Ridgewood Shade Tree Comission Meeting Minutes 20170613

Ridgewood Shade Tree Commission

Meeting Minutes

June 13, 2017

Minutes Andrew Lowry:

Attendees: Andrew, George, Monica, Mike, Melody, Tim, Carolyn

This provides a brief summary of the decisions reached and the issues discussed at the above meeting

Governance

A quorum was present.

Minutes from April 11, 2017 were approved.

It was requested that the STC minutes be forwarded to the Dillon for posting on the Village Website

Grant Funds Spending

Monica indicated that funds for the NJ grant were spent as follows:

Pots……………………….$300
Bartlet Trees…………..700
URL…………………………100
Post Cards A-A-Tree.900

Total         $2,000

Confirmation has been sent to the state. Once bills fron the contractors are received they should be sent to Bob Roney for payment.

Adopt-A-Tree

Tim reported he had received several calls about the program, these were general information calls. We have received 4-5 applications for fall planting.

Carolyn has issued a press release which has been picked up by Ridgewood News. We need to get the information on Facebook and Jiffy (?).  Manish will handle.

Village Budget

The Capital Budget has $55,000 for tree replacement and will be available June 20, 2017. It was noted that while unspent Capital funds can be carried over to the next year it is prudent to be sure that they are spent in the year in which they have been allocated. Future Capital approprialions are often based on what was spent in the previous year.  Given the amount of catch-up planting required it is important to be sure we spend the all the money allocated in this year.  The implication is that we need to be very schedule focused in planning the fall planting.

Tim reported that his post retirement replacement will be on board after July 3, 2017. Tim will be working with him until the end of 2017.

Tree Wells – Downtown Trees

Ian presented the findings from the tree well excavation. He thanked Chris for sending Ryan and the excavating equipment without which the effort would have been impossible (we did not realize how hard the sub-soil was)

There were several pieces of learning:

• The first 12 inches of soil seems to be fairly good, but is very compacted.
• The seconds 12-18 inches is a mixture of gravel, construction debris and sandy grit. Clearly this is not a good soil at this depth.
• There is a 12-18 inch cement collar surrounding the pit. This would inhibit lateral root growth and would force roots down, into the less desirable soil.   
• Other observations were made but the general agreement of the STB, after the discussion, is that we should ideally replace all the soil in the pits when a planting is planned.