Mountain Lakes Shade Tree Commission    

                                                Minutes of Meeting

                                      November 9, 2006

In attendance:

Commissioners - H. Carr, J. Best, S. Marshall, J. Eveleth, and B. Rosenthall

Council Liaison – L. Davis

Secretary - S. Landau

1. There were no comments from the public.

2. October minutes were approved.

3. Fall planting has been completed; 34 trees were planted, including 4 memorial trees.

Many were placed in the Fox Hill area.

4. Heather, Bonnie and Dan Dennison attended the annual Shade Tree Federation meeting. Heather and Dan each earned 5 CEU’s while Bonnie attended CORE training. They found the meeting interesting and worthwhile and discovered that Mountain Lakes STC and STC website compare very favorably to those of other towns.

5. A. The STC Charter needs to be revised. Sue and Heather will work on this.

    B. Updating new and ongoing goals for 2007 include:

        1. FAQs for web site –still in progress for 2007

        2. Revise STC charter

        3. CSIP grant application and implementation

        4. Review and propose changes to the permit fee structure.

        5. Town Club Presentation

        6. Year 2 of the 3 year Planting Plan

        7. Add ROW problems to Joan’s list of ongoing issues

        8. Establish Memorial and Honorary Tree Protocol and present to Council to be adopted as policy

 The Forestry Management Plan will be consulted for goals and commissioners will       email Heather with ideas for other goals.

    C. A review of membership shows that Jay is the only commissioner up for reappointment. He does not want to continue as a commissioner but will participate as an alternate. Names of people to invite to fill the open position were floated and a plan to contact them was established.

6. The list of FAQs was discussed and refined. All commissioners have a copy of the list for review.

7. A. Heather read her rewrite of the Memorial and Honorary Tree Protocol. Joan will review it and keep it on file. It will be presented to Council for adoption as official policy.

    B. Heather completed the clean up of the STC web site; adding helpful links, removing dead ones and adding a missing photo. Minutes have been posted on the web site and new minutes will be posted monthly.

     C. 1. Two large trees have been removed with approval, one on the corner of Crane and Morris, the other on Laurelwood.

          2. The homeowner on the corner of Pocono and Crane was stopped in the process of   removing the row of Hemlocks in the ROW and now requests approval to remove the remaining trees. A vote allowing removal of the remaining Hemlocks to be followed with remediation consisting of planting 3 deciduous trees was taken. Heather, Sue, Jay and Joan voted ‘yes’. STC will determine the specifics of species and location for the replanting following a site visit.

         3. Joan and Bonnie are continuing to work on the presentation for the Town Club. Photos of unpleasant issues ( berms, mulch volcanoes and rocks in ROW….) are being collected. Louise suggested photos of maturing Arbor Day seedlings might be included and used on the web site and possibly for an H&SA article. All presentation photos will be considered for the web site. Council will be invited to the Town Club presentation.

    The next meeting will be held on Thursday December 14, 2006 at 8:30