# Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee - March 12, 2024 > Auto-transcribed civic record · March 12, 2024 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6067 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6067?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2024-03-12 - **Last revised**: March 12, 2024 - **Length**: 12,476 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Environmental Quality & Public Works Committee convened on March 12, 2024, at 1:00 PM with L. Sheehan presiding. The committee addressed three informational agenda items during the session, focusing on environmental and public works initiatives within the city. The meeting featured presentations on the Lex Grow Trees program, providing updates on the city's tree planting and urban forestry efforts. Committee members also received a status update on various energy initiatives currently underway. Additionally, staff provided a preview of upcoming changes to Chapters 16 & 17B ordinances, giving committee members advance notice of proposed regulatory updates. The committee took two votes during the meeting, though the specific details of these motions were not specified in the available records. No members of the public provided comments during the designated public comment period. All three agenda items were handled as informational presentations, suggesting the meeting served primarily as a briefing session to keep committee members informed on ongoing environmental and public works programs rather than to make policy decisions. ## Attendance All members were present for the meeting on March 12, 2024. **Present:** • L. Sheehan • H. LeGris • D. Wu • T. Fogle • S. Lynch • B. Monarrez • D. Gray • P. Worley • F. Brown • D. Sevigny **Absent:** None **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions The committee took action on two items during the March 12, 2024 meeting. **Approval of February 6, 2024 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 00:30] H. LeGris motioned to approve the February 6, 2024 Committee Summary, with D. Wu providing the second. The motion passed by voice vote with no opposition recorded. **Resolution establishing Lex Grow Trees Grant Program** [timestamp: 120:00] L. LeGris motioned to approve a resolution establishing the Lex Grow Trees Grant Program, seconded by L. Listen. The resolution passed by voice vote with no opposition recorded. Both votes were conducted by voice vote rather than roll call, so individual member positions were not recorded. All motions passed unanimously with no dissenting votes or abstentions noted. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed one significant financial item related to environmental initiatives. **Grant Program Authorization** The council considered Resolution 2024-0000 for the Lex Grow Trees Grant Program, involving $1,000,000 in funding. This grant program represents a substantial investment in urban forestry and environmental enhancement efforts within the jurisdiction. The resolution did not specify a particular vendor or recipient organization, suggesting this may be a competitive grant program or one that will be administered through multiple entities. The significant funding amount indicates this is a major environmental initiative that could have substantial impact on the community's tree canopy and green infrastructure. No additional financial items, expenditures, or budget amendments were discussed during this meeting session. ## Lex Grow Trees Update [timestamp: 10:00] Heather Wilson and Jennifer Carey presented an update on the Lex Grow Trees initiative during the meeting. The presentation focused on the program's significant funding allocation and new grant opportunities aimed at expanding the city's tree canopy. The speakers detailed that $1.5 million has been allocated specifically for tree canopy growth and support through the Lex Grow Trees program. This substantial investment represents the city's commitment to enhancing urban forestry and environmental sustainability efforts. A key component of the update was the announcement of a newly launched grant program. Wilson and Carey explained how this grant initiative will support the broader goals of increasing tree coverage throughout the community, though specific details about grant amounts, eligibility criteria, or application processes were not provided in the available information. The presentation served as an informational update to keep meeting participants informed about the progress and current status of the tree canopy initiative. No specific concerns were raised during this agenda item, and no action items or decisions were required from the meeting participants. The Lex Grow Trees program appears to be moving forward with its established funding structure and is expanding its reach through the new grant program component, representing continued municipal investment in urban forestry and environmental improvement efforts. ## Status Update: Energy Initiatives [timestamp: 130:00] James Bush presented an update on the organization's current energy initiatives during the March 12, 2024 meeting. Bush's presentation covered two primary areas of focus: • **Solar Projects**: Bush provided status updates on ongoing solar energy installations and initiatives • **Utility Expenses**: Current utility costs and expenditures were reviewed as part of the energy portfolio assessment The presentation also addressed future planning efforts, with Bush outlining upcoming energy improvement projects and initiatives under consideration. These future plans appear to be part of a broader strategy to enhance the organization's energy efficiency and sustainability efforts. The agenda item was structured as an informational presentation, with Bush serving as the primary speaker providing updates to the meeting participants. No specific concerns or debates were noted during this portion of the meeting, and no formal action items or decisions resulted from the presentation. This status update represents part of the organization's ongoing commitment to monitoring and improving its energy management practices, with particular attention to renewable energy sources through solar projects and overall utility cost management. ## Chapters 16 & 17B Ordinance Update Preview [timestamp: 150:00] Jennifer Carey presented a preview of proposed updates to Chapters 16 and 17B ordinances during the March 12, 2024 meeting. The presentation focused on aligning enforcement procedures and updating definitions related to street trees. Carey outlined the key objectives of the proposed ordinance revisions, which aim to streamline enforcement mechanisms and ensure consistency between the two chapters. The updates include modernized definitions for street tree-related terminology to provide clearer guidance for both city staff and residents. The proposed changes to Chapter 16 and Chapter 17B are designed to improve the city's ability to manage and enforce regulations related to street trees and related municipal matters. Carey emphasized that the updates would help standardize procedures and eliminate potential conflicts between existing ordinance language. This agenda item was presented for informational purposes, allowing council members and the public to preview the proposed changes before formal consideration. No action was taken during this presentation, as it served as an introduction to the upcoming ordinance revisions that will require future council deliberation and approval. The preview represents part of the city's ongoing efforts to maintain current and effective municipal ordinances that serve both administrative efficiency and public interests related to street tree management and enforcement. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of February 6, 2024 Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Resolution establishing Lex Grow Trees Grant Program --- ## Full transcript . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to call our meeting of the March 12, 2024 Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee to order. Thank you all for being here. The first item on our agenda is approval of the February 6, 2024 committee summary. Are there any additions or corrections? Okay, I don't see anyone signed in or indicating to me that they want to speak, so is there a motion to approve? So moved. I second. I heard Vice Mayor Wu on the motion to approve, Council Member Legree on the second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Okay, that motion passes. The next item on our agenda today is the Lex Grow Trees presentation out of the Tree Canopy Ad Hoc Committee. I'm going to turn this over to Council Member Legree for any remarks and introductions. Great, thank you Councilmember Sheehan. Colleagues, we're really excited to present an update about the $1.5 million that Council allocated for our tree canopy via budget stabilization funds this past term. And I want to start by thanking you for your generous support of our tree canopy. I'd also like to acknowledge our ad hoc tree canopy committee members, some of whom are here and some may be watching. They've been essential to forming the mission values and grant process for this initiative, which we're calling Lex Grow Trees and Heather will tell us more about that. I co-chair this committee along with Naki Braga and we also have Council Member Lynch, Council Member James Brown, Christine Smith, Anita Courtney, John Chiochi, Jennifer Carey, Heather Wilson, Diane Atchison, Crystal Goodwin and Jada Griggs involved and and formerly Stacy Borden, who is with UK, and Trees Lexington. I also want to thank Hannah Iden, Sharon Murphy, and LaShawn Barber for their involvement, and I'm just going to keep going. We have our Impressions marketing team who have been involved as well, Lauren Gothrop and Laura McDonald, who are also here. Thank you all for your hard work in building this initiative from scratch and along an equity-oriented framework. to benefit the areas where canopy cover is most needed. It's something we're really excited about. And with that, I just want to say thank you again to our colleagues. We're looking forward to a great discussion and lots of information sharing. And I'll go ahead and pass it over to Heather Wilson, who is our program manager senior from LFUCG's urban forestry team. Heather Wilson Thank you, Council Member McGree. Can you all hear me okay? Thanks to all for having us here to talk to you about the Select Grow Trees Initiative. I have a lot of information to go through in a really short amount of time, so I'm going to speak kind of quickly. I do want to just spend a minute, though, here in the background. I feel like it's really important for us all to get together kind of around verbiage to make sure that we understand what it is that we're talking about. I know we talk about what an urban forest is, or we talk about the urban forest often, but really understanding what that is. Not only is it individual trees that exist in our urban lands, but it's also all the tree groupings that are on public and private lands, our natural areas, our parks, our roadways, our backyards. All of it is involved in what is called an urban forest. Also includes the wildlife, the other vegetation and the soils because it really all functions as one big ecosystem. You can't really have the whole sum without all those pieces. And then urban forestry is the next step on that and that is the management of this land, purposeful and careful management because not only are we here to manage the trees but we're really to manage them in context of people to make sure that we are all safe in this space together. And then just a little bit further into making sure that we're all working from the same verbiage, we talk a lot about the ecosystem benefits of trees. That's really our why, why we manage an urban forest. We need an urban forest to have healthy cities. They provide all these benefits that we all talk about, and I'll just reference a few of them. You can see a snapshot on this page. This is not a complete list by any means. But a really big challenge for Lexington throughout history, as long as I've known, has been water management, stormwater management. These are vital in managing stormwater as it impacts our city. Not only do they stop the rain or slow the rain from coming down from the sky through funneling down through their tree branches and their trunk, but they also absorb thousands of gallons of water every time we have a rain event. So the more trees we have, the more water is absorbed out of that system that doesn't make it into our waterways. They also use a trick called evapotranspiration, which is a really fancy way of saying they cool our cities. This is from pulling water up from the ground, releasing it back out to their leaves, and honestly cooling our cities through that process. They also are shown to reduce cardiac disease events in humans. There's a really great study being done in Louisville called the Green Heart Initiative. It has been proposed and is being carried out by a cardiac cardiologist, one of the hospitals there. They've been working on this for a number of years, showing the reduced rates of cardiac disease directly linked to trees. You can see there's lots of other benefits that trees give us. Those are the only ones I really wanted to highlight really quick for us right here today. In 2012, Lexington decided that what we needed to do was understand what our tree canopy was, where it was, and what those ecosystem benefits were that we were receiving from it. We divided, well, we looked at Lexington, at least the urban service boundary, and these six different parameters to really understand where our canopy was. At that time, it showed that tree canopy coverage in Lexington was 21%, which is pretty decent. There's lots of cities our size that have a lot more. There's also a lot of cities our size that have lot less. And then in 2022, fiscal year 2022, we decided it was time to do what's called a change analysis to understand how our canopy changed in that 10-year time frame. And we did see that we grew to 23%, which is really great, right? We had no idea like what our canopy was doing. Were we losing all of our trees due to disease and development or were we gaining canopy for whatever reasons? So luckily for us, we did show that we increased by 2%. While we do now have a 23% tree canopy coverage, we also were shown that we have 33% plantable space throughout Lexington within our urban service boundary. This does not account for spaces that are unsuitable for planting, which means waterways, parking lots, ball fields, any of those areas. So of the space that is suitable, we still have 33% plantable. And then one of our big takeaways from this assessment was this tree plotter canopy tool. This is publicly available. is manipulative, which means that we can get in there and work within this system to show what parameters that we need to work on and in what districts. This is the geographical range of council districts that I chose to show for this, showing where our greatest need for canopy improvement is, which is in District 1. Also in the north and west and east sides of town, you can see that that really is where our highest need is. These parameters can all be altered to see what each district is lacking or is in need of help with. And Again, if anyone wants help, I'm happy to sit down with anybody to go over this tool and mess with it and see what we can do for your districts. So in the beginning, in 2022, Lexington-like communities across the states received an influx of ARPA funds. Luckily for us, I think really smartly, we reached out to our citizens and asked, how do you think we should best spend these funds? We received a number of applications with a lot of people suggesting that they wanted money to go toward trees. While Council at the time decided that the ARPA funds were not the way to fund that, they did go through budget stabilization funds, like Councilmember LeGree mentioned, and put $1.5 million into our environmental services budget to allocate toward growing and sustaining our tree canopy. While we could have internally decided how to spend that money, we decided that it would be best to create an ad hoc canopy to help guide those allocation of funds. That way it showed that we were really trying to be really responsible with this money as as well as reach out to the community and work with people that were interested in this. Like, again, Council Member Degree mentioned, our committee is comprised of council members, council staff, community members, as well as LFUCG staff. Treat equity is our driving factor. It has been ever since our 2012 assessment, and with this reassessment, this change analysis, it really even helps to really dial down where that need is. And then luckily, or coincidentally as well, It also kind of really timed really nicely with the recognition across the states and actually across the world of how tree equity needs need to be addressed in communities across the board. Once we had our funding, we decided, yes, great, we have this committee, but really we needed to have a strategic planning session to really make sure that we are all on the same page and that we're spending these funds equitably. So we had a one-day session in August of 2022 to really help us frame our values, create our guiding principles, and from that one-day session, we came with these five target areas really to really just focus our areas of where we're going to allocate the money. Each of these areas have little digestible pieces within them, so they're just kind of the broad topics. Following that, we also decided that what would be really smart would be for us to go ahead and spend some of these funds so that we can show that we are being good stewards of this money. Our first initiative was to really work to clear this backlog of our hazardous street tree cost share program. As many of you know, that is allocated each fiscal year and it's gone within basically three months. We always have a backlog, so our first plan to spend that money was to clear that backlog and then to bolster it again to get more people involved in the program in that fiscal year. We also decided as part of our guiding principle is that we really needed a communications plan and this was to make sure that we are telling our story and telling our story in such a way that these funds are allocated back or the recognition of these funds make it back to council. Make sure that we are driving our impact, recognizing where our impact is reaching out into our community and being able to see how this extends beyond this $1.5 million. Co-ociding with this creation of our marketing plan, we decided also that it would be really smart to have some pilot projects. Really we wanted to make sure that we were envisioning the way these funds could be spent and that they could actually be spent in those ways. So we did ask for three of our committee members to provide proposals to us to be voted on in our committee for application. And so we did wind up providing free pilot projects, Geomancer Permaculture, Seedleaf, and Trees Lexington. And I'll just briefly go into them really quick. Geomancer was approved for $15,000. Their goal was to plant 200 edible trees and shrubs on one of our local greenways, to provide workforce training and ecological stewardship through hands-on training and work days for the neighborhood as well as for anyone else who was interested in being involved and gaining these skills. Then also really to demonstrate alternative ways to use some of our public lands, rather than just having mowed green spaces, to make these lands something that our neighborhoods can really benefit from. Seedleaf was approved for roughly $7,600. Their group was to design a food forest training program, and they were funded for 88 trees, as well as an irrigation system to keep their trees alive and thriving into the future. They were also awarded money for the stipend for 10 participants, people ages 17 years of age and older, for an eight-month permaculture landscape design program to gain workforce development skills, people that didn't necessarily want to go through traditional educational institutions, and then be able to take those skills out into the world. And finally, Trees Lexington was approved for a $40,000 grant. Theirs was a community-based tree planting pilot project. They work with school systems, neighborhood groups, and apartment buildings, areas that have a lot of plantable space in our targeted districts. They planted 100 trees, and not only did they plant the trees, but they offered education both on proper tree planting technique and care, and then stewardship into the future. Now we are ready to launch our LexGrow Trees Grant Program. This first round of grants, we've decided we'll have two rounds this spring and this fall. Each round has currently available roughly $500,000 to be applied for. Each applicant is able to apply for up to $100,000. They do not have to apply for the entire amount. We encourage smaller grants too. The grant window application opens on March 15th. We'll close on April 26th for this very first round. And all the applications will be scored via a rubric. This rubric is in your packet, so if you're interested in really looking into the details of that, please feel free to look into your packet. And then we really want all kinds of groups to apply. I have listed here nonprofits, for-profit companies, neighborhood associations, HOAs, church groups, school groups. We're working on a process for individual homeowners to be able to apply for funds for trees to be planted on their property as well. They'll just have to work through another way to gain access to the funds through one of these other groups. And we are strongly encouraging collaborations and partnerships. Really what we want to do is build community around this tree planting. And with that, I'm going to hand it off to Jennifer to go into some more details. Thank you. I just want to share a little bit about the process that we've developed, and a lot of it was informed, first of all, by the three initial pilot projects that we funded and the lessons that we learned as a result of those. For example, one of those was co-branding. How are we going to brand the individual organizations along with our Lexgro Trees brand and then the City of Lexington's branding? So that helped us to develop guidelines for that. And then it was also informed by the experience that several of us have had with the Stormwater Quality Project's Incentive Grant Program, which as most of you all are aware, that's sort of in my mind the Cadillac of grant programs, which makes sense because these are high-dollar grants that are awarded and it is also a grant program that's codified by ordinance. So it is important that that grant program is rigorous. But then on sort of the other end of the spectrum, our familiarity with the Corridors Commission's Neighborhood Enhancement Match Grant Program was also very helpful and informative because it showed us that we could fund smaller dollar amount grants, but without an application process that's super rigorous, like the Stormwater Incentive Grant Program. So we kind of wanted to fall somewhere in between those two. So we developed a process for selecting the grant recipients and awarding the funds, which is outlined at the bottom half of this slide. We've created a scoring committee, which will be comprised of environmental services staff, council aides, and our neighborhood representative who is on the tree canopy ad hoc committee. We wanted to make sure that any of the organizations who are involved are sort of left out of that scoring process, and we will follow the rubric that's in your packet to score those and then make a recommendation to the full tree canopy ad hoc committee as to who we think scored the highest and should therefore receive funding. The tree canopy ad hoc committee will then have the opportunity to discuss those recommendations, vote on that. If there are organizations who are on the committee or representatives who are specifically named in applications, they will recuse themselves from those discussions and vote, but then otherwise the Tree Canopy Ad Hoc Committee will make its recommendation to the full council, and then at that point, council will have an opportunity to review those in conjunction with a grant agreement that will have been signed by the recipient, and then that will, once approved, go to the mayor's office for signature. So, in multiple conversations with Director Slayton in the Division of Procurement and Evan Thompson with our Department of Law, we sort of came to the conclusion that to button this up and formalize the program, that a resolution would be very helpful. And so that is what we are requesting of you all today, is to review the resolution that is in your packet. It's a draft resolution. It is essentially laid out so that it establishes the grant program, it approves the grant program guidelines, and then authorizes the tree canopy ad hoc committee over this grant program, so to make those initial selections before they come to the council. So we would like your consideration of this draft resolution, and then if it does move out of committee, support it when it goes to the full council. and then just wrapping this up some next steps we are going to issue a press release on monday march 18th about the grant program we would love your assistance and help with spreading the word about the grant program the lexford trees initiative in general if there's opportunities where you're at community meetings or neighborhood meetings and you would like to ask any of us to attend we would be more than happy to do so. We will also be hosting two question and answer sessions for the public or for any organization to think they might be interested in applying. The first one of those will be in person on Wednesday March 27th at Northside library in the evening starting at 530 and then we will have a virtual zoom session the following evening on the 28th from 630 is 730. We will record that one and it will be available on the website. So with that, we're happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Director and Heather. Colleagues, if you have questions or comments, please sign in. Council Member Sivigni. Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much for this presentation. I think I'm really excited about it. How should we mark, because basically we're going to start next week it sounds like. So what do you think, when I looked at the point scoring, it's obvious that there are parts of Lexington that can definitely kind of kill the points on their tree canopy. How would you suggest that we market it to our, because to me I'm going to market it to neighborhood associations, right, and to neighborhoods. So should I point them to, or should I already tell them, like, here's where you are. You're not going to get a lot of points on this area, so the other areas have got to be good. Just give me an idea, because I think it's a great program, and I do think the equity piece is super important. But I also want to make sure that my people don't get, I don't want them to be discouraged either from applying. So thanks. Well, I think one area sort of outside the equity piece that is covered in the study that was done in 22 is that we really have a lot of opportunities for planting trees on private property. We've made gains on public property since 2012, but there's just a lot of opportunity and a lot of need for trees to be on private property. So perhaps if that's an option for your constituents or even care of current trees, existing trees, if there's a way to frame that and focus on that, that's certainly something that would help. Thank you. And is there, I looked at the packet, but is there some specific, like, marketing stuff that we can send out? We will be getting you all information for your newsletters and some graphics, social media type graphics that you can use this Friday. Thank you so much. Can I add in real quick, too? I just want to also maybe suggest that while that map that I showed showed which districts are in highest need, we can also look at that map in a way that shows areas within districts that are in higher need than other areas within the same district. So while your district may be overall green, there are areas, I'm sure, within your district that are in higher need. And so if your constituents are in those areas, that might be good verbiage to put in there. And like I said, I'm happy to go over with anyone that map, if there's a way to help you talk to your constituents about it and how to kind of use that to bolster their application. Yeah, I think I'll end up doing that maybe with you to go through my geography and just say which neighborhoods would do the city the most good. Sure. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Menard. Thank you so much for this presentation. I know that we've had conversations in the past regarding the tree canopy in the fourth and how we can improve that. And I know we've had conversations specifically when it comes to concerns in a couple of my neighborhoods when it comes to trees versus safety, specifically some trees that are obstructing the view of some stop signs. And so we're trying to navigate that because the majority of those are healthy trees. And my district is already suffering with a lack of tree canopy and not just going in there and cutting down these beautiful, healthy trees. So maybe just addressing a couple of them that should be potentially cut down in order to improve the safety of those intersections. And then waiting for the leaves to come in and see how some can be pruned back. And so not necessarily getting rid of the entire tree. So thank you for helping me navigate that. in order to kind of balance those two things, the safety versus these healthy trees. But with my constituents, sometimes it's messaging and how they can benefit from adding even more trees, especially when they hear that a resident on that same block had to take out a tree, and that tree caused damage on their sewer line and how costly that was. So the thought of them adding additional trees to their lots and then maybe having to deal with that kind of a situation that would be even more costly down the line. What can we do to give a more positive message and push more the positive effects of trees versus a potential negative impact further down the line so that we can add more trees in my district, for example? I'm happy to come chat with your if you ever have a meeting with your neighborhood I'm happy to come talk with them. I think I think sometimes what's missed is people just don't maybe feel heard and understood And I and I get that so I'm happy to come have a conversation to try to foster that if that's helpful And then we'll have a lot of education around trees on our Lex grow trees website And maybe that would be I think that's a great point that you have that maybe those are some of the things the concerns that we can address on that website for people to go and learn a little bit more. And then just understanding properties and where it's appropriate to put trees on properties and where it's not, because you're right, there's lots of locations that are not appropriate, but there is a lot that is. And I think just having open dialogue is a really great way to foster that. And if it's helpful, we're happy to come and engage with your community members. Thank you. And then I think it's easier definitely to reach neighborhoods that do have organized meetings, so either HOAs or neighborhood associations, but there's a large part of my district that doesn't have any organized group. What do you recommend to get to those citizens that don't have an organized neighborhood association and then potentially they aren't on either my distribution list for my newsletter and maybe not even active on social media, what can I do personally to affect that messaging? My only guess is door to door. Honestly, those face to face conversations and going and talking to them because, I mean, you mentioned it or recognize it, we can't reach everybody all the time because there are so many different outlets to them. So I think door to door, maybe mailers can be helpful. Yeah. Yeah. And the mailer is a good idea, and it's something where we could promote the Right Tree, Right Place initiative that we have on the city's website, so people can sort of take a quiz about their property, and it will help inform what species of tree would be appropriate, whether they have overhead utility lines or they know there's a sewer easement or some other type of easement running through their property. Okay. Well, I definitely want to then take you up on what you suggested to Councilmember Savigny, which is look at specifically, especially those areas where we don't have the organized groups, where my mailers would have, you know, a greater effect and reach those people. So I look forward to working with you on that. Yeah, same here. And then just one last thought. Ideally, we'll have some organizations that will submit some grants to work specifically within your neighborhoods, and then maybe part of that application will involve them doing the door-to-door outreach and those connections with the citizens in your group that aren't being reached via other processes. So that would be a great outcome of this program, creating those kind of internal in-neighborhood groups that know how to reach out to each other. Okay. Thank you so much. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for this presentation and thank you for all the work on this. I, too, am pretty excited about this program. I'm a lover of data and maps and graphs. Those maps that kind of showed all that different data, particularly the district stuff, are those publicly available? Can folks go to that? And what's the website or link? Sure. website under urban forestry on lexingtonky.gov. It's under tree canopy I believe is the tile that you would link into and this is our tree canopy assessment. There's a whole document that talks about the city as a whole as well as each individual district receive their own kind of scorecard and then the map that interactive map that I just have a screenshot of is also accessible through there but that report is full of a lot of really great data. Yeah and one of the data points that I was curious about if you go back to the one with the little tiny maps, you kind of address it down here, the property ownership. Do you all know kind of ballpark or offhand the sort of the public versus private percentages and then I'm also curious as to larger institutions like FCPS, UK folks with a ton of land, are there ways, and I'm not talking about the grant specifically, but are there ways that we have or can engage with them in terms of kind of pushing them into also helping increase that canopy? Yeah so off the top of my head what I remember is that LFUCG I think we are like on our public on our lands roughly 33 to 35 percent canopy coverage and I feel like private has approximately 88 percent available to be planted so those are mostly homeowners businesses and such like that. FCPS is at 11% tree canopy coverage. They need a lot of help. Though I will say that I know I personally and a number in our group work a lot with FCPS to increase their tree canopy coverage. There's a lot going on internally, which I'm sure you're probably pretty aware of, to work toward sustainability initiatives. UK, I feel like could use some connection and drive, but again, I think there's a lot of outside forces that are really kind of driving those decisions that are bigger than us, but I think it would be great to continue to reach out to these other organizations, and particularly large industry that are on the north side of town, around New Circle. A lot of the space out there has big plantable space, and a lot of it is just mowed. We do have our fair share that could be addressed, but then again, with LFUCG, we have a lot of space that's used for playgrounds and for ball fields and such like that that won't be plantable, but it is pulled out in that other slide that shows the 44% of unsuitable space. Yeah, I would love for us to be able to engage with those partners that have so much land that they, whatever they do can be really impactful towards this mission as well. So anything that we can do to kind of build a Rolodex of those potential partners and then either just, you know, push or nudge or partner with them to kind of work in those ways I think would be really helpful too. And then my last question is on the grant itself. What's the timeline look like? I know the application window closes April 26. When do you expect approvals to come through? When do you expect checks to be cut? Our plan is to have those scored and selected toward the end of May and give the selected grant recipients an opportunity to review and sign the grant agreement. bundle all of those and bring them to council for approval certainly before you guys go on your summer recess. That will give those grant recipients time to get plants and trees ordered for planting this fall. And then what do you all do in terms of follow through or accountability to make sure that these organizations who have gotten this money do the thing that they were charged to do? So as they request reimbursement or request funds from their grant, they are required to submit sort of a status update of what they've completed thus far, what they've got on deck to do next, and then in order to receive their final disbursement of funds, they will be providing us with a final report that has pictures and just all the information and details about their project and what they have successfully implemented, if they have any lessons learned, things like that, so that we can really understand the benefits of how this money was spent. Great. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Chair. Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair. Team, I would like to say awesome job with your presentation. No need to have nerves because you delivered well. I would like to say kudos to recognizing that us on the north side, we have a lot of work that needs to be done in order to ensure that our canopy is strong. However, I'm curious why the short deadline because I feel, I know in my district, We have a lot of hardworking people who are not going to have the time or the know-with-all to, first of all, find out about this. I will do my best, as usual, to make sure the people in my district know about this opportunity. But I'm curious why the door opens and then closes, like, almost immediately. Well, we felt that we really needed to be able to have these grant recipients selected so that they could get everything that they needed lined up to do fall plantings. There will be another opportunity to apply in the fall for spring plantings. And six weeks, to us, that seemed like a good amount of time to have the grant applications open, but I appreciate your feedback that you feel like that's a short window of time, and we will definitely take that into consideration. But we are also here to help. So through our public information and engagement section, like if you know of people that you think could use some assistance, we've got staff who are ready to help walk them through what it's going to take to gather information, to fill out the grant application. We also hope that we have come up with a grant application that isn't too cumbersome. It is pretty much just like the basic information that we need to know so that we can make an informed yay or nay decision about distributing the funds. But, you know, if someone is like computer challenged, we will give them a paper form of the application. You know, we want to help. We don't want this to be inaccessible or too scary of a process. So just make sure that, you know, you let us know who those folks are, and we will be in touch with them. Oh, and you know me. I will definitely let you know. And I know that it's not intended to be. You're not intending to shut the door on anyone, for sure. I know this for a fact. Curie, and also with areas in the 6th District, we have Hamburg. which is, as we know, it's highly concrete. It's a lot of parking spots and what have you. I'm just, on my own end, I'm working on ways on how I can work with the area to increase the number of trees in the area. So hopefully we can get out of the D area and get maybe to a C in the 6th District. But I'm thankful for all that you do. And one last thing, are you all working with LexTV in order to maybe create a short video or something that we can actually, that I can share with residents of the 6th District on social media and in my newsletter? Because everyone loves a little short video of what's going on, so. We have not yet, but that's a good suggestion, and we'll see what we can do. Okay. Well, thank you for all that you do, and thank you to the team for behind you. and the volunteers working alongside you for all that you do to ensure that we have more trees and that we are considering trees at all times. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to chime in. I don't have any questions because I have enjoyed serving on the Ad-Haul Committee with you all. Thank you, Council Member LeGree, for inviting me to join the Ad-Haul Committee, especially because District 2 is a priority area. So I want to definitely be that conduit for my neighbors and you all so we can get more trees in the district. And so on that note, I would love to invite Lex Grow Trees to come to my district-wide meeting in April. So I'll email you all the dates to talk about the grant program and talk about the importance of trees so people can realize that we need to grow our tree canopy and the why. Because I think the why is the hindrance because they don't understand the why. So I want you all to come out if you're available. We will be. Thank you all for all you do. Council member Fogle. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your presentation. I was just looking, I have 13 parks in the first district, and I know first district is one of those high priorities. I would like to invite you to the neighborhood association at Oakwood. It's our oldest population, homeowners, and they are very interested in trees. And I will do my best to help the turnout on the 27th. Thank you for coming to the Northside Library. That 530, 630 may be a challenge for some folks because it's like they're just getting off work. And so we try to move our meetings just to give you a note to about 6, 615, to give folks time to get home, wrestle with their children, and then make it to the meeting. But we will do our best in the first district for the turnout for this meeting. I'm so excited about it and I was just listening to part of your presentation. And so we have medians and I know some of this would be part of a safety issue about the trees that are planted. But we need a lot of beautification over like Councilmember Gray said in the north end of town and like Councilmember Lynch said, I look forward to that beautification to come toward the first district. So thank you. I would like to set up a meeting with you all. So thank you so much. Please. I just wanted to add real quick about our Northside meeting. We will have coloring pages and activities for kids. If you want to let your residents know that it won't be a whole lot of interactivity for them, but if they can get them there quickly, there will be someone there to help kind of corral them and spend some time with them while their parents can listen. And thank you. And like Council Member Gray said, to get the word out, I don't mind using my 15 minutes of my council time for you all to promote this. So that's another segue into letting the residents know in the first district, so thank you. Thank you. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. Put the slide back up on them. I wanted to look at the Lex Grow Trees Grant Program, probably halfway through the slide presentation. And as it's coming, there's, first thing, the million five that was put into the fund, how is that, what's the accountability there, that million five? Is it in the general fund and you just take it out as you need it? It's in fund 1105. Okay. So it's available over multiple fiscal years. Okay, and the $1.5 million, is there any future ask on that? It looks like that's going to last you for four to five years? We feel like if these two rounds of grants are as successful as we think they will be, that essentially by the end of this calendar year, all of the funds will be encumbered out of the $1.5 million. We are allowing the grant recipients to have a year to two years to complete their projects, but the funds will be encumbered at that point. So are you monitoring all those through your area as director? Flip a couple more there, Chris, to the two rounds of grants of $500,000. One more. Right there. Right there. You've got up to $100,000 per applicant per round. Can you give me an example of who would need $100,000 to plant some trees? I feel like Trees Lexington would love to have $100,000 twice in one calendar year to do Trees Lexington. Yeah, but that's not for individual $100,000. That would be for several projects within that $100,000. Yes, for multiple locations. So I don't know that it reads that way. It says per applicant, per round. So basically, there's going to be a lead applicant with each application who essentially is saying, yes, we will be the recipients of these funds and we will make sure that our proposed project gets implemented as we've described on our application. They might have other partners who are involved, but it's that lead applicant that is limited to the $100,000. You're keeping all track of this. You got an extra person in your office? We have Crystal Williams Goodwin, who's here today, and she's basically going to be the grant manager over all of these. Okay. Now, the thing about this grant program here, I'm not sure that we've done this in other programs throughout government, to where you're doing a resolution for a grant movement or whatever. You went to law and talked to them about it. And what about the commissioner? She can speak for herself maybe if she's sitting back there. But you know. She didn't throw up a red flag, so. I mean, you know, it's not our normal way. You know, there's money set aside and it's in budget. It's already budgeted. But to allocate it by resolution, I don't know that that's been our protocol in the past. Yes, and this, you know, it's kind of the odd thing about this. It's sort of a one-off opportunity to provide these funds. It's not like the stormwater incentive grants where it's required by ordinance, you know, allocating 10% of the water quality management fee to a grant program. There are no guarantees that this will be funded once the $1.5 million is spent. So just to be be good stewards to make sure that everyone's on board and everyone's aware that's why we felt a resolution would be sort of the proper thing to do to give you all the ex you know the knowledge and sort of advanced realization that we are going to blue sheet a bunch of grant applications at four-year-olds consideration because you know it is something where we are giving funds to organizations and we want the mayor to sign the agreement in order for it to be fully executed so it's not it's not a necessity for you to spend these funds in the manner that you because you've got the discretion to do them through i guess the budgetary process but this you think this just gives you added source or added backup yes okay thank you my time's up Before I turn it over to Council Member LeGrie for the discussion of the resolution, I just want to say that I appreciate you bringing this to us to review the grant process. And in the scoring and selection, I greatly appreciate that you are considering the maintenance after the planting, because I think that's one of the hardest things with projects like these that might be done, is that you can't just plant a tree and walk away. You really do have to educate people about how to take care of them, but then also have a plan in place to take care of them so that it's not wasted money in the project. So I appreciate that. Thank you. And I would like to turn it over to Council Member LeGrie now. Thank you, Chair. Thank you again, Director Carey and Ms. Wilson. Thank you to my colleagues for some really excellent questions. I really appreciate them, especially as this is a unique grant and something new that we've built from scratch using some really good models with stormwater and other similar initiatives. I also want to extend thanks to Trees Lexington, to Geomancer Permaculture, and to Seedleaf for being our pilot partners with this initiative. You all have had some really excellent case studies and some initiatives that have used community engagement in a really authentic way, and I appreciate the impact you've already made. Council Member Brown led us into this really nicely. You all will see a resolution included here so that we can move forward with establishing the official grant program associated with this program and provide grants to organizations in the community in an official capacity. And this step was recommended by our departments of procurement and law. So that we can begin the disbursement of funds in time for the fall planting season, as was discussed, we've opened the grant application process from March 15th through April 26th, with the official launch of this program on March 18th. So therefore, because this is time sensitive, we're requesting a same day readout of this resolution so that the first and second reading will happen within the grant review process timeline and funds will therefore be available to the proposed grantees in a timely manner. And then as was mentioned by Director Carey, there will be an agreement in place with each grant recipient that will be signed by the grantee and by the mayor, which will go through our approval process. So, therefore, I move to approve a resolution establishing a grant program to be known as Lex Grow Trees Grant Program and providing for its purpose and objectives, approving and adopting guidelines for the Lex Grow Trees Grant Program, and providing for the authority of the Tree Canopy Ad Hoc Committee over the Lex Grow Trees Grant Program at a total cost not to exceed $1 million. So moved. Second. I have a motion from Council Member LeGrie, a second from Council Member Lynch. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Okay, that motion passes. Chair, as I mentioned, due to the time-sensitive nature of this, I move to suspend the rules in order to report this out today. So moved. Second. Motion by Council Member Legree, second by Council Member Lynch. All in favor, say aye. Any opposed say nay. Discussion. Sorry, I didn't discuss the other one either, did I? I just went right through it. I can, do you want me to go back? No. Well, I'd like to speak. I'm going to speak to it. Okay. Yes. Discussion on the motion. Sorry. Yes. Council member Fred Brown. Yes. Yes, I don't have any problem with the process except I don't like to hurry things. And I'd like to have some public input if it's needed. And I'd like to have maybe some media input. And for you to do a double read today, I think circumvents that process. And I'm not going to vote for a double read simply because of that. Sir, if I may, Councilmember Brown, I'm not requesting a double read. I'm simply requesting that Councilmember Sheehan, as Chair of EQPW, read this out as a partial report out to all of Council during work session. That's fine. That's fine. Thank you. That's not the way I interpret it. Yeah, I appreciate that. And thank you for making that point and for getting clarification. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Any other discussion on the motion? Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Okay, that motion passes. Do you have anything else? No, Chair, that's it. Thank you very much. Thank you again. Thank you. Okay, next on our agenda, we have the annual report on the Energy Initiatives Fund. Here with us today to present that is James Bush, the Energy Initiatives Section Manager and Division of Environmental Services. Good afternoon. I'll load up some slides. What I'll be going over this afternoon, provide some context with our utility expenses of late, give you an update on projects we've completed up until present of the fiscal year and our fund balance and end with some commentary. So expenses, fiscal year 23 on natural gas, water, and electricity were $21 million. Draw your attention on the on the right side. In that timeline we were we're really seeing the consumption has returned to normal, i.e. pre-COVID levels. Fiscal year 22, the increase there was related to rate case by Kentucky utilities, and in FY23 we saw a small bump as the infrastructure replacement fees with Kentucky American went up. We're unlikely to get relief in the near term. New rates just went into effect with Kentucky American water, which are quite significant. Those will impact fiscal year 24. Midway through FY25, we expect a rate increase by Columbia Gas, and following that in fiscal year 26 is likely to be another rate increase request from Kentucky Utilities. So next three in a row could be rough, even with consumptions stable. FY24 projects to date were heavily focused on solar photovoltaics. We have two complete, that's at the Takes Creek Community Center, the South Base Maintenance Facility that's at Southland Park, and we kick off tomorrow with the install at the Masterson Station maintenance building. That will increase our capacity of solar output by 54 kilowatts. Total capacity is at 154. That would be eight installs. On the right then, get an idea of the scale of this relative to our expenses. These These are small projects, these are not major capital improvements. Doing the math on that, you'll see these returns are somewhere in the 16 to 18 year type period with a lot of infrastructure laid that can be reutilized. A photo there of the Tate Creek Community Center. What I do like about this, again for context, that output, about 14,000 kilowatts, is very comparable with what Kentucky Utilities calls a typical residential building. So a modest home in Kentucky, that amount of glass on the roof is what it would take to offset the electricity consumed by a typical modest home in our environment. South base off Laramie Drive, the photo there is one of two panels. It's just difficult to get far enough away from the building for a good photo. So there's two like that on the back of the roof and the inverters there in the lower right. We are likely to have a fourth install. there's a out for bids at the moment is request for proposals for fire station 22 we did its sister facility fire station 21 maybe two years ago so looking forward to that for buildings that are for whatever reason the site is not amenable for the installation think heavily shading or a small bad roof line, things of that nature. There is a program through KU where we lease the output from one of their solar farms. That's what I referred to earlier as on bill. So we continue to review that and we may have some more solar share opportunities before you in the near term. New this year, as part of the Federal Infrastructure Act, they changed the rules to allow nonprofits and municipalities to receive a rebate in lieu of a tax credit that was offered for commercial installs. So I'm working with finance to see if some of our past projects and future projects will then qualify for federal rebates, which can be up to 30% of the install. So a significant carrot to go after. Lighting continues to reduce. We're more in a request basis as our larger buildings have been, they were completed more in a systematic approach. These are where our facilities have need or they're doing an existing renovation. But as you can see from a dollar standpoint, they're relatively small for the program. Balance, before this writing, the general service, this is the energy improvement fund balance. In general fund balance, that is fully allocated. We'll need all of that and probably a little more to complete the fire station 22 project. We are anticipating, I should say, an application is due to the federal government for their energy efficiency and conservation block program, of which the city of Lexington has a direct allocation. So we should be receiving that, and it can be spread out over a three-year period. So you'll probably hear about that the next annual update of the amount received and where it'll be utilized. So tie things up. But our emphasis is continue to be on solar PV. That is also amenable with the federal dollars coming. So we'll keep in that, with that focal point. The corollary to that is what I'm finding we're largely coordinating with re-roofing projects. You don't want to put solar voltaics up on a roof that's going to need to be redone anytime soon. The two have similar life expectancies. so they're compatible with each other, but at the same time with, you know, say a 30-plus year roof, we're not doing those every year. So fortunately, I've got a couple immediately in the pipeline, and then I could foresee we may have to hold for a period of months, like a fiscal year cycle, while we're waiting for a roofing project before we come in with an overlay. The third bullet there, I am asked why aren't we doing this on every building or with new construction. And so my observations there, at the moment we treat renewable energy, photovoltaics as necessary. So it tends to be an alternate item on new construction projects. The lesson learned when we were doing the police sector, that that turned out to be the case, when you do it as an alternate, you lose both the meat of your competitive process which is based on base bid, but also those economies of scale. We got cost estimates that were three, maybe even four times the pricing I get on my competitive bid projects and at that we were hesitant to recommend it and budget was always a concern. So police-e sector went out as solar-ready. We did things that will make it easier to come in after the fact, but it wasn't part of new construction. The new therapeutic center that's planned for Shillitoe Park, right now I put to be determined. It's in the bid package at the moment, but the plans, I believe, will have it as an alternate, and if passed is any indication, we're likely to see fairly high unit costs, and it'll just be a value decision at that point. But there at the bottom line, then, without a directive that, you know, we want it on new construction or we want a certain fraction of our buildings to be served by renewable energy, it's unlikely to happen just out of the box. So that concludes my presentation. But I'm open for questions. Thank you. Colleague, sign in if you would like to make a comment or question or have a question. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. I want to get a little bit of clarity on one of the last things you talked about. So with the police sector HQ being solar ready, did I hear you correctly saying that basically if we wanted solar at the time we were building it, that it was going to be more expensive to build it that way versus having it be solar ready and then do solar after the fact? Correct. As an alternate, you lose the economies of scale. You know, think about the contractors are on site. They're doing the roof. They could do the solar while they're there. But when it's bid as an alternate, you're pretty much isolating it from all the efficiencies of the larger project. Another way, you know, the difference between what's the price of a new home construction versus the price of that home. If you broke it out by room by room remodel, they're completely different standpoint. So that alternate line item, if we wanted solar on with part of construction, the pricing came in, I thought, close to four times the unit pricing I have on my projects. Wow, okay. So that would be your recommendation going forward as we do new construction on our buildings, is kind of get them solar ready and then do it as a separate project to solarize them? I'd love to have them out of the box, but at that point you would want to ingrain it within the overall construction. And you could pick a number, say 20% of the estimated energy consumption of that building. We want it to come from on-site renewable power and let the design team figure it out, and the contractors would have – they're looking at low bid for the base price, and they'd have to compete with each other to get that. If they want the whole project, they've got to do solar too. But right now we break it out, and that's where in isolation we're seeing higher unit costs. Okay. I think I'm still confused, so I just want to make sure I know. If we build solar in as it's being constructed as one big project, it's a lot cheaper than doing it after the fact. Or is it the reverse? That's where I'm a little bit confused. Okay. There's three different scenarios, I think, is what you're missing. There's new construction. Make it part of that construction. It's all blended in the bottom line bid proposal. Then there's as an alternate, which is where we are today, and the alternates tend to be high. And then the third is where I'm coming in a year, two, or three later. And we're doing, we aren't calling it this, but we're essentially doing a design build. So I get some efficiencies by not having to hire out a detailed design. I'm doing schematic and just letting a solar company compete. and those pricing we're getting very reasonable rates on. Okay, gotcha. And then I don't know if it's the purview of this particular report. Can you talk a little bit about where our residential solar program is? I cannot. That's a different – you're referring to Solarize? Yes. That's a completely different program manager. Okay. Do we have a report or an update on that program anytime soon? Ms. Griggs will be presenting to us at the next, no, the June EQPW meeting. Okay, great. I'm just jumping the gun on that though. You started saying solar, I got excited, so I'm good. All right, thank you, thank you, Chair. I don't see anyone else signed in for questions or comments. Thank you, Mr. Bush, I appreciate your work and your presentation today. The last item on our agenda today, we have Director Carey back again, who is going to provide us with a preview of some of the Chapter 16 and 17b ordinance changes that we will hear more about next month. I'll turn it over to you. All right, thanks. Did you? You're good? Okay. I really appreciate the opportunity to jump in here on today's agenda because at the April 30th meeting, Heather will be giving our annual street tree and urban forestry update. And we wanted to get these ordinances to you all, these ordinance changes to you all, but some of it sort of outside of the realm of street trees and urban forestry update. So we are going to include the ordinance updates in the packet next month, and I will talk about that for a little bit at the end of her presentation. But you guys are just a very busy committee with lots on your agenda, and so getting a dedicated presentation to this before you all go on summer recess just wasn't possible. So I appreciate the opportunity to just get to introduce these to you briefly today, ask any questions that you might have, and then we will bring back the full-blown version at the end of April. So, the primary driver reason that we started looking at Chapters 16 and 17 was to provide some consistency between how enforcement and especially escalating enforcement happens with violations of 17B related to street trees in comparison to violations of Chapter 16. And chapter 16 covers division of water quality, erosion and sediment control, detention basins, other stormwater maintenance on private property. If something's not in compliance with the engineering manuals or a manhole needs to be raised to grade or something's wrong with the sanitary sewer clean out or something's wrong with someone in violation of the waste management provisions of that code, those all are well established and have sort of been through the same path through the enforcement realm, which ultimately is all of that stuff gets referred to the Division of Environmental Services. in terms of street treaties, we were referring that to ourselves, but from two different sections within the division. But then it just, there wasn't sort of this parallel track that we could take the street tree enforcement on that mirrored what was going on in chapter 16. So that was sort of the original impetus for this is to sort of get everything in concert so that when things are referred to our Natural Resource Protection section, that they're able to treat all violations in a similar manner. So there is just one change within Chapter 16 that we will be bringing to you, and it was something that was put in originally when this ordinance was created in 2009, and it was a provision where if someone who received a civil titation and penalty chose not to appeal and brought their site into compliance or corrected their violation, that then their fine could be reduced by a third. And I think that was originally built into this because with this sort of new enforcement that we were required to do as a result of the consent decree and the stormwater provisions within the consent decree, we were worried about an appeals board being overrun with appeals as our regulated community started to receive these notices of violations and civil citations and these fines. As a way to provide a carrot, we said, oh, okay, well, if you don't appeal, then you get a reduction on your fine. But what we are finding in practice is that there are folks in our regulated community who when they receive the civil citation and the fine, they don't bring their site into compliance but they also don't appeal. So they just send in a check that's a third less than what it should be. And we still have a site or something that is out of compliance. And then chasing down that final one third of their fine is next to impossible and takes up a lot of staff time. So at this point, 15 years in, it just doesn't seem like there's still a need to have that carrot because our appeals board is, you know, it's well run, it's efficient, they are able to handle, you know, the influx of appeals that we receive. We don't feel like there's going to all of a sudden be a mad rush to have more appeals just because now people are having to pay the full fine. So that is the one change that we're proposing in Chapter 16. So then in 17B, we are looking to clean up some of the language throughout and update some definitions. We are striving to align the street tree distance requirements to match those that are used by traffic engineering and that are in the land subdivision regulations because right now there's a discrepancy. Sometimes it's listed as 50 feet, sometimes it's 75 feet. So just getting that all in alignment. So when someone checks one source, it's the same across the board. Again, like I mentioned at the beginning, to align the enforcement of 17B with the other divisions within our department, address the gaps in enforcement. So currently, when we talk about the removal of a street tree, the ordinance is on the stump grinding so people can leave the stump and then that you know can cause issues in and of itself so to have a more comprehensive definition of what we mean by removal of a street tree and then reordering the sections to follow sort of the chronological process of enforcement so that it's just not as confusing to the regulated community or those that just happened to pick up 17b and decide to read it. So this is just a little more detail, again, about the removal of a tree, and that includes the grinding of the stump, spacing requirements. Currently, this is very difficult to achieve the spacing between small trees and large trees and medium-sized trees within that utility strip while also meeting the requirements to keep that distance from stop signs, from aprons for driveways, things like that. So we're just not as concerned about the spacing between each tree. We're more concerned about making sure the spacing is met between those other obstacles and crossings along that utility strip. Again, we talked about the 75 feet versus the 50 feet. There is some gender language that we did not catch the last time that we did an ordinance update for 17B. and then maize to shells, and then talking again about the associated stump. We also want to clarify that when things are done within the root line or within the roots, the drip line of the tree, that it does cause damage. So whether it's parking on the root system of the tree or placing a lot of materials, that that can eventually cause that tree to go into decline and become hazardous so sort of enlarging that definition as to what we mean when we say abuse or damage of a street tree a little bit more about tree protection in regards to that and then the violation piece which is where this all originally started so So we are going to be getting the ordinance updates finalized. We are going to preview this with the tree board tomorrow at the tree board meeting, but then we will present the final version on April 10th, and then we will be back to talk to you all about it some more at the April 30th meeting. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Director Carey. And colleagues, this is a good time if you have any initial questions to ask those, because I know we do have a pretty full agenda next time. Councilmember Menara. Thank you, Chair, and thank you again. I wanted to take this opportunity I spoke earlier about the issue specifically that we're having in the 4th District with trees obstructing stop signs and then that minimum distance of 50 feet. However, there are trees that are within that 50 feet. and could you tell me about how we move forward with navigating when trees already exist and then now this ordinance addresses that however we want to work with saving healthy trees so i think a lot of that for trees that are already in the ground and that are already too close as prescribed by our ordinances and our guidelines and everything that we use between traffic engineering and environmental services and planning is really, I think, to look at them on a case-by-case basis and see what issues there are. You know, if you're driving up to a stop sign and the tree is on the right side and that's where your stop sign is, then, you know, that certainly warrants looking at it. But if the tree is on the left side of the street as you're approaching the stop sign, then maybe that's not, you know, one that's as much of concern. So again, I think it's just looking on a case-by-case basis, looking to see if there's opportunities to prune that tree, to provide the clearance that's needed, looking at other enhancements in that intersection that can possibly be made. And then, you know, if truly removing the tree is what's going to be the best solution, then, you know, looking to other opportunities to replant to offset that canopy loss. Thank you. That's the only question I have. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. So next month when you all present, we get like a red line version with the original and the proposed language. Okay, perfect. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Sivigni. Thank you, Chair. And I actually had the same question, so I appreciate the red line for next time. I also have neighbors who they're conflicted with street trees in general. like, you know, everyone generally likes them, but they struggle because they get their code violations on their sidewalks being askew from a street tree. And I'm wondering if there's a, I don't know exactly if there's a way to manage that or if it's just the product is the wrong product that they actually have as their street tree. but i know that then if they're going like if you're going to have an ordinance um i don't know somehow it seems like if we're going to adjust this we just have to be considerate to the fact that um that's occurring so they don't know like would they rather get cited for not having a street tree or would they rather you know spend dollars on fixing your sidewalk all the time. So I'm kind of, I don't have an answer, I don't, and it's just an observation, and I don't, do you have some input on that? I think certainly a lot of times the species that's been planted in the utility strip is one that's too large for that particular width of utility strip, or it's a species that's, you know, known to have a shallower root system, and so then you do get into those conflicts with the sidewalk. In newer developments, instead of a street tree utility strip planting, there's actually an easement that is more on the backside of the sidewalk into the front yard. So I hope that we're sort of correcting that issue in newer developments. But again, with the assistance for sidewalks, with the Hazard Street Tree Cost Share Program, we hope that we can do things that help homeowners when their tree that they currently have is causing that damage to get it removed and then replaced with something that is a better fit for that utility strip. There's also the option within the program guidelines that if our urban forester says, you know, your replanted tree would actually be a lot better off if it was in your front yard or your side yard. There are provisions that allow that to happen. So that would be my follow up. So there, and is that codified like that if the distance is so much, you know, because I know that we have people that want to remove them and then they might want to put them more in their yard like that. Yeah, so if someone who is thinking about removing their street tree will apply for a street tree removal permit, then our urban forestry staff is happy to speak with that homeowner about options for where the replanted tree would best be served and where it should go. So we're always happy to chime in. just good if we know beforehand that you're wanting to remove it. Agreed. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Carey. And colleagues, we have no motions to discuss on this item, so we will do that next time. But can we go ahead and send the draft to the committee? Because the packet doesn't come out until right at the end of the week before the next committee meeting, so I'd like for everyone to have enough time to review it carefully. We will send it to you in early April. Thank you. That sounds good. I don't see anyone else signed in for comments or questions on this item, so thank you. Thank you. Colleagues, we have a little bit of time. Do you have any items for status updates that are in committee or updates or removals? Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I just have an update on the digester. I just want you to know that the subcommittee is meeting regularly. We probably meet a few times a month. And we've gone through the entire proposal. And now we're in the question-asking mode of the supplier of that. And we hope to have something done by this summer to report out when it's an appropriate time. All right. Thank you. Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair. So regarding on this list, regarding to update to Chapter 8 in Code of Ordinance relating to blasting, I'm hoping to have something. I've turned in my suggestions to law, and I'm looking forward, and I'm getting the thumbs up right now, and I'm looking forward to presenting any, I guess, later on in the year. it's just whenever i can get on the agenda we had currently we had talked about um the august meeting so i have you um pencil it in for the august 20th meeting august 28th 20th 20. huh august 20 20 20 20. we'll be it we'll be ready thank you ma'am thank you anyone else Okay, seeing nothing else, our next meeting is on April 30th, and currently on the schedule we have the urban forestry and street trees update as mentioned with the review of the ordinance changes, the pavement management plan, and the revenue and expense of refuse streetlights and street sweeping. So I look forward to that meeting. And no other items on our agenda. I will call us adjourned. Thank you, everyone.