okay
yeah buddy
is is is there anything different about
that mayor
no do no most of our meetings we we do
that
uh okay another way for it to be uh
recorded and viewed
okay well all right so it's uh
four of us yeah so and we've have uh
a quorum so let's get started how about
that
all righty okay i'd like to call the
april bexley train public gardens
commission to order and call the roll
larry hellman here sheila straub
here thank you hi kelly
dave wakeman jim wilson
here lest williams
celeste i'm neutral yourself please
thank you
here here good
you graduated
linda subnet here susan quintans here
we have a quorum um i'd like to welcome
hallie raskin
who is executive director of the bexley
community foundation
and i know that she's probably here out
of interest
in the landscaping and the trees but i
also think because the community
foundation gave the grant
for both the tree assessment study and
for arbor day celebration are there
other reasons that you're here hallie
just to say hi and see everyone no those
are right thank you for having me
good so we'd also like to to note that
mayor kessler is here
elena andrews staff consultant grant
archer
city forester and jordan cavallaro who
is our efficient but invisible
administrative assistant uh yeah so
here we go um so we have a quorum
um you didn't you didn't call my name
i'm sorry barb barb giller
sparkier i did not see ellen bowden
yet or molly o'donnell i don't see them
on my screen
are they here no no all right
so um at at the moment um
or before the meeting if dave wakeman
does not come barb why don't you be his
voice
and vote and then come i'll ask you to
step back and he can vote
okay yes i will take a um
let's review the minutes of march 24th
2021
if there's any corrections or additions
no no no again thanks to jordan for
for um making such a great copy i had
minor corrections that i sent back to
jordan i think corrected
minutes are posted so i will take a
motion for approval of minutes as sent
okay is there any discussion emotions
remain seconded that we approve the
minutes of march 24th
2021 is sent all those in favor say aye
aye all those opposed same sign all
right
um are there any additions to the agenda
grant or eleanor mayor okay if hearing
none
then we will move on to announcements
small victories
and residents come in so first thing
bexley bloomers our volunteer gardening
group
um we met with uh grant
and mike price a few weeks ago and grant
had really a terrific idea
which was to focus our gardening efforts
on jeffrey mansion
that uh it's a worthy enterprise that
focuses what we do
it gets us primed to helping with
commonwealth once that's installed
and you know brings a sense of critical
mass to a critical area
so we are going to have our first
meeting may 6
9 to 12 that's thursday
and and go forth and i invite any of you
or
all of you to come and join us on
thursday mornings nine to noon at the
mansion there you you may get a t-shirt
but you will get no money and you have
to bring your own tools in water
yeah so this this is not anything that's
like a a government pork barrel project
and then i do want to make a correction
um the mayor found out from a neighbor
that of what i was calling original
limestone curves that we have in the
city of bexley our original sandstone
curves which i think is fabulous if uh
the mayor could recount the story
well i feel like i heard it first from
someone else and then my neighbor
was it andy or grant one of you i
or larry i think larry suggested they
might be sandstone
so many sandstone suggesters but no i
was uh
randomly the same day that i think andy
or somebody had told me they were
sandstone
um i was talking to my neighbor who had
uh
had reclaimed some of the former curbs
as
a uh sort of retaining small retaining
wall for his
front walkway uh when uh college avenue
was being redone in the 90s
so uh hit uh and and and sort of one of
these jack of all trades that knows a
little bit of something about everybody
everything and just immediately said oh
these are sandstone curbs that i
reclaimed from from college so
sadly college used to have sandstone
well we decided the good news was that
sandstone would probably be less
expensive than certainly granted and
probably limestone so if we ever had the
interest
in replacing or repairing it would be a
less expensive budget item so i think
there's good there's good news there
question i i presume we don't have any
inventory of
sandstone should we find some areas
where we would need to replace it like
brighton between uh parkview and
and drexel do we have any inventory of
that or would we uh
or would an infill piece be uh you know
like concrete where all the rest is
sandstone
i've never seen the inventory grant have
you
but i think grant grant and jordan are
having a teddy tet
okay either way uh i've never seen any
inventory in sandstone grant do we have
any
no i don't not that i'm aware of so
grant i guess that begs a bigger
question is there any inventory of
ephemera of architectural ephemera that
would be from old buildings or old
streets
in some warehouse and some part of the
world no
uh not that i mean there might be i mean
dorothy did a lot of that stuff
but i i couldn't tell you well we do
have i mean we have the granite
we have granite uh slabs from the old
city hall site
so maybe i'll ask her grant see if she
knows
that we don't know about you've got
brick you've got bread
right and we can always order more
sandstone they still make it
they still make it that's right okay i
want to remind
everybody that the mayor is on prime
time tomorrow night from seven days
with the public library discussing the
overstory
there are a handful five seats left
in this discussion group of 25 which i
think is
outstanding because the book is is hard
reading
it's a fabulous story it's well worth
reading but i think to have 20 folks
there is
remarkable so you can four states left i
took one
oh good great and i've been telling you
is like a professional book clubber i'm
in so much trouble
i think it's outstanding and i wanted to
mention that
linda zubnik has volunteered to be a
love your alley judge
on may 23rd so i'm appreciative of that
thank you linda
and you're welcome yeah i might have to
excuse myself from one
we uh got rid of all the stone that was
on our our side of our driveway
and uh somebody came over and they lived
just on ardmore and they're gonna
use it to enhance their alley so
i'm like oh well okay
okay so um and we come to one of the
exciting parts of arbor day and our
anticipation of arbor day and arbor
month
and uh grant is going to share with us
if he does return i am here i can hear
you i just
i am on daddy dude today oh i see okay
okay
um well we welcome all all young
arborists
that that to share with us and talk to
us about the winning
bexley landmark tree for arbor day 2021
uh yeah so is that where we're starting
out here
well we're starting out yes that's an
announcement of small victories i wanted
to get everybody's attention before you
know the
crowd dwindles a little okay okay
um can we pull up the agenda there
should be a picture
on there
elena do you want to do that would you
be able to do that
thank you just so you guys know i'm
going to be off camera for a little bit
because i was just told that we're
losing internet
here soon at city hall so i'll be
transferring to my
home internet okay would be great mayor
if you could be on for the tree
assessment study
uh report i'm gonna be not don't worry
okay
just all right
so yeah that the tree
is a katsura
tree that is
on 30 north columbia
it's in the front yard it's it's huge
it's
one of the largest know it was there
it's one of the largest trees
um catsura trees i've ever seen um
it's probably one of the only in baxley
i know we have one street tree
um i did a little research on these
trees and
you know these are very similar to
ginkgo trees and they can be
traced back to prehistoric time and
their their wood is used a lot in
furniture building which i didn't know
so this is a pretty neat tree with a
picture
there was supposed to be a picture
attached here
there is also a kotzera tree at 210
stanbury
that i thought it nominated yeah that's
not the only i mean that one wasn't the
only one i think i've seen this one at
30 north columbia before
um jordan are you able to pull up that
image
that grant sent yesterday uh i can try
okay and i'm gonna see if i can find it
if it's on granicus
or are we still doing that no would it
be attached to the agenda it is attached
to the agenda on the website
okay let me check is that all right this
it's really tiny to see what
you were sharing earlier yeah okay okay
um well grant can you just tell us a
little bit about how many entries you
got and how many
how many viable trees you had and if it
was a tough
tough time yeah so we had 17
um applications i did you know when we
first started going through these i felt
that it was going to be hard
a lot of oak trees a lot of large
sycamore trees
there was several a couple of ash and
several two ash trees nominated
um but then when i saw the this tree it
really
you know it's meant to be i guess
okay okay it is very unique to bexley
and
there it is good job elena
good job i don't think that was me
well whoever grant jordan mayer thank
you
i think the um the image is a little
skewed it's it's
right grant it's actually it looks like
a squeeze somehow it's
it's a shorter tree than this i'm not
sure
it loses a little bit of impact with
this aspect ratio but
so if you can in your mind just do that
to the image
yeah well it looks beautiful and of
course having the red button in front of
it is kind of a nice artistic touch
so it looks great so grant are you going
to call
the resident and um announce this
terrific honor uh yeah well i think i
don't know if we have their number on
there but we definitely have their email
okay okay and then it'd be wonderful if
we could feature this tree
you know during a very select time
period like maybe
on at the bexley house and garden tours
sheila i don't know if that'd be
something they'd like to add if
the resident would like it or on arbor
day for a certain amount of time
well it sounds lovely i mean you know
we're hoping that that tour will happen
who knows
it depends on what level we're at right
right right
so grant maybe when you talk to them you
can ask if there is any willingness on
their part to have
the property open for a small designated
period of time
to to view it yeah i mean uh
the drive their their driveway is set up
really nice so you could just
accident walk up the driveway a little
bit and you can see it and see it
yeah do you have any idea how old you
think it is even though we try never to
have birthdays for trees yeah that would
that would be hard
hard it's kind of you know i you know
upper 80s to
you know
hard it's multi-stemmed it would be
really hard to tell
what's gorgeous that has elegant elegant
lines as they say
so do they get a plaque in front of
their house or something or
um black on the tree i think okay
we probably won't drill into the tree
but we maybe put something
at the base of the tree or something
like that well yeah
we that's a good conversation to have so
we do it also during the tour of the
fairy gardens when we're doing it
at limited time right yeah
so um thanks grant for following through
on that i think it's a great choice for
the first year and certainly
it has a presence so i think people will
give people a good example for
continuing years so thank you and
any other announcement small victories
residents comments
yeah we have um our first update on
bexley and bloom
okay and so far
which the letters haven't been out all
that long we have
uh gathered 6200.
from 68 different people that's great
that's great great yeah as many of you
may know or may not know trees for
bexley raises more money than bexley in
bloom
but from um not as many donors
so the bestly in bloom is really
important for our community because it
allows
more people to contribute at multiple
levels
it just seems to shake out that way for
no particular reason
um hallie i don't know if you have
anything you'd like to add to that
but suffice no yeah i think um
yes specially bloom has over 200
donations usually
i think 150 200 you know many more
people in our community i think
you know the dollar the 25 value is on
there and people feel
you can make a nice impact with that
which is wonderful um
and flowers i think are everywhere and
people see them and are excited to
donate so
yeah well thank you thanks yes so and
uh tracer actually usually has 130ish
donors so
you can see the differentiation okay if
there aren't any more announcements we
are going to go on to the mayor's report
uh elena has no landscape applications
for us to review this time
i don't know if that's good news or bad
news but it's the news
so mayor it's all yours next thank you
so um yeah i wanted to kind of pick the
pick your brains here to recommission
talk to you about a recent um
meeting i had with some residents on
north
or south casting i'm sorry in central
bexley
and um
i've pulled this up here on the uh on
the screen here just to give you an idea
of what the street's looking like
first off it's been beautifully paved
since this photo
was taken so it's nice and smooth which
has actually i think led to
some of the issues that residents have
experienced which is that uh speeding
seems to be an issue on casting in
between broad and
the school um and i think in general
that street has a lot of pressure on it
especially during school drop off and
pick up
and we put a lot of effort into
increasing the safety of the
intersection
at casting him abroad and in general
obviously trying to prioritize what are
our primary routes that kids are coming
to school this is this is one of the big
ones
and how are we making sure that we're
putting all the tools in place that we
can to keep
keep it a safe environment so one of the
observations that i had when i was
standing there talking to this group
is how barren south cassingham really is
of trees compared to some other areas in
the city
um and this this i picked the worst area
so sorry i picked the most
of the most open uh closest to powell
here to show you but
you can see how over time i think that
the policy is that we're trying to
encourage
city trees in front lawns
and i think we've had situations where
we tried to do that and residents have
pushed back
pretty aggressively is my understanding
although i i don't think i was familiar
with these conversations
and so we've lost that template of the
tree lawn
a little bit by design i think a little
bit by not pursuing as aggressively the
back of
sidewalk plantings that we had intended
i think
but one thing that occurs to me is i i
guess i'd just like to ask the tree
commission to reconsider the idea of
whether or not we should be planting
trees in the tree lawn i know it's not a
it's not a super wide tree lawn on the
other hand it's not
an unusual tree line i think for other
central back sea streets
and i think this is a street that would
definitely benefit from that tunneling
effect
and the way in which that tunneling
calms traffic
so i wanted to get your feedback on that
and uh just hear what you guys have to
say
well let's um and and thanks to the
mayor for um
sharing some of that information with me
yesterday so i was going to ask grant
a little bit about um
what has happened there as far as uh in
filling with trees
and the trees uh recommended for that
street and what his thoughts were on
you know tree lawn versus behind the
sidewalk
uh well definitely you know
depending on the tree species uh behind
the sidewalk is always better you have
less sidewalk issues
um you have more room to work around
utilities
um the roots have you know healthier
it's just a healthier place to plant
behind the sidewalk
between the curve and sidewalk i
remember and i can't speak for this
address
on cassingham especially when we were
planting in front of the high school
we got a lot of residents really
upset with us planting trees
out there they just wanted lawn area
so um and at that time
uh you know management said don't plant
trees
i i endorse what grant said it's
absolutely the way that
i remembered that so is that me that
wasn't me was it
no no that was not you no it was not
you know what happened then and what can
be now i think are two different things
so
one of the uh suggestions i made to the
mayor yesterday was would we have the
opportunity on cassingham to do what we
did on drexel which was
bring red maples forward in the tree
lawn
and then put the sugar maples behind so
you could alternate
so you have almost an la i don't know
grant if you feel there's
enough tree lawn and enough behind the
sidewalk there that it would support
a double row even though it might be
uh zigzag uh on casting hammer i think
there's 13 feet behind the sidewalk
oh so that's considerable so the issue
there
is that usually means the backyards are
much smaller and there's less room to
play so it'd be
you know you'd have to get a lot of
buy-in from the residents
especially on casting hand because i
think a lot of those people use the
front yard
okay um the only problem with doing
a double row i feel like
um
you really do i mean the sidewalk i mean
there's a lot of issues with sidewalk
passage
and things like that people complain
about
uh constant
stuff from the sidewalk and you know
depending on the species maples have a
lot of surface roots people do complain
about those which we have an email
being passed around currently about
those
um but yeah i mean but
what about tulip poplars
would do great i love that tree they're
very low maintenance
um and they get big quick um
mayor what kind of timeline are you on
here
oh i think i was thinking of having
grant plant the trees in july and then
just water them every day
well i just i just wondered if there's
time between now and may
for a little walking tour you know we
always do best when we
when we actually know so my my
commitment to residents was just that i
would
i would i said you know the trigger
mission is very picky they don't want
your street to be slow
you know but i'll still i'll ask them no
just kidding
but um i did say that like any tree
planting wouldn't occur until the fall
okay so i said you know talk to you guys
circle back
and uh absolutely time to take a walk
and a gander
and i you know i i would also note
casting him is one of the narrower
streets in central
so it really is a street that would
benefit from this in a tangible way and
i was talking to
susan about like just watching the
leaves emerge this season on even yet
again on college avenue and how
successful that has been in creating
that
that l.a so
it's just encouraging that that can make
such a meaningful difference
jim wilson did you have a comment yeah
this was on one of my streets when we
did the
uh the tree survey or the lack of tree
survey
and i pulled up my notes i i saw four
spots um in the
those blocks of cassingham that i had
identified
trees could be placed my recollection
and
i can't say this is a hundred percent
true is
that um when i was doing the
walk there were a number of places that
from a distance looked like a tree could
be planted but either there was a drain
tile
or a water line or some other
obstacle to actually planting more trees
there so i'm i may be wrong about that
but i do think it deserves
another walk um by the whole group or
some subpart of the group to actually
look at what's
feasible there because of those
obstacles
other comments
roosevelt i live on casting ham
um and i agree 100 that it needs more
trees
um the houses both houses that are two
north of where i
am both recently had trees cut down
because they were dying the one south of
me
was damaged by a tree a storm cut down
um and then the storm that went through
last year that wiped out
so many gorgeous trees on um
cassingham's complex the school complex
so the entire
atmosphere of that street has now
changed dramatically in the five
well eight years now that i've been
living here um so i mean i would fully
endorse that i think that
residents probably it would be
interesting i think a lot there probably
is more buying i know i've talked to
some of my neighbors and they're like
yeah we would love to have a tree put in
because
you know it looks really empty right now
i also don't know
if i mean if we could plant trees on
bexley's campus on the high school there
i don't know if we're allowed to do that
or if we're able to be like hey
are you guys having any kind of plans to
do that because right by
the the high school on the uh south side
of the complex just
i mean looks just naked um so
i don't know if this the city can just
be generous and be like here we're
donating some trees in all of these
spaces that are totally empty
we tried to do that grant was really
helpful
and um worked with me and with melissa
lacroix who's the former
chair of the bexley board of education
and we submitted ideas to the
superintendent
and offered to pay for them and never
had a response
so um i i i would say that
you know it's that we'd be willing
to be helpful in some way and maybe if
we look
to the mayor's point of the entire
street from
let's say fair all the way up to broad
that we can have
a broader plan so to that point um
are there people that would love to walk
that street
and um okay sheila
yeah i would do that too and i think if
you're looking at small
trees i might sand over and roosevelt
they have a very narrow tree line but
there you know there's that whole row of
trees that just do
it's it does it looks so great yeah
that's the cool poplar there yeah
anybody else
sheila linda anybody else elena should
you walk that you live at mali you'll do
it
i'll walk good okay
i would just comment just to just a
comment i i mean
uh if it's healthier for them to be
behind the sidewalk
uh but the resident doesn't want it
there then i would absolutely plant it
in the tree lawn
i mean we you know that becomes
difficult when
an individual owner has some kind of
veto power over
um consistency on the street and i
i just think that's something we gotta
we gotta wrestle with as a matter of
policy but
that street is barren in places and i
think that's a
that's a problem um you know if the tree
line is no
narrower than i'm looking at right now
here on cassidy and
you know we got some pretty big trees
and we planted a whole bunch and uh
most of them seem to be doing fine and
if it's if it's not ideal
so be it but uh at any rate you gotta
you gotta you gotta do the canopy
and then later on we talk about the tree
canopy study
focusing on the school properties might
be a policy issue but that will come
later
well i i think to that point i had a
conversation with the mayor earlier in
the year
and said that um and i hope hallie
endorses me on this
that we have enough money to fill most
of the
tree holes in bexley now do we have do
we have it
you know at the moment would we have to
do a little finessing and
and work with a different couple
different funds yes but
i i don't feel that the monetary issues
should prevent us
from in the filling this fall mayor if
we come up with a plan
yeah and you know what in the meantime
if people do want to drive
roosevelt that street was really
treeless every all the trees were just
behind the sidewalk
and they did the street the sidewalk the
curb and then
um that's when we then did the tree
project there
and that street i when i think of the
before and after
it's significant it does
okay i just like to make one more
comment about drexel
in the fall there is not a more
beautiful
image than what happens on drexel with
the maples it's just glorious
i wanted to ask um grant how many trees
he thinks should come down what are his
expectations or how many
more holes that we're creating by the
number of trees that need to come out
you mean across the city this year
across the city yeah
that's up that's to you grant
we normally cut down about 100 trees a
year so
wow okay that's nice
so here i asked yourself mayor i i we
have
what i'm going to call a a mini plan
forward
so i will get the block on the books
we'll do a little doodle poll
and whoever wants to walk can and then
we'll have
um some thing to offer to you
and and grant and ellen maybe prior to
the next meeting and then some
more mature plan at the may tree
commission meeting how does that sound
okay okay all right so um
i want to welcome jason halliwell
from capitol university he's here to
learn about the trees assessment study
and grant i think you're going to
introduce jeremy or we'll welcome jeremy
to
our meeting now from planet geo in
greater colorado
yeah so uh they're the ones that did the
tree study so i'll
be time sensitive we'll let him have at
it
uh have you shared the screen with him
mayor
yes well he's on it i see his picture
he needs the duke to put his uh
presentation up
right can you hear us
yes sorry um okay i guess my zoom needed
to be updated so i'm good now
okay well we welcome you to the bexley
tree and public garden commission we are
a volunteer group
that meets monthly um we're
you know again we're about 20 years old
and
we love trees and we plant them and and
try and be helpful to the city
in in ways that uh i should say uh
reinforces the good work they do uh
i think you you sent the report to grant
maybe 10 days or so ago i've shared it
with the commission members
who may or may not have read it it's not
a test
but we just thought it would be
effective if you
ran through the survey for us and
the outcomes and then let us know what
recommendations are and how we compare
with other
first-ring suburbs
okay that sounds great um should i go
and get my
screen shared yes okay
let's see
[Music]
just bear with me one sec
all right can everyone see my
presentation
should be on the whole yes
anybody can't see it we have a picture
of the drexel up and up drexel circle
all right hearing no think contrary
jeremy please go ahead
okay um great well hello everyone and um
yeah thanks again for selecting us to do
the tree canopy assessment for your city
um
kind of been done with a lot of the work
for three or four weeks
um we've we've recently wrapped up the
report and we also sent over a
kind of two-page high-level results fact
sheet
so hopefully if you haven't seen that
yet you will be
saving it or seeing it soon um
but so just a little bit about
our company i work for planet geo we're
based in the denver colorado
area in a suburb just northwest of there
and uh yeah we were established in 2012
my boss ian actually started the company
doing tree canopy assessments
we've done close to 100 of these so
we've been doing a lot of
assessments like this in the past
including
nearby columbus ohio
[Music]
and we are we are also you know a trees
and technology company
we do other things we have our own
inventory software
to manage individual trees throughout a
city
uh obviously we do gis and remote
sensing which is what we used for
for this project that's the the team
that i lead
we also do tree inventories so
we have a team of of certified arborists
that visit the city
and collect a whole bunch of different
data fields
on every public tree within the city
and we also do have management planning
team as well if you were interested in
taking this kind of a
another step forward and actually
putting
you know some of some of the data and
recommendations
that we've included in our study
and taking that a step further to
actually making a plan
from that data
[Music]
so that's a little bit about us but
let's
get to what we actually did in this tree
canopy assessment
so step number one was the
land cover classification and this is
basically just
taking an image we use a
image from the us department of
agriculture it's called
nape imagery or the national agriculture
imagery program
it's freely available pretty high
resolution
and it's updated about every two years
for every
state in the at least the lower 48
and it meets our needs perfectly that's
basically what we use in all of our
studies
unless we're in a different country
so from that image we uh
create this land cover map that you see
on the left
and basically what you're seeing is
every pixel within that image is
classified into one of five different
land cover types so first and foremost
the one that we really care the most
about is tree canopy
and you can kind of see it in the dark
green color
we also look at other types of
vegetation
and those are a little harder to see in
this map
but they're shown in that kind of
brighter light green color
and that that includes any other type of
vegetation
other than tree canopy um third
shows up as a gray color in the map here
and that's any impervious surface so
things like buildings and roads parking
lots
and we also look at what we call soil
or dry vegetation which there was not a
whole lot of
in bexley and we also look at water
bodies which
again not not very prevalent in your
city
other than um the creek along the
western edge of the city
secondly we then take that land cover
classification
and this is where we look for
possible what we call possible planting
areas and these
are basically open
vegetated areas that could be used to
plant new trees on
part of our process when we're doing
this is we will go through manually
and ensure that we remove things like
baseball fields
football fields you know you don't have
any golf courses within your city but
that is another area that we kind of
will hand
draw to make sure we're being as
realistic
as we can from an overhead view
with our plantable areas
um so that second map you see uh
again is showing tree canopy in the dark
green
your plantable areas are in that bright
green color
and anything that's kind of a shade of
brown are
areas that we call unsuitable for
planting
and those include impervious surfaces
plus the those unsuitable
areas that i just mentioned before
so with those kind of two maps
in hand you know that actually a
majority of the work
happens in those first two steps um
but then the more the more meaningful
um information at least from the city's
standpoint
comes from the the next two pieces so
the
the utc assessment so this is where we
um basically look at uh in this case we
looked at two different
two different geographic boundaries and
those
were uh land use as well as land
ownership
and we basically break up the land cover
maps into those individual pieces
so in the case of land ownership
we looked at well how much tree canopy
and plantable space
is found on privately owned lands
versus publicly owned we also look
specifically
within the streets right of way
so those are typically publicly managed
spaces for the land use
we we used a data set that grant was
able to provide us
looking at residential areas versus
commercial areas and then there was also
another category
for exempt and i'm
i'm not entirely sure what's included in
the exempt areas
uh hopefully some of you are a little
more familiar with that
well it's schools schools mostly and
uh larger pieces of uh recreational area
okay great um and then finally we
wrote a you know an assessment report
that summarizes
um our methods findings and we also do
have a
section at the end that has some broad
recommendations
um for the city to take action with
they are meant to be pretty broad and
more focused on
on the data again if if you're looking
for very specific
management actions um that's really
where an
urban forest management plan comes into
place
so keep that in mind jeremy i don't know
if you want questions to go along but
before this graphic disappears
for the exempt areas were they
were they included in if they
contributed to the urban tree canopy
were they included or are they just
outside the study all together what what
does exactly
so that's just the way that the land use
was
classified or coded it was absolutely
included
in our study um okay good question larry
yeah well and i haven't
commented that it's you know it chose
the high school complex as commercial
and that's institutional
high school middle school casting him
right and i i think um grant had
actually mentioned that to us
um this is just the way that that
land use layer was classified and
provided to us
was with these residential commercial
and exempt
categories it's possible
for us to go back and adjust that but it
that is a significant change and
um yeah not totally sure how
we want to handle that but but you said
that it will not
it does not affect the tree canopy
percentages
or it does so the way this assessment
works
is we basically look at
all areas that are exempt and calculate
how much tree canopy is within those
areas
we also look at every area that's
commercial
and we calculate how much canopy
plantable space
as well all those other land cover types
that i mentioned
so we we calculate what the the acreages
of those areas as well as how how much
percent of those areas is within each of
those classes
okay okay
yeah i'll be just i'll be going into
more detail on that
okay yeah let's let's move on let's
let's go there and
yeah happy to answer any questions as we
go along
i don't mind being interrupted so go for
it
um so again the next couple slides
are looking at the entire city
so throughout the city of bexley we
calculated that
there was 39 tree canopy cover
uh 28 was that non-canopy vegetation
class
and 33 was impervious
um soil and dry vegetation as well as
the water class
were a little over zero percent
but you know not not enough for for them
to show up
um when we look at tree canopy
and plantable space and then those fun
suitable areas
that this is what the breakdown looks
like so again 39
tree canopy 28
uh was possible planting areas and 33
was unsuitable for plantings jeremy
quick question
and this may be getting real detailed
here
but the the areas that are unsuitable
because they're impervious
in effect built on is the
is the data get down to the detail
where it could tell whether something's
a deck or a patio versus grass
in backyards for example
um so yeah things like backyards
should be included in the
vegetation class so they would be in
those possible planting areas
anything that's a hardscape or a you
know a deck or a patio
should be in this unsuitable class
because it's
an impervious surface um
some yeah sometimes we do
if a city we're working with has data on
things like
buildings and roads and parking lots we
can actually
add a little bit more detail that way
and some of our clients are actually
interested in knowing
you know including a parking lot as
plantable space
because you know in some cases those are
ideal places to plant
they just require obviously some
removal of asphalt and planting a tree
in those spaces
which is a lot of work but some cities
are interested in doing that
but um hopefully that answers your
question
yeah it does uh because again we get
later on when
when in effect the vast majority of
potential planting space for
additional trees is residential property
eg backyards
knowing what happens in the backyard is
coming critical we'll talk about that
later
right yeah and you can um you know you
can see here
these are homes here and you can see a
majority of their
of their yards uh if there's not a tree
there
they're being picked up as that
vegetation or plantable space
and jeremy would you mind this is
celeste williams uh
clarifying again what you meant by dry
vegetation
um sure i i will say it's not very
relevant
in your city's case okay we see a lot
more
in the western us where if an area
is not being irrigated it's it pretty
much
dies by the end you know by mid to late
summer
which is when a lot of the imagery that
we use is collected
um so those areas we those
kind of tent tend to fall into our dry
vegetation
bare soil class and we actually do not
include those as plantable spaces
because of you know potentially
it's an arid climate if you're not uh
watering these areas a tree might not
survive
uh thank you there was very little of
that
within the city of bexley so
uh okay
so let's get into some of those other
results um so this is looking at land
ownership so we've got three different
ownership
types here we've got privately owned
lands
so and if you look in the map on the
right you'll see
in the blue color the areas that are
covered by that
so large large majority of the city
falls within this private owned lands
and a lot of it is also of residential
land use
um so we've got private publicly owned
lands um which there's only so much of
and there's also the right-of-way in
red so again the right-of-way is
primarily
your your street corridors
and these are generally publicly
managed spaces each city is different
but
for the most part most of them are are
publicly
managed um so if you look
at the chart on the left
this is showing you the breakdown of
tree canopy
plantable space and unsuitable areas for
planting
within each of those categories
um so you can see each of them adds up
you know each
bar here adds up to 100 percent
so if we look at at private properties
within those areas there was 37 tree
canopy cover
30 plantable space and 34
unsuitable for planting um
another another important piece of
information
to note though which is included in our
report
is that um you need to also look at
well how much area is with you know how
much of the city's total
area is within each of these so
we know that most of the land in bexley
is privately owned so even though
public properties have you know 62
percent tree canopy cover
these public lands only make up three
percent of the city's total area
so jeremy another quick question
is this this says urban tree canopy
potential
or is this urban tree canopy uh present
presently in place by land ownership it
suggests that this is future
opportunities for or am i what's the
interpretation of that
yeah good question it's a little of both
and sorry for the confusion
um but the utc percent
at the bottom so what's in dark green is
what's current
where the potential comes in is if you
add what's in this
light green color so this is your
plantable space
so for private properties you've
currently got 37 percent tree canopy
cover
if you were to plant a tree
and cover every square inch of plantable
space
you could achieve 67 percent tree canopy
cover
that's not very realistic but that is
the potential
um on private on private property
on private property city-wide is
um city-wide is if we go back here
and look at 39 tree canopy cover
and there's 28 percent so
67 which is exactly the same
okay so hopefully that makes some sense
but um just some observations
again you have the highest canopy cover
on public spaces
but they only can you know they only
make up three percent
of the city um the city's primarily
privately owned where you have 37
tree canopy um and that makes up
69 of all tree canopy throughout the
city
it's found on privately owned properties
um another important thing is
you had 43 canopy cover within the
right-of-way
and that makes up 26 of all tree canopy
throughout the city
so you know the these are the
right-of-way is often an area that
that cities focus on because they are
they are the ones managing those
those trees um and
you know another thing to look at is you
do
yes the canopy cover is pretty high
within the right-of-way
it's above the city-wide average at 53
um but there still is 22 percent uh
plantable space within the right-of-way
yeah i thought your data on uh and that
this is from table
three where you said there were 79 acres
uh available in right-of-way uh
for possible tree planting which i
thought was a was a was a big number
uh and then i think for it's helpful for
everyone to
later on just 85 of all the tree canopy
and 86 percent of the plantable areas in
residential areas
uh and that that struck me as kind of an
overarching fact
yep absolutely um that was
uh to me that the biggest thing to
highlight
and stress the importance of of working
with
you know residents and private
landowners
to educate them i mean they
sounds like a lot of you are already
educated on
on the value that trees provide um but
uh that's that's definitely a something
we recommended
was just outreach and education to
private landowners to ensure that
they're
managing their trees properly
potentially planting new trees on
open spaces if they're interested
so jeremy um how you know as i don't
know if you can do comparisons but again
we're
you know we're a relatively small 13 14
000
um you know residents in a a small
community
a first rank suburb are have you done
others and would these
kind of numbers be comparable is there
something we're doing better or worse in
that should be noted
right um you know i haven't i haven't
looked closely enough
obviously we've done a lot of these
studies but i haven't done
a good comparison of your
city's data to similar sized communities
i can definitely do that
maybe after we're done today just okay i
feel
i i will say i think i think columbus's
canopy cover is like 20
or somewhere right right so obviously
you're
you're a lot higher than there but
columbus is a much bigger area
right it it includes yeah well we're
yeah i was going to say you know that
they're a city i mean and we're a suburb
so we have you know
the you know kind of different tools to
work with than they do so
yeah it would be really helpful to see
what the
to know what the average urban tree
canopy percentage is across
all the studies you've done obviously
we're looking for benchmarks
um and i don't know if there's other
slides so stop me if i'm getting ahead
of things but
uh one of the categories that's in the
um
private land ownership would be i'm
presuming i i'm presuming that the
schools
we have a lot of institutions we've got
the school properties
we've got columbus school for girls
we've got st charles we've got capital
university
a lot of land area in that to where
maybe a focused tree program on some of
those
would be helpful i don't know but i'm
presuming if we could we could pull
those properties out and know how
they're contributing
to the overall statistics
it kind of looks so larry look at this
next slide that
um jeremy's got here if i can before we
look at the next slide add to the
thought of
um not just averages but it would be
interesting to see
communities that are exceeding our
canopy so that we could look
specifically those communities
not at their development pattern and
their policies because there might be
some
some things to learn from this
jeremy that was mayor kessler speaking
so he has that
that great kind of overview to
um to offer and that would be terrific
information for us to have
yeah yeah i'll make a note to make sure
i look at that
we do have a pretty big and growing
database of
cities of all different sizes and
i will say a lot of you know a lot of
you don't want to compare yourself to a
city that's in a completely different
eco region where the climate is
is very different um because i can
guarantee you you're going to
have much higher tree canopy cover than
than
a lot of cities especially if you're
going west of the mississippi it's just
a much drier environment
and unless you're somewhere in like
western washington
which we do actually have uh
close to 20 different studies that we've
done
in the seattle area so that might be
um you know that might be an interesting
place to
to look at for comparison purposes um
it is a little bit more of a
wet climate there but um you guys get
plenty of rain i think
uh would you review for the folks the um
the benefits uh i think i found that
pretty compelling and if everyone read
the report i'm sure they probably did
too but it might be helpful
just to go over the highlights of what
there you go great
yeah um do you want to spend any more
time
with this again it's it follows a
similar
trend to the land ownership but it's
it's kind of a
slightly different way to break it down
i think we can figure that out ourselves
now that you walked us through that
prior one unless
anyone has any questions on definitions
if you don't then let's move on to the
to as larry suggested the values that
trees bring
okay yeah so
um basically the way we
get these numbers is we know how much
tree canopy there
uh as far as tree canopy acres
there are within the city and we
take our values for the acreages we then
pull in some coefficients from i-tree
um and if hopefully some of you are
familiar with them but it's a
research group that's uh
it's kind of a consortium of groups from
the u.s
forest service i think davey
resource group is involved as well and
some other
groups but they're the ones who are
doing
more research on these you know
ecosystem service benefits
and the values that they provide from
trees
so we use we use i tree values and
you may see you can get more specific so
if you had a tree inventory
you could actually calculate much more
specific values
and it's really based on things like the
species of tree
uh the condition of that tree how
large of a tree it is obviously with
this study
we're really just interested in acreages
of canopy cover
so it's a little bit less specific um
but it does include private and
public trees whereas usually an
inventory is only for
for publicly managed trees so there is
an advantage to looking at it this way
so we look at at a few different metrics
if you will so air quality
uh we you know you know trees absorb
pollutants from the air and help to
improve air quality that way
so we found that 46 000 pounds of
pollutants
are removed um
which is a 180 000
annual value all these all these numbers
are annual
by the way for storm water runoff
they we found that the trees in bexley
remove
14 million gallons of of
rainfall basically um and that's 120 000
in savings annually and
also when we look at carbon
sequestration so how much
carbon is being stored within the mass
of a tree
42 million pounds are stored and
or three and a half million dollars
value
um so we we've
seen you you guys have a lot of pretty
substantial
trees and the larger the tree the more
carbon that's being stored so
any questions for jeremy on those
numbers
well so i so i think that we can say
that the tree commission is worth four
million dollars
so i think or more
mayor i think we need to increase our
budget yeah yeah
yeah yeah let's see yeah jeremy why
don't we move on again knowing that
we have only half an hour left
um yeah well that was actually my last
slide oh that was your last slide okay
all right yeah i wasn't sure what other
things you had on your agenda
well who knows we're not always sure
ourselves but
okay i know you're i know you're open to
questions and um
if you can go back to full screen so we
can see you
that'd be great sure yeah and uh let's
let's see who has questions for you
jeremy this is sheila straub have you
done any
area in central ohio
or are we your first area
yeah so we yeah we've like i said we've
worked in columbus um
that was back in 2016 actually right
before i started
at planet geo
[Music]
we we've actually i've been talking to
people in grandview heights
which is basically on the opposite right
from you um we have not been able to get
a project
started with them yet but i'm hoping to
uh it's a very similar i mean
a historical kind of suburb especially
right yep i think
yeah unfortunately we have we haven't
had a ton of work
in in your area um i think you did upper
arlington
jeremy upper arlington yeah that's
another one that was
done before my time right so what kind
of questions do we have for jeremy i
mean i
i think one of the things we should talk
about jeremy is
the ways in which planet geo and other
communities
have found to encourage planting on
private property because that seems to
be
at least my take away from is the thrust
of your report
to increase our canopy we're going to
have to go private
um do do others disagree with that
well maybe to augment that a little bit
um
i think one of the things you know once
we set numbers
the last thing we're going to be
comfortable with is going backwards
you know having a you know do this three
years from now and our percentage is
less and go out our percentage is less
so you know it puts a metric into place
that says
you know we better exceed uh meet or
exceed those numbers as we go forward
that faces uh the issue that
in general all things being equal
we get more dense every year more
backyards get filled up there's more
decks there's more this
less rooms and backyards to plant trees
um
which then puts the pressure on the
remaining front yard spaces since again
86
of our plantable area is residential
you know that puts high pressure on the
remaining lot space
on single family property so i just say
that as a matter of
of course here because that that's
something we've really got to think
about from a policy standpoint
and then likewise we'll get to that
later but as as we talk down the road
but
baby school properties are something we
talk about their front yard maybe we've
approached a little different than we've
done before
maybe the college campuses because uh it
is about finding green space to plant
trees on that's the bottom line
jeremy do you have kind of a response or
can you enlarge on that perspective
yeah i mean as we saw there is plentiful
space within the right-of-way um
so i i will say
you know there are areas outside of
those privately owned areas
to look into
as far as planting trees go
the other thing to consider too is a lot
of your trees
may be reaching some you know maturity
or getting closer to the end of their
lives
so you you know we always tell people
you need to be
planting trees even though you know your
city does have
a relatively high percent canopy cover
there's potential that some of those
trees i mean trees die every year
right um but
you could i don't i don't know what the
species of the
you know the species makeup is but you
there's potential
you have a lot of ash trees i don't know
if you have eab
within the city yet but that's
definitely a threat and
uh you know more and more storm events
happening
um you know seen just in the last year
an increase in that especially with that
that directio
that happened in iowa where they just
had
a huge chunk of their tree canopy wiped
out
um so you always have to be proactive
is all else if you're trying to
maintain a certain level you can't just
sit and and be happy with with the 39
canopy cover
question her comment too is that some of
that is
when we have uh people bringing you know
possible
uh projects to the city that you know we
have
imposed some limitation on how much they
can uh occupy the property
because i've seen several houses you
know over my sons on roosevelt
that they must have it looks to be
almost 80 percent of the land mass is
covered
between the garage and the you know the
decks and everything
and i don't know how we can you know
it's a balance between people wanting to
add on
and live here and then you know keep
cover over every square inch of
green space so that's kind of our
architectural review group
yeah i think lynn i think you're spot on
i think
there are there may be four broad things
just thinking about it and
one is i think jeremy's right we have
holes to fill in the city right away
and uh you know that's the low-hanging
fruit because we control that and that's
within our purview
uh number two i don't know if there's
anything regarding
replantings because you know when you
lose a big tree you start over with a
stick
and so you go backwards a lot in terms
of canopy for that individual tree now
maybe it averages out across the city uh
i don't know i don't know what that says
about replacement number three new
places to plant and if that's the
uh i don't know schools or any of that
kind of stuff those campuses
but then four are new policies and if
people are going to clear out the
backyard of trees
maybe we force them then they have to
they have to plant in kind in the front
yard
right they've gotta they've gotta
they've gotta replace that and start
over in the front yard
and it's not just doing nice landscaping
in the back
it's it's contributing to this tree
canopy and
and our four million dollar a year um
advantages
yeah no one of the things i see jeremy
again you have to remember we're a first
string suburb so we do not have you know
our homes don't stick
on acreage so a lot of um
how people screen their houses from next
door are
arbor biting so so i mean that's
you you'll go down the street and you'll
see row after row of arbor bitey or
hedges taxes you know certainly you know
we don't have honeysuckle in bexley but
you know there are other things so it's
um
you know i i keep wondering would your
um your slide be able to distinguish
between something like arborvitae in a
shade tree
um i would i would
think that most of it was picked up and
included in
the tree canopy layer um it
it you know they do grow pretty tall and
they are providing
limited shade but it is some shade so
we don't have a way to distinguish those
okay but it would be interesting to
yeah to see what that breakdown is yeah
and then
i wanted to ask you a question you know
where um we are surrounded by the city
of columbus and so we're always
thoughtful about
our boundaries and making sure that we
are as diligent about planting our
boundaries and keeping them as
as up-to-date as interior areas of the
city
on the map at least when i saw it it
didn't seem to me like our
our boundaries were under treat did that
strike you did did that um
did you see anything there that would
make you disagree with that
kind of summary statement
um so you're asking
and the uh you know on the edges of our
community did you feel
that it was that it was under treed
no i mean it seemed pretty consistent
throughout the city
um and i even i looked through the
columbus report as well
and actually some of those neighborhoods
that are surrounding you
you can kind of see it's incrementally
getting higher percentages of tree
canopy as you move
maybe from town columbus to the east
going up into bexley and kind of that
canopy cover is increasing as you move
east
and then similarly as you go east from
bexley
it tends to decrease a bit
but it did seem like within your city
limits it was pretty
consistently covered good good that's a
that's a
a better outcome than i had anticipated
so
jeremy last stupid question for me uh
and
and this will be a goofy one i don't
know how to put this but
as we in in our in and actually get more
dense because we probably lose two three
acres a year of green space
just through additions you know it just
happens and every year tick tick tick
um so as we lose more
open space does that mean we should have
more vertical open space
and then what's the relationship between
losing green space on one end
but growing more vertical green if you
will on the other
as it pertains to some of those outcomes
about storm water
and all of that kind of thing in other
words can we uh is that a partial
offsetting if you will of the loss of of
green space
i'm not sure i totally understand your
question as far as like
the vertical goes is the vertical
element growing the trees higher
trees right it's the trees so the only
thing we can do
we're not going to make more land and
but we're going to lose some of the land
that we have
does that put more pressure on planting
more trees
in order to continue to sustain some of
those outcomes that we're looking for
i haven't really thought about that
aspect um
but you would think that the taller the
tree
the more shade it's going to provide
potentially i don't know well the more
carbon
taken out the more uh storm water taken
out
and and in other words it it's one of
the is it one of the few things we can
do to counterbalance the fact that we're
every year we're going to get denser
a 20 by 20 foot edition are you then
thinking that if we said okay
then you need to plant a tree that as at
its mature canopy would basically be
400 square feet you know if it was a
20-foot
radius tree canopy so almost if you're
going to do that addition you need to
find a spot in your yard
front or back that you're going to plant
a tree that will essentially kind of
offset that is that kind of what you
mean by kind of replacing
the vertical yeah i mean that's on the
path i mean this we're all just patting
down the
down the path on us thinking it through
uh
but you know how do you how do you be
green how do you stay sustainable
uh under this set of circumstances and
uh you know my god you see around us
everywhere these five six story
apartment buildings and
open space disappearing at a rapid pace
uh you know what can we do to
uh stay uh stay sustainable i don't care
i don't
i don't wanna jump ahead but you
susan had asked me to research further
the
district of columbia tree canopy program
and one of the origins of that was
between
1973 and 1997 they
lost a significant portion of their tree
canopy and that led to
their we would call them ordinances but
since dc is really more like a state
than a
city in some respects i think they're
they're considered statutes
that protect these heritage trees and
these special
trees and put regulations around
what private property owners can do
which we have
you know other than on new
to this bui is that this is very useful
information to us but it needs to be
shared with other decision makers in the
the city i mean we've
already sort of talked about lot
coverage issues and i think that's
probably a bsap
issue um giving a ch
lifting the normal or zoning
requirements but
there i think like when we look at how
many trees
this survey says could be planted in the
right-of-way
i think if we actually go out there what
we're going to find is
we don't regulate where people put their
drain tiles or where the water lines go
so we've precluded ourselves from
planting trees a lot of
obvious spaces because no one
looks at whether a drain tile is going
to prevent a street tree
from being planted so i think we need to
communicate
you know about that i also think you
know we do have some
hard escape here in the city in form of
parking lots and
having regulation that any development
of parking lots includes
tree plantings would be beneficial if
we're really serious about increasing
the tree canopy in the city i mean you
look at that the sort of
gravelly parking lot across from you
know the
um the corner of parkview there
if that's ever developed it would be a
real shame if it weren't if they weren't
required to plant a significant number
of trees
in the parking lot there
yeah thanks thanks jim um
we'll get to that more more of that on
on dc but any other questions for jeremy
we've given him a little bit of homework
to do because of course he's too he's in
colorado so he's two hours earlier so he
has time
time to work before he leaves uh grant
do you have anything you'd like to ask
no i think uh everything's been covered
the question
you know um this is all great
information and i like to have it i
think
as a city we're doing great
it's great to be funded like we are and
i'm being attacked by a two-year-old
right now
so no i think it's great okay thanks
thanks
any other one yeah just last point
i talked too much but the um i think one
of the things that we need to focus on
uh is how to put this in some kind of an
information way
so that we can present maybe to counsel
we can present to other people we've got
up you know
ben will take your advice on this too
because a big piece i think we have to
do
is for people uh to be educated about
how important this is
and what it means to our long-term city
what advantages we're now
having from that financially as well as
otherwise
so that we we never take our focus off
the importance of these trees and
and their importance to our city
yeah um so i i know that jim is going to
get in this a little bit later but i
agree that having this presented
accounts will be really helpful
um i think it'd be nice to kind of
release this in snippets
during uh next week during arbor arbor
day week
sort of like a new a new little
infographic i think it's uh jeremy you
guys have done a great job of making it
very visual making it very appealing to
see
um but uh yeah i think it's
to grant's point you know we are it's
encouraging to see where we are
it's also really inspiring to see where
we can go
and i think that's uh that's the real
benefit and value of this
and to larry's point i i'm concerned
about any backtracking i was thrilled
with 39
because i think jeremy to grant's point
that's the highest
number that i have seen of any of the
suburbs in
columbus i mean some are at 36 37.5
so you know it's almost one of those
things you got to be
careful what you wish for because in two
more years if we asked for an
update it would be it would be sad a sad
day if it was 35 percent
so is it go ahead owen
i was just wait uh what do you
feel is kind of an ideal what would be
our goal to
work towards on a percentage
of coverage with the trees
well how how about like the arboretum
being first how about we have the
highest number of anyone they've done on
the study how's that
jeremy what was that do you know
on the arboretum property no no no on
the
on who has the highest tree canopy
coverage of any of the communities that
you've done
oh um that might be in my
homework assignment okay that'd be great
i think you're
definitely at the top of the list though
good um
i i do believe there was one community
in the seattle area that was 40 percent
or a little bit higher
mm-hmm okay so we're doing
good well we have let's be in the rain
forest that's why they're in the rain
pretty much well as you can tell we've
got an outstanding commission
and um you know a mayor that's
interested in this
endeavor and a great department of
foresters so
we're lucky we're lucky um
any other questions for jeremy or she
will release him to his
uh his computer and looking up all this
information
susan i got a quick question if you
don't mind no
hey jeremy this is jason hollow with
capital university
i'd be curious to know if your software
works in a way where you could outline
specific
areas such as a college campus
to kind of dial in on the specific data
for that
that area you mean to
to kind of take it out of the survey
that's done so far jason and
make it your own yeah i think i'd like
to know like how we could help you guys
improve
um and it'd be kind of neat to you know
be able to just dial in on
you know either our campus or if it's
another you know whatever the high
school campus or whatever it may
be where could you dial in on specific
areas
um you know with your software program
and and kind of figure out what the what
that specific data
is for that area yeah
so um i i don't think we
really delivered that but we i mean i
think
the land the land use
uh it's either land use or land
ownership it's basically parcel data so
they're individual tax parcels so we
can't actually look at
individual properties and what they're
contributing to the city's overall
canopy
oh great good yeah that'd be awesome
yeah i'd like to
you know talk to you more about that
maybe offline but um
i just say why i can send you jeremy's
uh contact information
yeah i'd appreciate that okay thank you
yeah that's great and thanks for being
on today really and thank you
thanks for inviting us yep great to have
you
any other questions for jeremy
jeremy thank you so much we appreciate
it
yeah my pleasure thank you again okay
and we'll look forward to getting the
you know the little kind of uh extra
credit work
yes should i just send that to you yeah
just send it to me and i'll send it out
to everybody
including you jason okay all right
thanks so much
happy arbor happy arbor month yes you
too
okay bye everyone thank you thanks
okay um you know i after um jeremy sends
that out i will
i'll send it to everybody and then if
you have any comments on whether you
found this to be a value
or not failure or what you would have
liked to have seen or heard that
wasn't included in this report i think
those conversations would also be
valuable so i i'd like to add that a
couple of years ago and grant might
remember when it was that i went to this
um
citywide um meeting about
uh forestation network station but
uh canopy study that the city did
and i i believe that when i was looking
at 30
bexley was like 35 or something 35
so we are up from a couple of years ago
and upper arlington was second and i
think that
gahanna was in the running
for top suburbs
so we are improving i don't know if the
other suburbs have improved but we
we appreciate we're working toward it
okay well let us go back then to the
agenda elena
your next stop if you're ready
yes okay good thank you alrighty so
um i have been going through and looking
at the commercial properties
um for the most part we're okay i
haven't hit some of the really bad ones
um but uh some of the work that we've
been um
doing giant eagle has a couple of things
that we need to kind of fix
um and but you know brassica is doing
well
um some of the other ones and so as i'm
moving forward i will be working with
daveford liquor to try to get notices
out to people to sort of say hey
can we kind of take care of this and so
slowly ticking that off
i did want to give you guys all an
update um this past month there's been a
lot of just kind of
following up with um other
past applicants and trying to get new
applicants kind of up to speed in terms
of what we've been working on so to give
everyone somewhat of an update of some
long-standing items that we might
hopefully get
soon resolved um blue spot yoga um i
just got word from an email this morning
that they will
indeed be removing those concrete piers
from that corner bed so we'll be able to
um
get that as kind of a visual blight
kind of removed and so um that has been
really they've been actually you know
great to kind of work with between the
property owners and then the
the tenants of blue spot um and so we're
working forward with that and also
trying to fill in some of the variety so
that's a nice little tick that we can
kind of take off of on our list
the a lot of new builds are
are still coming up so we still haven't
gotten a landscape plan
from 2730 east broad
that is still upcoming so we're still
waiting to hear that one keeping track
of that
um 424 south columbia
um that is a um build
that that's the one that's going on mksk
is working on that with dan beer so i've
been talking with him and so we were
trying to maybe get it for this month
but um it was just that we kind of ran
out of time or they ran out of time
so we're hopefully going to be reviewing
it next month um 394
south columbia this is another new build
um
and so i was just talking with john b
hall um this morning
in terms of trying to make sure that we
get a landscape plan for that and what
are the things that we're looking for
um and a lot of it is they do want to
preserve a lot of the trees that they
have on site
so um this is you know kind of a timely
discussion for us to be able to have
just reviewed that we do really want to
protect as much of our tree canopy as we
can
um 476 north parkview that's another new
build
that is coming up as well um in terms of
having conversations with
um the contractor of what all it is that
we're looking for
so um there has been um a little bit of
just some questions and i would be
curious to kind of get
everyone's input on the protection of
our trees
on private property so we have if you
guys recall
within past couple of months we've kind
of come up with the diagrams of the tree
protection in the right
of way and if you're protecting a tree
on site
if a tree is in someone's backyard
whether or not in terms of during a new
build that we would
prefer them to use what the city
has kind of said that this is what our
standard is now granted that's the best
thing that
would be to protect the trees and i've
talked a little bit with susan we kind
of think that that might be the best way
to go but i'd
like to sort of see what the the group's
input is um we might also have to check
with um maybe council to kind of see
what we're allowed to impose or what
we're not allowed to impose
in terms of you know kind of protection
of
trees on private property so i would
like to
open that up and then after that i've
got another discussion about a tree in a
right-of-way that i want to bring up but
before we go too into that i would love
to open it up to hear people's thoughts
eleanor it's celeste here are you
getting any pushback from
contractors are they thinking that we're
being reasonable
or so so let's before before we go to
that i
i uh just before we go to that i had
mentioned in a quick email exchange with
elena that
my my memory is that the um
impetus for the for the landscape
planning and review of the conditions
on properties that were going to be new
builds was to protect
the trees and and and
so that the landscape would not change
considerably
with old houses coming down and new
houses going in
and so i'm i'm thinking that maybe
before we have a discussion we should
look at what that ordinance says
because i remember when some of the
first landscape plans came
at may or maybe you can remember because
you wrote that ordinance can you then
then i will quit talking okay can you
help us with this then please
yeah so i think it was twofold one was
one
actually the the major impetus what
started it was
um essentially screening from adjacent
properties so we had situations where we
had
adjacent properties that had mature
screen
with existing landscapes that were being
torn out
without really any regard for what was
happening to the adjacent property
and while previously it was the right of
any owner to do that
um it was just being done sort of it
seemed to be being done
just as a default you know scrape the
whole site and then
and then replant something new so
preserving mature buffers
was a major piece of that and the other
piece of it was
protecting and preserving mature trees
as a part of the new build process
just providing some oversight and so you
guys have done a great job of
it's not a restriction against taking
down trees um
and there is a right to build within a
certain
you know footprint on a site within
those setbacks but it gives the tree
commission
the ability to adjudicate every tree
that's being removed
and and make it part of the negotiation
process uh
to to preserve the mature tree canopy um
in a new build situation
so does that did i synopsize that
properly i might
yeah i mean it's that's so helpful to um
remember so to help you uh let's
remember
yes thank you elena i think
that uh we stopped short you know
there's a fine line between doing that
for new builds
for the reason of protecting the mature
buffer versus a guy putting on an
addition that's
half again the size of the house taking
all the buffer out with no restrictions
whatsoever
there's a fine line between those two
but we felt that was a step too far
in terms of what was acceptable so
we can't get too far out in front of
people here so but maybe
jim i agree that
that we've characterized the record and
the concerns correctly and
perhaps my anxiety is created by the
fact that i'm looking out my window of
construction across the street where
they've
left earth removing equipment on a
i think it's a fur that's 80 feet tall
about the only tree that could hit my
house in the neighborhood
and i re i i appreciate the concern
that we not limit what landowners do but
i'm not sure the folks that are doing
this addition across the street
have any idea that six or seven years
from now that tree may be dead
and they're gonna at a minimum if it
doesn't fall on their house
have the expense of removing it and i
wonder whether an interim
step here might be some requirement that
um that when something comes before
architecture review
that there is at least information
provided to the
to the landowner about the possible
consequences
of not adequately protecting their trees
during construction um i mean these
folks
who are lovely folks i think are going
to be very depressed if they lose this
80-foot fur because
they've decided to expand the side porch
on their house
by five feet um and
so i just wonder whether i i realize
we're talking about different
different bodies and how we would
have architecture review provide that
information i have no idea
i just am concerned people are making
decisions without knowing about the
consequences of what they're doing
uh yeah i i think regulating a private
tree protection plan is is is
absolutely doable i think i want to
there's a difference between
the tree preservation with the new
builds versus additions
and tree protection across the board
so whenever we issue permits for new
construction whether it's an addition or
total new construction
that can be a piece of the permit
process we can expand what we're doing
with the
the right-of-way and go to private
property and larry has made a good point
or somebody i think was you larry about
you know you're not just
impacting your own property often you're
getting within the root zone of adjacent
property
and that can have impacts as well so so
educating and
and uh and more than educating and
forcing
the protection of trees on private
property during those projects i think
is
absolutely doable i think it's a
different question than when we were
talking about remodels i think the
the hesitation about having a tree
protection plan for the remodels was
not not protection tree preservation
plan for the remodels
was that then what would end up
happening is every single remodel would
get kicked to the tree commission
any any addition potentially um
and there's probably a way that it
doesn't have to get kicked to the tree
commission but that was sort of
i think we were doing baby steps and
we even i think ended up really pushing
for a more aggressive plan than council
was initially comfortable with
and i'm really glad we did because i
think that like i think that
it's been successful so far and it's
giving us a good experience to be able
to then
continue to evolve that those
protections well we have to thank you
for your
leadership on that mayor because it
you know it was touch and go maybe for a
minute but it was for a bit
for a bit right so elena i don't know if
that's helped you at all
if you want to continue
it it is it is i ben i might circle back
with you
um in terms of just some of the kind of
the regulation that we may or may not
have to do because
it has come up with a couple of people
of
if if if a homeowner is saying i'm going
to protect
the trees on my property in my rear yard
um can the city dictate how it needs to
be
protected during a new build or can it
just be up to
a contractor to say well we're we'll
protect it so it sounds
exactly so the contractor might just be
the biggest
okay so i'll circle backwards i mean we
could administratively try to do it it
would be a lot stronger with an
ordinance
i mean ben there may be a way to add to
the architectural review some soft
language
about impact on vegetation and neighbors
shall be
you know thought about or somehow some
soft language so that it's at least
mentioned uh and can be part of some
discussion and maybe
somebody could be sent to grant to kind
of talk through what's the best
practices but
right now we're bare it's the whole it's
a no there's it's a void
and no one can touch it right now
because it's not part of anyone's
purview
yeah so you know um
having seen this question come
up regularly you know i have become
strengthened in my views that the
stronger
the protection not not the language but
the structure
the better chance you are going to have
of a tree standing at the end of the
process
and if you would drive past the house on
on broad street that doesn't have the
landscape plan their fence has gone
around
the street tree in front we go up to
whatever the house number is on parkview
the fencing around the um hawthorne is
gone
um and it did there you know they were a
couple
uh steaks and then a little orange
plastic fence and
you know the it's it's not their fault
the contractors run over them
and someone just doesn't seem to do it
but
um mayor you have raised your hand and
you probably could be more succinct in
saying this than i no i was just going
to ask grant um
if you're not wrangling children at the
moment which i'm i'm sympathetic to
believing
uh if if uh that might be a job that our
right-of-way coordinator could take on
um so we just as an update the city has
hired a right-of-way coordinator whose
job is to make jim wilson happy
and um uh while not an arborist by
training
i think one of the things that could
happen um you know grant grant's crew is
busy out you know tearing down trees and
playing new ones not
not enforcing code and so i think a
right-of-way coordinator might have a
might be at the right position for that
what do you think grant yeah i would
agree with that so
first of all you know before we start
adding ordinances we need to enforce the
ones that we have
right the the
ice stop three projects today
um that didn't have tree protection up
the two on drexel and one on roosevelt
so i carry around the sign it says stop
work
uh notice on it the head has dave heard
like a signature on it and i just stick
it in the front yard and wait for the
phone call
um i'm actually having pretty fun
i'm having fun with it people get really
upset
[Laughter]
it's yours it's your release valve isn't
it yeah it is i mean i'm done with the
community
so i gotta find something else
if you're looking for civilian
volunteers i'm happy to join the force
this is one of the reasons why i was
asking elena because i believe that we
broadened our requirement to for a
greater stance around a tree
and i've i've seen some of that
happening but i just didn't know
evidently they haven't been talking to
her but grant's finding out that people
aren't complying
yeah we don't have anybody that goes and
looks at the site prior to construction
they get the paperwork and off they go
and then
you know i just so happen to drive by it
and i see well this isn't
compliant so i just stick the sign in
the front yard
yeah so that is i mean that is part of
the job of that right-of-way coordinator
is to make sure that our right-of-way is
being preserved
trees are a piece of that um and that
would be a really logical
uh piece of that responsibility that
discussion
starts when the application is filed and
you meet with
the zoning people that's where that
discussion starts say
these are the things you have to do and
you have to look at this you have to
make sure you do
that so they know going in and you don't
have to then just get an
enforcement picture well when we talk
about small
steps the mayor's ordinance um was
actually a big step if you think about
it and elena talking to these applicants
upstream i call it is really a big step
i mean so
that the problems that maybe you know we
get we've got
uh communicative people on both sides
here but we know some of the issues
before we start so i think that's
helpful
but anyway elena back to you are you
feeling that you have
some direction and some information that
you can
you know feather out a little bit yes no
that is helpful because
in terms of some of the contractors i've
talked to there has been a little bit of
pushback in terms of do we really have
to protect these trees if it's not in
the right of way
so i wanted to have this discussion um
so we can kind of
i i can let them know what the city is
planning on doing and again like you
said be a little bit
ahead of the curve so we can be
proactive rather than reactive
um and going back i think again to i
think was larry in terms of the
educational piece for jim i think also
what you were saying
a lot of people don't know that if
you're not protecting the tree that five
six years from now when it starts losing
its leaves and they're like what's wrong
with it
i just all of a sudden it's dying they
have no idea that it takes that long for
a tree to show signs of stress
um and and quite honestly people don't
believe it i mean they think that you're
they think you're lying they think that
the tree's always been there it doesn't
really matter
um so there's you know there's a lot
that people just take for granted with
um mature trees and they think that
people are just
we're just tree huggers and we're
totally making it up and there's
actually
there is science behind it you know
people will
face it and i think i like the idea of
also jim what you had said in terms of
letting them know listen
you're gonna spend three thousand
dollars to take this tree down or
spend 20 bucks and get some fencing and
put around
it you know what's your roi yeah
you know what if there's something that
we maybe could add to the arboretum
website with you know maybe some of
these policies that people can refer to
so as you get into this
and even elena if you're talking to
people say you know you can go on
to the arboretum website
and we have all of these steps spelled
out so that they
you know have something to refer to um
i'm just trying to think other avenues
because i think um
information and education is
you know really important uh again to
being proactive
to this process mayor i like your idea
about an ordinance
happy happy to you know back you on that
okay so elena you were going to go on to
a tree in the right of way please
yes so um and then grant
feel free to jump in on this one as well
um so we don't see
that oh there's grant okay okay so we
had
a um i think everyone on the commission
was probably copied um i'm not sure who
all got it but the email that we
received
from um from 678 vernon road
where he has a maple in his right of way
um it has a lot of surface roots he
reached out
to um grant to ask if the tree could be
removed
um grant looked at it the tree is
healthy um it's not even that large of a
tree but it does have
some surface roots in its yard and it's
preventing him from you know kind of
growing the lawn that he would want
um i think that he would prefer to have
it removed and replaced
it was then suggested that it could come
before the tree commission now
he's not here today so i don't
necessarily want to plead his case or
you know anything and we're not here to
make a decision but what i would like
um is to have an informal discussion and
ask everyone if between now and next
month
um to actually go and look at the tree
um
and have a decision or is it something
that this is not something that the tree
commission
gets involved with and that it stays
with um
it stays with grant um in terms of you
know he's in charge of maintaining the
trees in the right of way
this is perhaps something that you know
despite the fact that the homeowner
might be upset about it
um is not something that we need to
necessarily get involved with so this is
you know kind of a new situation for for
at least me to
kind of participate in so we wanted to
bring that up for discussion
and grant do you have any updates on the
condition of the tree
and um your conversation
with the resident uh yeah so
this you know typically when i you know
when i tell a resident
you know they feel that the you know the
earth is dropping off when they come to
me with their concerns and i i want to
give them
an alternative way out like you know i'm
not just the final say
on this but you do have a committee of
of residents who who
can make decisions as well um so in this
situation yeah it's a maple
with a lot of surface roots i feel like
some mulch
would alleviate alleviate a lot of his
problems the city is responsible for any
sidewalk damage
and so the tree's healthy it's doing
what it does and
this is this is part of life between the
curve and sidewalk
okay any questions for grant or for
elena
i have a question it was was the tree
planted too high originally
or is it the the um the cultivar of the
tree that
its characteristics do that that's
uh it's just the location i mean the
roots didn't have anywhere to go you
don't know how many times the
you know if we planted it we you know
we've redone the curbs on that street
we've redone the sidewalks on that
street so
at some point the roots have nowhere
else to go but uh okay
thank you well i i saw the email and he
talked about his lawn
is it in across the sidewalk because
everything i saw
photos was tree lawn yeah there's
nothing behind his sidewalk
is there a potential possibly but
normally we eliminate that when we
replace it
he talked about his lawn so i is he
aware that it's not his lawn it's a city
line
even though they say that then they want
us the most
okay yeah i think you'd mentioned that a
tree had come
down near this property grant
correct so his issue was he saw us take
down a
perfectly healthy sweet gum tree next
door and i said why not
call and see if i can get my maple tree
taken down too
all right so um elena so what would be
your preference as far as procedure on
this
would you like us to have a vote on it
or do you feel that the resident
needs to come in may and um
state have a chance to state his case in
front of us
i i think that would be fair i think
that it might be um not fair for us to
have a discussion without
letting him know that we have this
discussion and him have an opportunity
to um at least prepare and and and
come up and talk to us or even send us
an email or something beyond that
um you know i think that that that just
seems
i know i'd be mad if you know i was like
i want this down oh the tree
commissioner will talk about it we voted
no sorry and
i never got an opportunity to say
something
okay what is the address again so that
people can go look if they wish
678 vernon road we can also come up with
a form
just like a a complaint form that they
can
they can address their issues so he
doesn't have to come on
a zoom link i i you know i don't know
whether
maybe that's what we should do uh if if
if i were doing it i would say that you
know
it's a high bar for us to take out
healthy trees
uh and the tree commission has a history
of not doing that
however if he wants to present in front
of us he can i wouldn't want to give him
any kind of false hopes that having a
hearing
uh means on the process somewhere i
would agree larry and i was really
i was really impressed on the north
remington that you guys replaced the
sidewalk a bexley replaced the sidewalk
took care of that email and because
there was a property owner that wanted
to get rid of the trade
and you guys did it you took care of the
sidewalk you shouldn't have i assume he
has no other issues
so i have a question i record
does he want the tree because he wants
to have more grass there i mean what's
the
the reason for just having a i have
several trees that just have tons of
roots coming to the surface but
i mean well that's kind of i think
grant's point that we have that
condition
across the city because of you know
planting in those areas so
it would take a whole different thrust
in planting to
change that equation
and i haven't had the chance to talk to
him yet so it's just
what all right so we will look at this
and if he chooses to come
in may um we will certainly be glad to
introduce him okay larry's got an april
snow pick
okay so there's uh i think that
concludes your report right elena
right okay uh real quick for grant
um there's some comments on the
dilapidated
look of the taxes on cassidy in a grant
i think you have some answers for us on
that
yeah that's salt damage that's plowing
snow slushy salty stuff up on
the cassidy north cassidy west side
and so you have but you had a solution
for it
well we could go through and prune out
paint everything green
is that what my solution was yeah that
was it
no we would have to go and hand prune
out all the the burnt pieces
and you know i don't think it would kill
them
before i mean you know i don't think
i've seen it that
you know extensive and i don't know
where we've been a few years since we've
had a snow that big and you gotta
remember they're getting bigger every
year
so okay i mean when they were smaller
you probably didn't see it
no that's bad but now that they're
getting bigger and they're
they're branching out further they're
you know yeah the slush and ice that
hits them does more damage to them okay
so um let us know if you want some help
pruning grant
yeah okay it's that may or may be
instead of trash talks we'll have to
move to pruning
yeah i'm on board okay grant is that
going to continue to be a problem then
do you think as they get bigger
it depends on the snow yeah i mean we
can
start training them back so you know
that might not be an issue
maybe next year but maybe two years from
now it might be another snow sense
wouldn't help or anything to try to
protect them
yeah i mean i've learned i mean it's
working on broad street i mean
we got hit pretty hard at city hall with
the boxwoods there
or dying with the salt
that was on there but you're going to
replace them really soon so they'll be
fine
i am before i get my letter from elena
i already called her grant watch out it
was
just a text with some pictures that's
all i said
so grant do you want to tell us about
the tree giveaway jordan can you pull up
that picture
for grant maybe this is you know if you
if you like the idea of
sharing trees uh let's see here you guys
see that
no we don't we don't see it yet yeah oh
i
we don't seem to see the agenda see the
agenda okay oh yeah that's what i'm
looking for
all right okay it's way down
on number five
or six
no there's a giveaway yeah okay
number seven
look can you see it now we don't see a
picture we only see the agenda
oh i think you can just there it is
there it is
so those are the 100 plus trees we're
giving away
wow i loved celeste williams comment she
said it's like looking
at a batch of first or kindergarteners
wondering what they're going to grow up
to be
oh those are beautiful yeah
they're good size that someone will have
their work cut out for them
wow okay susan you're in charge
following burlap ones will be fun
get those get those gloves on we're
gonna deliver them okay
all right grant do you know how many
applications we have for the hundred
trees
uh i just have the email information
that you sent over 180 i guess
180 people have put their names in for
that so
that's great yeah it is it is great so
let's go on to jim wilson he sort of
preempted him himself on the
on the information from the district of
columbia because i think it's really
helpful as this kind of agenda
unfolded that so much of our talk today
has been on private property so jim
why don't you take it away um
well i'll i'll try to give you the short
version because there's a lot of
information
that i've been able to glean from this
so
as you all recall last month susan
shared i think was a brochure from
the the district of columbia's tree
protection program
um that basically protects
two categories of trees special trees
and heritage trees that are defined
by their size the programs actually
began with a an ordinance or statute
back in 2003 called the urban forest
preservation act
and it just created the the category of
the special trees
and defined those as all trees um
bigger than 55 inches and then in 2016
they amended
that statute to add the heritage trees
which are the larger trees
and to reduce the the size for
special trees to 44 inches and this this
applies just to trees
on private property and unless a tree
is um is deemed a
a a hazardous tree or
falls within three species ironically
not um the american sweet gum
sweet gums apparently still have a place
in
our nation's capital but trees of heaven
mulberries and norway maples
are not protected so they can be taken
down
but the what underlied this is
um there were findings made by the
council
in the district of columbia that are
very similar to the factors
that were identified in the tree canopy
study as
the benefits of trees don't that none of
their legislative history
specifically refers to a tree canopy
study
but it's clear that um that they had
done several in fact there's a a booklet
and any if anyone wants it i'm happy to
email a pdf of it called the
district of columbia urban tree canopy
plan
and it referenced um three or four
different studies the first in 97 which
showed a significant
decrease in the canopy in the district
from 1973 to 1997.
um but that being said their their
canopy is actually 35 percent
um which is not i don't think too bad
for an urban area
um i've also learned that there's a
non-profit called
casey's trees that works with the
district to
plant trees and does work including
doing something at a much larger scale
like we did
where they actually did a survey of the
street trees in the city
and there's uh and then there was a
urban forestry administration
um existing a possible tree canopy
report in 2009
and a report on dc's tree canopy in
2010. so
they've got a lot of research if
anyone's interested
in sort of more details about what the
statutes
require i'm happy to share that but i um
it would take some time and we're almost
at the end of our meeting if
it's helpful for me to prepare a summary
of the statute i'd
be more than happy uh to do that and
um and i guess the last thing i'd report
is
in looking at it i didn't see any cases
that actually challenge
the legality or the constitutionality of
the statute to some sort of
improper taking or intrusion into
private property
did you see did you see them moving that
100 inch
oak tree did you see that on any of the
information
yeah no i did not see that okay it was
pretty pretty fabulous
cost thirty thousand dollars to move or
it would cost thirty thousand dollars to
take it down
which they couldn't do so that was it so
did you
any other takeaways or insights on
on sort of addressing the the
role of of a community in
relega and regulating trees on private
property
i mean they seem to have done it
successfully by
you know by pinning their hopes on
trees of a certain size yeah
what i would say is i i think the
process was built on a lot of community
input there are
a lot of community associates
associations that came in
and supported the legislation in
hearings
the only group that spoke against it not
surprisingly was
the public utility um and
um and the statute interestingly it does
apply to utilities too i don't know
whether you could do that in ohio given
the rights utilities have
to with their easements but these
requirements apply to the utilities
as well so um
questions for jim
is it a conversation yeah i'd like to
get a copy of it or i could look it up
online but
i'd love to get a copy of it because uh
and is it because they're
kind of a quasi state not a city or that
they can do things that uh
we can't um
well i i we do you know each state has
its own restrictions on what
municipalities can do versus
utilities and that sort of stuff in ohio
gives pretty broad leeway
as i understand a lot i'm not an expert
to
public utilities um and um the
requirements that cities can put on them
um
the i do think it's interesting
that there's not been any challenge to
whether the
the city had the constitutional right
to put these restrictions on private
property um
and i i'm not an expert but i would
think if we wanted to go down this road
we'd want to talk to mark fishel about
whether he thinks such a statute
in ohio would be upheld um
just so everyone should know that every
idea i share with mark fishel causes
more acid indigestion in his life than
anyone deserves that you know we we have
pretty broad rights
and if you if you have any question
about that just look at what dublin does
that'll help you okay clarify yeah well
i'm
happy to put together more of a written
summary of what the protagonists would
be great
and i can share that next month yeah i
mean it's just really kind of
interesting as i said as i looked at the
agenda we've got the
uh report from planet geo um the
comments about
the remodeling and the enlarging of the
homes and the decreasing
uh planting areas in the backyards and
then your information on
washington so maybe yeah and i think
that when the a lot of the decrease in
the tree canopy between
73 and 97
was a result of the increasing
urbanization
of the neighborhoods in dc um sort of
being you know ahead of where we are but
what we might face in our future
thank you jim i'd love to see a a
summary page i mean that
i'm asking you to do do work but i'd
enjoy reading it
i'm happy to okay thank you um thanks to
everybody
uh happy arbor day happy arbor month
this is a great
group to celebrate arbor day with and
i hope everybody participates in the
arbor activities to come
so if there's nothing else to come
before the tree commission
we will say thank you very much for your
participation and we will see you
come may
thank you thank you have a great arbor
month
everyone thank you good luck with the
plantings
good jobs good luck susan with the
plantings yeah thank you so much