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Meetings
Tuesday, January 20,
2004 Meeting
Minutes
Attendees: David Seymour, Karen Cadorette, Brenda Cagle, Linda Keeling,
Christina Staubi, Kathleen McArthur, Evelyn Krueger, Franceska Urbin, Mark
Meritt
Open the Meeting
- Christina Staubi opened the meeting at
7:02 p.m.
Minutes of Last Meeting
- The minutes from the December 16, 2003,
meeting were accepted with no changes required.
Greens Committee (Brenda Cagle):
- Greens Committee strongly recommends
they have the responsibility each year of determining which trees are
planted, pruned, or cut down in the village. Nothing should be done to any
tree without first going through the Greens Committee. David Seymour is
currently the Village Trustee who is responsible for all tree-related
activity. He agreed that he (or any Village Trustee that has this
responsibility in the future) will work through the Village Green from
this point forward to make these decisions. David will also go over this
with the Village Board to see if there are any concerns.
- A “General Plan for Yearly Operation”
was presented to the group. In general, we should be focusing on improving
the health of the existing trees in the village before planting large
numbers of new trees. As a result, we believe that yearly plans should be
created based on the following priorities:
- Replace any trees that were cut down
during the previous planting season (in accordance with the Red Hook
Village Tree Ordinance).
- Plant any commemorative trees that
were requested during the previous planting season.
- Ensure that at least 3-5 new trees are
planted each season. Therefore, if 3-5 replacement or commemorative
trees are not planted, then plant new trees.
- Address the pruning/maintenance needs
of trees that were identified as needing “emergency maintenance”, which
is maintenance required to ensure the survival of the tree or the safety
of the village. Trees can be identified as needing emergency maintenance
during our planned yearly arborist consult or throughout the year as
necessary (for example, due to weather conditions, safety concerns,
etc.)
- Address the routine
pruning/maintenance needs of trees in the village.
- Each year, reinventory 20% of the
village trees (which will be the trees in one of the five village tree
zones). Consult with an arborist on those trees that require a
professional opinion. Use this inventory and consult to form the action
plan for the following year.
- Brenda will find an arborist to look at
the trees that were flagged during our tree inventory this past fall.
Trying to get 2 estimates.
- Need to determine who will pay for the
trees that requiring pruning this year. Will the Red Hook Village pay for
it, or will it come from Village Green funds? David will investigate.
- Brenda is working on our Master Forestry
Plan and a presentation about the plan. Waiting to receive copies of other
management plans to use as examples so that we can create our plan in such
a way that it would help us when applying for grants.
- 13 trees were removed from the village
this past fall. We will not be replacing 2 of the trees that were removed
from Abraham’s Park and 2 trees that were removed from Memorial Park.
Therefore, we will be replacing 9 trees in the spring.
- We were reminded of goal to plant 1 tree
in Abraham’s Park each year. Perhaps this should be reflected in our
Master Forestry Plan.
- Christina Staubi will be maintaining the
tree inventory database.
- Karen Cadorette will be maintaining the
map that indicates where we plant new trees.
- Brenda will investigate offering a
citizen pruning program in the spring.
- David will try and get the highway
foremen to start attending some of our meetings in an effort to facilitate
a better working relationship with the Village Green.
- Need to investigate an ordinance
requiring utility companies to get permission before they can start their
pruning efforts.
- Need to review the Village Green Tree
Ordinance to see if any updates are required.
- Need to start developing a relationship
with Central Hudson so that their pruning efforts to do not interfere with
our tree planting efforts. Perhaps they can attend a couple of our
meetings. David and Christina will send them a letter and try to set up a
meeting.
Communications Committee (Mark Meritt):
- Will publish an article thanking those
who contributed to the “Bakeless Bake Sale”.
- For the next water bill, thank those who
contributed to the “Bakeless Bake Sale”, mention the dollar value of the
trees in the village, and explain that our focus for 2004 will be on
pruning and maintaining existing trees.
- Brenda will finalize the press release
that discusses the Cornell tree inventory and our 2004 master forestry
plan.
- Mark will put an update in About Town.
- Mark will also put the master plan on
the website.
- Mark to update the donor page on the
website with the names of those who contributed for “Bakeless Bake Sale”.
- Dave and Mark will meet with the
webmaster to discuss the costs of maintaining our website and the
possibility of getting visitation statistics for our website.
- 2004 Kickoff Meeting:
- Tentative date is Friday, March 19 at
7pm.
- Still need to come up with the invite
list.
- Purpose of this meeting is to
re-energize volunteers and get them to renew their commitment.
Fundraising Committee (Evelyn Krueger):
- We are currently being charged $75 a
month to have updates made to our website. Need to determine whether this
cost is justified.
- Financial status:
- To date, we have received $832.00 from
the “Bakeless Bake Sale”.
- Our Village Green fund totals
$5446.90.
- Our village budget fund totals
$1873.16.
- Evelyn is going to wait a while before
approaching Dar Williams about doing a fundraiser for the Village Green.
Dar is having a baby.
- Evelyn would like to come up with
inexpensive thank-you notes for fundraisers, rather than using our
letterhead stationary.
Additional Business
- Review status of to-do list
- A suggestion was made to add Marirose
Blum Bump to distribution list for our monthly minutes.
- In light of Governor Pataki’s
State-of-the-State address, where one of his goals is to focus on planting
trees in urban areas, Franceska will write a letter to him introducing the
Village Green Committee, highlighting some of our accomplishments, and
describing our goals. Maybe this will generate interest on his part and he
will want to showcase our efforts.
Next Meeting
- Tuesday, February 17, 2004, at 7pm in
the Village Hall.
Motion to Close Meeting
- Christina made a motion to close the
meeting at 8:44 p.m. Mark seconded the motion.
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