this through but i did want to let them know and secondly we have a new city attorney in ann arbor and i suggested that she schedule a meeting with you dan because she's trying to understand the history of the galman plume and you're probably the only person that's going to be able to give a 30 minute overview that that she's going to understand might take longer but but you're very concise and you just did it so um i i think that would be very valuable and it would also provide a different perspective than just the the history from the uh from the lawyers to you thank you um lisa you have the floor thanks i just wanted to just lay out three points

098that i think we should make sure that we do some research around before we write any kind of a resolution and i think it's a great point that dan just brought up and great grateful for his work on this uh we should probably find out if the if the ag agrees with the aag um i'm curious to hear what evan pratt thinks of this report um i it's not clear to me that he i mean this is kind of out of his hands basically which i think he has said before that the state and the feds are fighting this out but nonetheless it might be a good idea to check in with him and then i definitely think that we need to before recommending any strategy that involves bringing the federal government in we should

099check with our lawyers around this and make sure that there's no conflicts in that because we have an epa process going on we have the consent judgment process going on and now we have this um ms4 permit which is distinct although wrapped up in all of that and so gil yaman just continues to be a mess upon a mess and so um i wanted us to make sure that we have feedback from everybody who's engaged in this process before we step into something um that we might not know what we could potentially be setting in motion and also like what is even the mechanism for bringing the federal government in that would probably be a lawsuit and i'm not sure how the city initiates that so and i mean that literally i don't know um

100so yeah i'll stop talking now because i think there's more expertise in the room well just to respond to a couple of of points lisa you are correct that evan pratt even though he holds the permit and he is the official person responsible for administrating and issuing this notice of violation has asked that the attorney general help out so he is really completely deferring to the assistant attorney general on this the second point is that what could happen is fairly easy if the federal government views that this uh permit violation has been going on for a long period of time which it has for three years and it should have been addressed immediately they can take over to notice a violation and bring in action themselves against gelman to demand compliance with the ms4 permit

101so it doesn't have to go to court doesn't have to do anything else it's just that instead of the state uh pursuing this or water resources commissioner pursuing this the federal government takes back and takes action on this particular permit but i agree with you that it would be good to understand these particulars okay so um kathy you still have your hand on um yes and i agree with lisa's uh third point that the legal department definitely needs to know what is happening and that's one of the reasons i mentioned it to the new city attorney and and offered to set up a meeting with dan bicknell because we he he really is the one with the expertise i'm not sure that we have employed our outside counsel on this ms4 permit violation in any

102way is that true dan i don't remember anything being written by outside counsel no the like you say there's this distinction between the proposed fourth amended consent judgment dealing with the part 201 regulations that that that governor the groundwater cleanup and then there's this federal ms4 permit and i don't believe that the city attorney has uh worked at all on this ms4 permit matter oh okay thanks i think that council had a resolution that initially came from the environmental commission that um was directed at evan pratt to take action that's correct okay yeah yeah so um yeah so all right dan thank you so much once again and um i think the action points here is that um you need we need to make um you need to have a conversation with the new city

103attorney as the first step and then um uh did i mistake you or did you say that evan pratt has already appealed this decision by the assistant attorney general to the attorney general no no sorry um evan has uh left this in the hands of the assistant attorney general he's deferred he's deferred completely to the assistant attorney general oh and yeah and the assistant attorney general was asked uh in a public meeting whether the attorney general dana nessel uh was aware of this problem and he said he did not know he had not raised this or cleared it if you will through her all righty well i'll okay so kathy maybe you can um maybe you can um just get the city attorney together with uh and i'll talk to evan pratt and myself and

104see what's going on there and then we can we can table any further action here until next month at the earliest once uh once we once we've passed through these steps satisfactorily you know i've got some advice and so we'll put this on the agenda uh dan as soon as possible in order to come up with a plan and uh in a public discussion okay if i can help please let me know farewell thank you yeah thank you once again so um so the next item on the agenda is chapter 40. uh the the chapter 40 revisions so rita who's going to present that um do have it available if um and chris if you want to talk that's certainly welcome uh galen if you could give me some sharing privileges and i guess i

105would first like to ask the group whether uh you all need to see the actual chapter 40 as revised um or which way we would like to proceed it could be looking at the revised document or it could be looking at a resolution to endorse it anybody conference i'm happy i'm happy just to look at it as is i mean we've been looking at this off and on for some time so when you say as is are you talking about uh oh the uh the draft provision david okay thank you yeah let me just find something here yeah i've read over the whole thing it seems pretty straightforward and i'm aware the conflicts that existed before so um let's see i have one question about it this is it can you see the document yeah

106all right thank you i had i had only okay yeah i personally only had one question about it and that is what where does the city get its invasive species list it refers to an invasive species list so it's not going to be where that comes from when we first adopted a local wetlands ordinance um i think as part of that it was required either in the implementation or by the state ordinance that we address invasive species in the city and so a list of and that we address what planting should occur in mitigation wetlands and the idea was that we shouldn't be permitting invasive species to be planted in mitigation wetlands and so a fairly comprehensive list with two or three levels of a priority was developed oh in the early 1990s um how

107often that updated and it was just updated um in november but it had the updated uh list has not been posted on the city's website it's available internally i've been asking that that the language of surrounding our list be modified to apply to uplands and to the city in general rather than rather than being tailored specifically for wetland projects i don't know what the status of my request is but i'm sure we'll get somewhere with it so the city has an extensive invasive species list it governs what can be planted in development projects what can be planted in wetlands um it's addressed by the naturalized program for how they're dealing with these species on our natural areas and they have much outreach information available to people about invasive species in the city the most recent

108uptick has more species we are continuing to get more and more yeah that's why i was asking that it's not clear you know what authority generates this list and how often it's updated but uh it doesn't need to be part of this um this chapter 40 ordinance but i i think it should have pointers to it and with some explanation that's that's available to the public as soon as we have a live link it'll be there okay okay great sorry for the interruption um but uh let's see um so so rita um or chris um what do you want to uh do you have the floor to talk about this um oh i'll just make a comment which is um first off i really thank chris for spending a lot of time thinking about this

109um he's had a lot of literally hands-on experience thinking about and effectively planting in these areas and working with individuals and contractors um that makes it have some good ground truth i think um i feel that the concepts that it includes are really good that it encourages people to plant in the what we're now calling the sidewalk buffer strip the area between the roadway and the sidewalk edge closest to the roadway if there is such a sidewalk um otherwise to the property line and to encourage people to plant things other than mowed grass and to use safe heights of plants maximum height in particular areas that are sensitive like the streets corners hills um as well as crosswalks so there's a 24 inch height in most sensitive areas i'm calling them sensitive areas and there's

110a 36 inch height allowed in other areas both of which have an assessment of how opaque uh of planting is so a seriously okay in my estimation would be something like a trimmed punch that is very disgusting i'm sorry to interrupt but am i the only one who's having trouble hearing rita i am too i am very sorry i will see if i can improve this well then this is that's i think that's better yeah okay all right i'm really sorry uh thank you for letting me know um anyway i i think that the modifications that that chris has uh suggested are really good that their educational issues are made available to members of the community who want to do these kinds of plantings as well as when community standards may be approaching someone to

111modify uh or to let them know that there may be a violation so there's an opportunity for education um so those are really the the kinds of things that i i think are uh important and i support this um any questions um for rita or chris okay i hear or see oh kathy you have your hand up kathy griswold sorry uh in section 3.13 uh point four it it refers to eight foot vertical space above a public sidewalk and i think that we want to include that phrase in number three because it just says below eight feet um but there isn't the reference to eight feet vertical space above um the ground i guess it would be in this case so you're saying use parallel language yes use the same language hopefully that would be

112a friendly amendment chris do you have any comment that seems like a friendly amendment well the two points are addressing different subjects but um perhaps that can be done easily honestly three is about this well isn't there a difference here because it's saying in between 24 inches and eight feet which is different than this above the sidewalk which is the whole space i guess my comment would be that this is one of those areas that as it moves forward we've been talking about diagrams and this might be a place where a diagram would help oh i i the original ordinance was kind of a confused muddle in my view right that's why i got involved and as i said earlier in the meeting i i think the great majority of people are quite confused about

113where their front property line is and what their what they own and what they don't a lot of people think they own to the middle of the road and once upon a time that was true [Music] and very few people understand that short of a significant tax increase in the city to add a lot of staff the city cannot maintain um they can't maintain a pavement in the streets well enough to be honest about it much less anything outside the curbs so i thought it was important and rita genuinely boosted my interest in this that we get a lot more explicit about what the right way is where it is what's possible how to keep people safe at the same time get away from suggesting as so much of city specifications that in the green

114book suggests that grass should occur from the property line to the back of the curb except for the sidewalk if there is one it also addresses what the older ordinance did only in a muddled way what what people's responsibility is on their private property with regard to vegetation and um i think the city lost the lawsuit not long ago yes because it didn't have explicit uh language such as we've put in here now yeah language is pretty clear to me and meanwhile we're trying to encourage native and natural habitat plantings and natural habitat management and trying to discourage the use of grass mowed grass instead of side lawn extension we changed the definition of sidewalk buffer stream um it's good most of all the obligations of people to take care of their street lawn not

115just for snow on the sidewalk but for watering trees and making sure their contractors don't blow leaves and grass clippings and i've seen the city employees do this into the street and not clean them up honestly i mean we tried to get a much more explicit about a lot of things that have been in a very gray area that's very good i mean it's it also says here in section 3 12 that it's a city administrator that has the authority to decide uh you know what the try what the specific triangle of vision is for a particular location so it's a city administrator or as designated so a lot of a lot of that is already not in code but in what's called the green book well obscure manual that used to cost thousands of

116dollars to get a copy of but which is now online and unburied some of those specifications including site triangles and although there are no graphics in the green book uh we're hoping we can develop some here so people understand it better yeah okay so um i did see a hand chris bandenbrook did you want to ask a question i answered my own question thanks it's okay okay all right um are there any other questions for chris or uh rita and uh what's uh what's the ask here the ask here is for a resolution of endorsement of this can you see a new document this is a resolution to endorse the revisions of chapter 40 and two after this gonna zip down to the results to ask our council members and the commission to take this

117to city council for additional review and discussion among staff as needed so that we can ideally move this along so it's been a long time um and we'd like to implement it as soon as we can so we can start education educating the public okay and my my understanding is that this has been reviewed by city staff and the legal department um it is not completely reviewed by the legal department and so that is part of the reason that we brought it here was so that it could go back through a formal um a request by city council for that review are the council members here happy with that kathy uh yes i am um i had asked staff to review it just to sort of fast track it uh but realizing that this has

118been in the works and discussed for at least three if not for city administrators not just these changes but but other revisions um and so there were a number of departments that wanted to take a look at it but i would recommend that the environmental commission pass it and move it forward and that that would be the normal process for staff to then take a look at it as it's being considered as a council resolution and i guess i'd also like to thank rita and chris for the tremendous amount of work they've done on this i thank them personally but i want to thank them publicly as well okay thank you thank you kathy thank you for your leadership yeah any other comments um about this draft resolution of support um okay are there is

119there a motion to uh um i have a motion to consider this resolution for a vote uh from shannon seconded by bridget okay um all who uh approve of this resolution has written um as drafted uh raise your hand or say i i hi any opposed i hear and see none any abstentions i hear and see none so it passes unanimously so uh galen would you pass this on um to city council in the normal procedure yes and thank you so much um i mean i know for kathy griswold bringing this to our attention a number of years ago and chris and i think chris and the natural features work did a great job i think the language is very clear and it's very well organized so thanks everybody thank you yeah thanks harry oh

120um edie you have your hand up yeah just real briefly um as we were talking about you know the education needs to help um folks understand street tree responsibilities and the possible changes in aesthetics and everything that might be associated with this program we might want to consider something kind of like the rain garden um interpretive signage i think that's pretty successful in helping people to understand why this looks different and what's going on here and there could be something the city could do that's similar that says like this is my native plant buffer strip and this is what why i do it um just to just help address that and get ahead of those kind of um you know changes that people see that's a that's a great point okay um let's see if

121there's um no other comments about this let's pass on to uh um let's see new business we have no new business reports from committees other commissions council and chair so uh national features report uh hopefully the next time we meet there will be a package of proposed changes to the udc for you i'm my fingers are crossed i'm we're we're through all but one of the sections that we want to present to you in the first package okay chris thank you um yeah let us know um if you're ready by you know a week before the uh next meeting right okay so we have time um pollinators um i would like bridget to chime in on this but i want to just say that we've um we're nearly through nomo may uh it's been very

122interesting to see some different yards to see people participate pardon me a lot of dandelions yeah yeah yeah um and we've had from my perspective it's been really fun to have some conversations with people there are some people who don't want to do it at all and that's totally their choice um but but i think um [Music] my um well i'll just give you one stat we had 394 people register formally for this program um i think there are many more people who are participating in formally without registration because we got started really late um but i'm pretty pleased with just that particular step statistic and um bridget i don't know if you want to chime in and give a comment it's going to be great um yeah people are talking about it that's for

123sure both you know positive and no maybe we're getting some the conversation is starting which is great we have an email that we've been checking people though sorry i can't hear at all oh can everybody else hear me not very well very low oh okay um i don't have headphones in or anything so i'm not sure what it is i'll just talk louder for now uh we have an email that we've been monitoring that we send out that we communicate with participants using that email we checked in with them mid-month we've got some significant feedback from people about ideas and what they were seeing and we just sent out another email today reminding them they have to mow before june 1st giving them tips on how to mow their very long grass and we hope

124to maybe send out a survey getting some more feedback from those who participated and be ready for next year okay yeah thank you rich thank you uh pollinators um what about zero waste zero waste is so busy i can't even list everything that we're doing but uh we have a team of five c's students in addition to the two enter two interns that we've already hired and we are busily at work collaborating with osi developing a map of circular economy businesses that's an interactive map and it will not only tell you where they are you can sort them by thrift stores or places where you could buy in bulk you can also find out what each of these things actually does that why we count them as participants in the circular or reuse economy we

125are working with these interns to do um case studies of the ann arbor public library of recycle ann arbor and of one or two thrift stores definitely the ann arbor thrift shop and possibly also pto to talk about how these circular economy businesses work it's really important to feature raa not just as a great mission-based recycler which they are but as a mission-based recycler that has a very clear process of decision making around what it accepts for recycling and how it is that we get authentic recycling from raa in addition to the processes that raa uses in hiring to promote equity and sustainable livelihoods so there is we are working to publicize and enrich and deepen people's understanding of the reuse or circular economy and to to make them aware of all of the ways

126that they are already participating in it and trying to get them psyched about participating in it more by knowing it better and we expect to we have a website we expect to have some great short movies by the end of summer and um it we're just uh going great guns and it's it's an enormous amount of work but it is so rewarding that's great yeah i know there's a lot of activity there and i i might in this context i'll mention uh just that there is a waste a smaller organization in town is doing a zero waste challenge for the week of june 5th for the 12th so it's a competition it's a challenge so go check out live zero waste zero waste challenge from june 5th to 11th coming right up and then the

127other thing i want to mention is that there's going to be another uh there's an organ or another organization that's organizing a trash talk tour like was held uh may a year ago but this one's going to be in september so it was it was in september a year ago too oh you're right yeah it was it was so much fun i want to be um a host this time okay great yep so um we'll we'll have more information about that later but yeah it's in september um so then the water uh the water quality group uh we met uh once um what i've learned is that a lot of this is regionalized as water you know is almost as uh mobile as air and uh so uh you know jen lawson at the city

128staff plus um the heroine river watershed council you know is an intra governmental body that handles a lot of water issues locally so they have a regular quarterly meeting and um what we're going to do is join this group um as environmental commissioners from the city and uh participate more in that in that form i think plus uh we're going to have another meeting in june um that i haven't scheduled yet so that's the only update i have about water quality um so let's move on to other commissions um shannon um planning commission i think the biggest thing is that we've been really going over our um what we now call our comprehensive plan um and uh we have to kind of approve that every year and the big news on that is is also

129kind of dovetails i'm sure with city council is that um there's going to be a big revision that's coming up in the next fiscal year for that uh which is a really long time coming and that has all kinds of implications in terms of our environment too in terms of zoning and how all those things fit together it weaves together lots of different comprehensive plans that we have it's very complicated and we're hoping to be able to put all of this into one document to make it make it much easier to follow um so i would say that's probably the biggest thing that has really taken up our time that has any pertinence to environmental commission okay thank you thank you i would also just like to say actually because i i um from the

130beginning that i didn't get a chance to is that i really appreciate um you and rita both continuing on as your roles um to be able to do that for the environmental commission so thank you both for uh for stepping up and doing that again i appreciate that thank you shannon yep i'm always i always appreciate constructive criticism also as well um so about the energy commission um tuna eda edie yeah um last meeting there was an overview and update on the city's energy concierge system um and program uh talked about the platform and funding needs and and how that will continue to be built out um we also got an overview of the findings from the survey on the city's green rental housing program um i think the majority of the respondents were landlords

131or property owners or managers um then tenants and then some that didn't really fit into either category um and so it's kind of some mixed findings there um and i think that is also going to you know continue to be there's going to be other opportunities for engagement and legal review and so forth with that um and then lastly we had a quick overview of that latest segment of the ipcc report that will culminate this september um and that is focused on mitigation of climate change and i guess some of the highlights from that um just the urgency of transitioning away from fossil fuels the importance of social measures and demand side measures including you know kind of lifestyle changes were highlighted more than in previous reports um as were opportunities for synergies with other

132goals that um we might have including you know how green infrastructure can fit into our climate mitigation efforts and have other benefits so thank you okay yeah thanks edie yeah i think it would be good to engage the environmental commission more about lifestyle changes in green infrastructure so uh it has elements of that um okay um parks advisory um um ann's not here today so um so let's move on to council cathy um council passed the resolution for uh u of m net zero workforce housing at the may 16th meeting since then i have talked to someone who is a county commissioner and they would like the language to uh have the county commission consider it this evening i spoke to garland gilchrist the um lieutenant governor who was in town for for another reason

133and uh well he wasn't in town to visit me i guess that's what i'm trying to say uh i think it was some kind of educational event but there was also um a little meet and greet this evening and i mentioned to him about the resolution and he was very interested and started talking about the housing plans that the governor announced probably a week ago uh and so i'm going to work with his staff so i think that that this was sort of um something that that i was working towards but it definitely wasn't a done deal but many of the pieces seem to be falling in place at this point and i believe that given that this is consistent with the state plan um that we just need to develop the political support that

134we need through the student organizations and through the unions a couple of unions have already signed on as well and so i want to thank looney i know we talked a little bit about mobilizing the student groups and so we need to have a good plan in place and and then uh put pressure on the university of michigan regions but things look um excellent at this point so and thanks to everyone who worked on this yep thanks kathy yeah that's wonderful that so many of the uh government or governmental organizations are aligned are aligned yep okay um kathy did you want to mention anything i mean lisa no i don't think so okay yeah i mean we passed a great budget yeah yeah yeah and congratulations thank you so much i know that's a very

135contentious process every year so uh deserve a vacation so um uh so let's move on to chair uh the chair has nothing more left to say for now so report from staff yes um uh the office of sustainability and innovations will be kicking off a 2-0 week uh starting on june 5th through june uh 11. so we'll be kicking it off with the dexter ann arbor run and just want to uh everybody to come on out and just have a good time that week so wonderful and uh so um let's see uh so the items for the next agenda i have uh you know the gelman ms4 permit and the uh ann arbor for public power um we will have those folks back on in our june 23rd meeting are there any other suggested items

136specifically at this point to attend here at the june 23rd meeting i don't steve we should decide whether we were going to have i'm sorry i forgot the professor's name lisa um about the legal issues relating to trump norton yeah about uh um um it's it's about isn't it the relationship between um trees and storm water management i think it's more like um removal of trees on private property you're right sorry but actually i think it's how the storm water management tree case affects yeah yeah yeah the ability to remove trees on private property sorry i should have reviewed my notes i have no memory me too yes so that's sounding like it's a crowded agenda yeah so maybe we would want to move that to later i think he's totally flexible okay and the

137other one is is chris and natural features um so we've got kind of a good lineup um and the question is just how to how to slot them yeah yeah i think i'll try to we'll try to get directly to the point as much as possible because we get materials beforehand and it's up to all the commissioners to review them and it's they're available for members of the public uh for a few days in advance as well so i think i'd like to focus more on just well what's the ask here we'll have a discussion and then um come up with an action instead of you know instead of relying on the time of these meetings which is rather limited to just go through informational reviews it's just not as good as part-time um okay

138so um we'll try to manage that okay we'll uh i promise we won't go longer than 9 30 and uh hopefully we'll never go long we won't get we'll get our business done by nine so um let's see so the next scheduled meeting is june 23rd from 7 00 pm to 9 00 pm uh this the next item on the agenda is public commentary so uh this is the second opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 and enter meeting id 915-8343-9176 this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press

139star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and you to any television background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there can be a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established galen is there anybody on the line as yet there's no one okay let's wait another 30 seconds or so okay is there anybody on the line yet kayla uh no okay well uh thanks everybody um we've covered a lot of ground today and so uh so i declare this meeting adjourned at 9 18 pm thanks see you all in in june bye bye bye