There's 226 regular meeting for the Park's Recreation and Tree Advisory Commission.
Can I have a roll call please?
Board Donna?
Here.
Richard?
Here.
String.
Here.
Wallace?
Here.
And Stolks' absent.
Thank you.
So for agenda review, we have a presentation from the Napa County Resource Conservation District.
It looks like we have a handful administrative reports.
Six A is harvest property acquisition.
Six B discussion on the 2026 goals and work plan.
Six C's urban forestry management plan update.
And six D is park maintenance and recreation division updates.
Do we have anybody from the public who wishes to speak on any items that are not on the agenda?
We don't take phone calls, right?
Seeing none, we'll move to approval of minutes.
Anybody like to make a motion?
How moved to approve minutes?
Well, in favor say aye.
Second one.
Yep.
Bye.
All right.
Okay.
Moving right along.
Next up is a presentation from the RCD.
On their annual projects update.
Do I need to turn this on?
I just turned.
It's on.
I think.
Should I put theirs up for?
On the old guy, the barely.
I just hit control, delete when I.
Is that the other mics on, but I don't have control of the power point.
Or do I?
No, I don't think so.
The RCD power point.
This is mine in Jeff's.
Okay.
Thank you.
Ashley and I will be giving this presentation together.
So we'll be kind of swapping out periodically that I'll kick us off.
Next slide.
So today we wanted to give kind of a general overview of different ways.
We've been working with a city in the accomplishments over the last year.
Ashley will talk a bit about our community stewardship programming.
We'll both talk a bit about other ways we've been working on coordination planning and implementing projects that have variety of scales.
And then we'll also talk about a few other partnerships with other city departments.
So I'll head in it over to Ashley.
Okay.
So kicking it off right away with our volunteer events.
We've partnered with the city of Napa Park Smart Department quite a bit on different forest health related events.
And the first one is one of our largest events every year.
That's our green Friday event.
It happens the day after Thanksgiving.
And traditionally this is an oak planting event at Austin Park.
It's very popular at the community.
We've had families that come back year after year and they go back and look at the tree that they planted.
You know, the year before two years before five years before.
So it's extremely popular.
This year we had 52 volunteers that joined us.
And we planted 57 new planting locations.
And those plantings were kept with the in the footprint.
So that we weren't asking for more maintenance.
But also as mitigation for full damage that was done in that area as well.
The other large event that we do is MOK day of service.
This is run just recently by our team conservation interns.
We have three high school interns that run actually both green Friday and MOK day of service.
But it just happens this Monday.
It was a really successful event.
We had 60 volunteers that joined us along the Napa River trail.
And we removed really invasive and very heavy ivy off of native trees along the river.
And the whole point of that is to lighten the load of those trees so that they have the potential to not be super heavy.
And then obviously fall down.
And we removed ivy from about 65 trees.
So it was a really super successful day.
And after talking with some parks staff at the end of the day.
We basically called that project to done for the next two years until we need to do some sort of ongoing maintenance for that area.
And we also do sort of on our third Saturdays of the month from January through April.
We do we partner with the city of Napa, Napa RCD and then the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service.
We'll partner together for the third Saturday French broom poles at Westwood Hills Park.
And students really love those because they are scheduled.
They're regular.
Students need hours to graduate.
So they know that on the third Saturday of the month they can go to Westwood Hills Park.
And they have an easy.
They have three hours that they can get for their volunteer service requirement for high school graduation.
So it's been a really popular program for the last.
I think this is a fourth year that we're doing it. So it's been super popular and we'll continue doing it.
And then we've also had a couple of well two so far really successful events as part of the Urban Forestry Management Plan.
This year we did one in October.
It was in contrast to the year prior.
One of the wetest events I've been part of.
It was awesome.
We had 22 events in the down pouring rain.
They brave just absolute mud and slap to plant 53s and mulch the very entrance of Vineyard Park.
Here in Napa it was really fun.
The volunteers absolutely loved it. They had a really great time.
So that was really great.
And then we have another one scheduled for March 7th out at the Napa Gulf Course.
And then we also as part of that Urban Forestry Management Plan.
We've done two we will have done two virtual workshops.
The first one was about three regulations.
And Jeff joined us for that and kind of led that one.
And that's available on our website on our YouTube page and also the city Urban Forestry webpage.
And then our next program that's coming up is right to you right place.
That's going to help people figure out what tree to plants if they've got a certain kind of soil.
They've got a certain amount of space. They've got other trees around.
Just kind of helping them figure out what kind of tree should go in the space and area that they've got.
And then the last thing on this slide.
We are starting kind of a newer ish partnership.
Doing a tree give away as part of the.
The street tree permit.
And we're working with again Jeff and his crew at city parks and.
The city managers, the sort of climate program.
And so city parks folks are going to take street trees.
So folks who want to put in street trees.
City parks will do the site visits.
They will do the recommendation and things like that.
And then folks who want to put in trees behind the sidewalk or in their backyards.
And then they will take on the site visits and things like that.
Make the recommendations and send that off to parks and then that.
We're hoping that that.
$200 fee will then be able to be waived.
Yeah, and then the goal of that is to really just increase can't be covered here within the city.
Good night.
And then I want to really briefly take a minute to introduce.
The Napa weed management area.
This is a countywide coordination on invasive weed management.
This is something that was in existence for a while.
Has been in existence multiple times in the past.
We recently got a new three year funding grants from the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
And this is we're hoping that this is going to just be able to allow us to bring together different agencies and organizations and community partners.
To focus on education tools volunteer efforts.
Instead of all of us working in our individual silos.
Bring everybody together to have a plan for the county.
So our funding is emphasizing coordination, not direct treatment.
So coordinating volunteer events with the city of Napa and other partners.
Supporting meetings, workshops, educational materials, things like that.
I do want to mention that an MOU is not required to participate.
So if anybody from city parks departments or other not just city parks other city departments would like to participate.
We welcome them to participate.
And let us know how you experience weeds and how you deal with weeds in your in your day to day work.
And then the really big thing that we're trying to do is advise on the upcoming countywide.
IPM policy. So weeds are a big part of integrated pest management and the weed management area is a big part of advising on that.
So I'm going to hand it over to Ali.
So as Ashley mentioned, we've long history of working with the parks department to do volunteer room removal events and we saw a really important opportunity to develop a larger management vision for Westwood Hills Park.
We have funding from the Department of Conservation Regional Forest and Fire Capacity programs who are able to provide this planning process to the city.
Forest management plans kind of in contrast to an urban forest management plan really drill down into that specific property.
What are the current conditions of the property, the goals and objectives of the landowner land manager.
Can ongoing maintenance needs and really codify that into this living document that can help guide those management decisions over time.
And one thing that can be really valuable about these, these plans is that they are these cooperative plans that have been developed by the Board of Forestry and natural resource conservation services.
And so it's kind of a standardized plan that's recognized and adopted and can provide a pathway for implementation funding for certain grant programs that require these plans.
So we have completed the plan for Westwood Hills Park have gotten feedback from Jeff and Brianna on that plan.
And we worked with a registered professional foresters, a cell clifton and developing that and it's just going out for final signatures from the registered professional forester now.
So that's exciting. Next slide please.
And kind of really related to that is some larger scale of room removal that we'd like to support at Westwood Hills.
We have funding that we secured from the state coastal conservancy to support some initial priority treatments.
You can see in the map that's on the screen there that darker green is all the areas where there is French broom in the park.
Our volunteer efforts are really phenomenal but in order to make a bigger dent in that we wanted to bring in some additional resources that will help to mitigate wildfire risk and improve forest health.
This is a really important wildland urban interface where there's a lot of wildfire risk to the community.
And so we are right now working on figuring out exactly how many acres of that that about 40 acres will be able to treat.
The treatment method that we've aligned with parks department on includes cutting, piling and pile burning the broom and then using this kind of novel technique of flaming the resprouts as they come up the next growing season.
The treatment methods that can be used but this is one that kind of fit best within the city's goals.
You know we'll need to be taking into account not only how far funding can go in that initial treatment but taking into account the longer term maintenance needs.
We have this funding through 2029 so we'd like to think about like at least having a couple rounds of follow up treatments to make sure we're making as big of a dent as possible in that room management.
We also built in some funding for community outreach and education.
It's obviously a very highly traffic park.
We want people to understand what we're doing there and why.
So see the opportunity to do kind of educational walk in talk.
We've talked about just broader outreach strategies to the neighbors and community members in that area.
And then you know it would be cool to eventually have some durable signage that could also educate people about the kind of ongoing management of the park.
And then you know as I mentioned there's going to be ongoing maintenance needs there's also you know unlikely that we're going to be able to treat all of the rooms that's where the integration with the volunteer programming can be really effective and thinking about where those targeted areas that the volunteers can support ongoing maintenance for year over year.
And I also want to mention you know we're thinking on our end about other sources of funding that could expand the treatments at Westwood Hills Park.
There's a wildlife conservation board grant that our statewide RCD agency is seeking funding through that could support some additional treatments at Westwood.
And then you know beyond the broom there's obviously opportunities to think about the Eucalyptus along the trail when you're walking in that pose a lot of safety and wildfire hazards and another.
A print improvements that could be made longer term. Next slide. Oh, and I'll pass it to Ashley, the talk about
Austin. So, Austin Park is about really exciting news in Austin Park. We are looking at about 16% survival
of trees planted over the last 11 years, which might not sound like a lot, but in wildlife restoration,
where you're not using irrigation, we're looking at 15% is the norm. So, we're actually doing better than the norm, which is exciting.
So, we're really excited about what that looks like. So, we have had a lot of success despite, you know, the last year
has been a little bit touching go for us. We had a really huge boom and full populations of wolves are like a little
rodent that's loves to eat the bark of our small baby oak trees. And that kills them almost immediately or can kill them almost immediately.
A lot of our oak trees were able to respawn out from the roots, which is really exciting. So, oak trees are very resilient. It's one of the reasons why
I love them so much. So, a lot of them respawned from the roots, but a lot of them are only so alive because we had a really great core of volunteers who came out many, many times to help us
create rings of like, defense around each and every one of the trees that are planted there. There are over a thousand trees planted all some park by napar city volunteers.
And if we didn't have some of our dedicated volunteers, we wanted to be even known that we had an issue. We had a volunteer come in and say, hey, all of a sudden, you know, we have 20 less trees in this one spot, then we had a month ago. And that's a big issue. That's a problem. So, we're really lucky that we have such great volunteers doing a lot of really great work for us.
We also are really, really lucky that through another grant, a U.S. Forest Service grant, we were able to hire conservation core north bay.
They actually did work on over 800 trees at Austin Park. You can see in that photo they basically just used weedweckers and created giant, like bear areas around each one of the plantings.
And again, that just discourages Vols from being near the trees because they don't have a place to hide within that grass.
So that was a really big deal. Having that weed reduction happen, I'm really helped to reduce the full damage that we could have potentially seen throughout the summer last year. So really, really excited that we were able to have that partnership.
And just because we wanted to keep it exciting and turn it back over to Ally.
I think it's just a testament to how integrated our programming is.
One other thing I just wanted to mention about Austin is, you know, we see some opportunity for longer term planning there. And we do have a Forest Service grant that has some flexible budget to think about how we want to utilize that.
So, you know, it would be a little different than a Forest Management plan, but could provide some support and thinking through kind of that longer term vision.
And then, kind of related to this, we've been working with the City Napa Fire Department, as well as with support from Parks Department and our collaborators at Napa Valley Coad and Napa Firewise to develop a community wildfire production plan for the City of Napa.
This has been a really nice process to go through. You can see the map that's up on the screen there shows wildfire risk and you can see, you know,
There's good reason why we're focusing on places like Westwood Hills where that is a really high wildfire risk in an area that leads into urban, you know, highly populated urban spaces.
So, this planning process has involved a lot of engagement with local partners, agencies, community groups, and that we now have a completed draft of the CWPP.
We're working on translating it into Spanish so that it's accessible to our community and expect that it will go to Council this spring for adoption.
And you know, I want to mention that through our collaboration with the City, this plan has a list in addition to highlighting kind of what are the known hazards and risks throughout the city,
What are the kind of resources for mitigating those risks that produces an action plan that has a project list and a method of prioritizing those.
And that does include projects that we've identified in collaboration with the Parks Department and like the Westwood Hills work that we talked about opportunities for Austin Park.
And then kind of synchronization with the urban forest management plan and, you know, being able to eventually incorporate those identified needs into this planning process.
And I want to highlight, in addition to, you know, planning the boots on the ground implementation projects.
This, this planning process identifies a lot of the community outreach and education needs regarding wildfire mitigation and emergency preparedness.
We did some surveys of the community and there's most people don't know where their evacuation zone is.
Most people in these urban spaces are a little bit less kind of familiar with how do you pack it go back and all those types of things that we all need to be prepared for.
So we see a lot of opportunity for that type of education going forward.
Next slide.
I actually alluded to the Forest Service grant that supported some of the work at Austin Park.
This is a cross jurisdictional grant that we were awarded in collaboration with city andapa, American Canyon and St. Helena as well as American Canyon Community and Parks Foundation and the buying trail.
I won't get in too deep into the goals of this work in addition to supporting tree canopy support education programming and workforce development.
And we have some opportunity to figure out where there are some additional planting locations within the city that we can support.
And additional educational needs so Ashley mentioned a few of the educational workshops that we've done but we're always open to other ideas of what what those needs might be within the community.
Next slide.
I also just wanted to mention we're working on a grant proposal for the Cal Fire Forest Health grant applications that are opening up the spring.
And we've done this in collaboration with the city andapa water division fire department.
As well as the Napa open space district and private landowner stoned vineyards and our partners in Lake County at Lake Resource Conservation District.
And this has been an exciting project to develop kind of a similar pathway where we first developed these management plans for Lake Tennessee and more creek park and the snowed in vineyard.
And then use that to help inform the grants that we're developing.
So I think it's just a nice example of the way that we can help support some of this planning and fund development with our partners.
So hopefully we'll be successful with that funding solicitation.
And back to Ashley.
So just really quickly talking about two other city departments that we work with a lot.
And we have a really great long-standing partnership with the city water division.
We support the water wise landscaping workshop series in the fall.
We do some in the fall and some in the spring.
Talking about drip irrigation conversion, picking the right plants for your different kind of soil and irrigation techniques.
And all kinds of things like that.
And also talking about landscape design as well.
And we also are the primary coordinators of the climate friendly garden tour.
And we did some math recently for a volunteer event that we did.
And we found out that we have actually reached over 13,000 Napa residents through the garden tour.
So I think that's a really exciting benchmark that we've reached since 2011.
We are in the planning phase of the climate friendly garden tour right now.
It will be held on May 17th this year.
So we are in the thick of it right now working with Pat and Josh over at city water.
So that's a really exciting partnership that is always growing and is a really robust partnership.
And then the other one we have is we're working with the city manager's office to work on some climate climate action programs.
And then climate action outreach.
We hosted a summer workshop series for residents focused on practical everyday climate actions.
And that's called the rooted and action week.
And we offered that in both Spanish and English.
So we had translators available so that people who only spoke Spanish were able to participate as well.
And those focused on reducing food waste, growing food indoors, repairing and reducing household items.
We did like a repair fair, things like that.
And that was pretty successful and people really enjoyed a lot of those programs as well.
And they're currently partnering with the city manager's office to lead listening sessions with community based organizations to.
Together input on improving electric vehicle and bike charging infrastructure throughout the city and focusing on disadvantaged communities as well.
And we're working on expanding partnerships with organizations such as.
Napa community housing in the family resources center.
And we're just laying groundwork for future programming with a lot of those different organizations community based organizations.
To just talk about electric.
Electrifying the city of Napa and getting more electric infrastructure throughout the whole city.
And I think that's all we have.
We have questions we'd love to.
We'd love to answer some and we'll.
We have questions we can also feel free to email us as well.
Yeah.
Thank you for your presentation.
Yeah.
You guys work too.
It's a team.
Very good.
Yeah.
Practices.
I'm just curious from a historical framework.
The the fires has there ain't been big fires at either Austin or Westwood field over the years.
I've just curious.
And how bad were they what.
Maybe we know that here.
I know that fire history is in the Westwood forest management plan, but I'm trying to remember.
Jeff, do you remember when that last fire.
Is that there might have been like.
I can't.
I mean major.
I can't remember what's in that plan.
Yeah.
There.
But there hasn't been a significant fire in a really long time.
And that's partially, you know, the issue is that fire hasn't been on that fire adapted landscape.
A long time.
And so.
A lot of overgrowth.
That's allowed the broom to really really get.
Yeah.
Well, it's good.
You want to keep it that way.
You know, something's working.
Yeah.
I was curious about at Westwood.
There's that little nature center there.
And there's a current part.
Whose control is.
Is that under?
Where?
Where is that.
The fact you're in the recreation department.
That building is least.
From the Parks and Recreation Department to the nonprofit.
So they're totally separate.
Yeah.
Oh.
Okay.
That's it.
So I had.
I'm going to ask a really dumb basic question.
So resource conservation district.
What type of organization is that?
Is it.
Is it a foundation?
Is it.
It's.
How.
What's your budget?
How are you funded?
Are you.
You you're obviously staffed.
Yeah.
We're a public agency.
Okay.
And resource conservation districts were established.
And response to the dust.
But without funding based.
So we are primarily.
We get maybe 5% of our annual operating budget through taxes.
But the rest is through grants and contracts.
So that's why we're constantly going after grants.
Like some of what I was mentioning.
Up there.
We can't accept donations.
Like a nonprofit does.
That was that was going to be a matter of question.
Because obviously you're really leveraging volunteers.
Which is fantastic.
But as a resource conservation district.
You cannot take.
We can't.
Yeah.
But that's not a big part of the way.
We essentially operate.
Like a nonprofit.
But we're we're a public agency.
Okay.
The part of the get guide every year.
And you know.
You know.
A fair amount of money.
We've got it every year.
Yeah.
I'm on the.
Park Foundation board.
So I'm like.
Hey.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm going to prove kind of donor engagement strategy as an organization building out collateral.
Yeah.
I think, you know, we're one trying to increase our name recognition within the county as well as help people know you can donate to us.
So from a staff perspective, then.
I mean, how many folks actually work for the conservation district?
We have a team of 18.
We've grown pretty significantly in the last eight years.
I think eight or nine years ago we were about a team of nine or ten.
Our budget has also increased from about a three million dollar annual operating budget to eight million dollar annual operating budget.
So we've really been trying to increase kind of the scale of work we're doing.
And the impact we're having in the community.
Our forced health program is relatively new.
It really grew out a response to the the 2017 and 2020 wildfires.
So we've a long history of planting and restoration, but now we're doing a lot more work in force management planning feels reduction.
And and and that side of things as well.
So as you are pursuing partnerships or reaching out to businesses and whatnot as they donate to you or as they partner with you,
there's a tax benefit to them as well because even though again, you are a public agency.
That money is intended to be a taxed up small.
Exactly.
Okay.
Thank you.
Just a couple.
And Joe was asking you about funding. You mentioned taxes. Are those property taxes or assessments on the property tax bill? What sort of taxes do you receive?
I believe property. I might need to double check that to be positive. But it's small. It's like if you look at our pie chart of where all our funding comes, you can barely see that sliver on the chart.
In the city of Nevada, I don't think it's all of the Nevada. But it was like when we were first founded, was when like our funding base.
And from what are funding base established? And it's very strange.
Okay.
The President is on how to calculate it.
In the Westwood Hills implementation part of your presentation, in the handout, I'm not sure you addressed this.
I missed it. What is flaming of rescrout?
Yeah. So it's essentially like, after we cut back the broom, and there's new growth coming up the following season,
it's basically taking like a torch and flaming those sprouts as they're growing up.
Yeah.
With a torch, I wonder if that would work at home.
You could try it, but I would recommend getting advisement on it.
Most of my weeds are in the bark, so I think the bark would catch fire before he leaves.
We'd be very careful with that.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Okay. Next up is item six A and update on the harvest property acquisition.
Exciting news. We are the proud owners of a vacant abandoned middle school.
I know. It's been a while since I've seen you all but we closed on the property mid December.
So the transaction recorded, I think, December 12th.
We took the month of December to just button up some final things that we needed to do in transitioning the property,
but we opened it back up for public use starting January 3rd or maybe second.
We had some groups sneaking in there.
This is obviously a huge endeavor for the community, a huge endeavor for providing recreational services and amenities to the community,
being a 27 acre property. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what's going on out there now,
kind of the interim plan and then what our plan is over the next year or two and ultimately designing what will ultimately be constructed on that property.
So even the school had been shuttered for a few years. There were numerous community groups,
nonprofits and sports organizations that were renting field space, gym space over the past few years.
So collectively there was about 17 groups who rented about 2,500 hours of space.
You can see the breakdown about 950 hours and then 1,550 gym hours.
And that split over there are two gyms on the property.
Playground Fantasco, which is operated by the city that was originally constructed upon a least parcel of that property.
So now we ultimately own that property.
So our intent was to make sure that we didn't disrupt these groups or did so is minimally as possible because one of the reasons we were,
one of the primary reasons we're very, we're interested in purchasing harvest was to provide additional field space in court space and gym space.
So we want to be mindful of that as we look to the future.
So we are currently operating the small gym, the large gym, the synthetic turf field,
and then the track that goes around it and then there are two natural baseball fields at the back.
So we've accepted reservations through June 30th.
We plan to accept reservations on like six months basis moving forward until we know definitively what the construction timeline will look like.
And construction will likely at least at some point impact some of these.
These areas that are currently being utilized by the community.
The picture of the track right now.
We do have four full-time staff out there with lost lost floors being closed for construction.
We took those four staff that work out of lost floors and they're over at harvest at least temporarily.
It's good for us to have eyes on the property and have a presence there during the day.
One of our first orders of business is going to be a demolition plan.
It's an attractive nuisance.
It's already getting it.
It has been getting quite a bit of a vandalism over over the years.
It is in the city's best interest to get the vertical structures down as quickly as possible.
It yesterday's city council meeting council approved an allocated five million to go ahead and proceed with the demolition and that there should be.
And then some funding remaining to at least initiate some of the planning and design services.
So I don't have a timeline yet, but now that that funding was awarded will assemble a city team and start looking at what the demolition plan looks like.
Here's just an aerial view of the property.
I called out in the red box that's the old gym.
At this point in time, that is the only structure that will remain as far as the school buildings go and all the surrounding school buildings are intended to come down.
The old gym gets a lot of use so our first preferences to rehabilitate or renovate that building unless we learn that it's cost prohibitive to do so and that it's we know for sure it's cheaper to demolish or demolish it and build something new we're going to keep it up until we know that for sure.
And then right by that little small pool and you can see my mouse.
This is the new gym and this is in good conditions of that is remaining as well.
The first big lift will be to initiate community engagement.
It's very important to the city that it's a transparent, it's an inclusive, it's a community driven process in developing what will ultimately be constructed.
It doesn't even have a name yet we keep going at the harvest recreational complex or harvest complex.
What will be built upon the site so we have this for phased approach to community engagement.
I'm going to walk through this just at a very high level but I want to make sure you guys have an understanding of just how robust of a process this will be how many touch points there will be with the community and with you all as stakeholders as we move through this process.
So four phases phase one is connect phase two is outreach and consult phase three is involved in collaborate and the final phase phase four is to share leadership.
The good news is all our work over the last few months is we have done the preliminary phase one work already just anticipating that this time was coming when we would close on the property and we would want to be positioned.
To pivot quickly we know there's going to be high community expectations and desires and demands to do this as quickly as possible which is why.
Over the past few months we conducted the statistically valid survey.
The in person community meeting you all participated in one of the two leadership alignment workshops with the commissions and then beyond the statistically valid survey we did the city wide bilingual survey and I'm pleased report we had over 1500 responses to that.
So we are compiling all this data this will all be coming back to you as like the very first layer of information in starting to.
Our particularly what the communities priorities are and it's very interesting there was a lot of alignment near parallel alignment between the statistically valid survey and the community wide survey.
So we are once we have our.
Architect and design firm on board and I'll talk a little bit in a minute about the process that we're going through but once we have.
Our team assembled and on board we will launch into phase two.
It's anticipated that this will likely occur it's not great to do community outreach at the peak of summer so we're likely going to try to target like august like right after kids go back to school you'll see a host of.
Opportunities to participate so phase two outreach will analyze and kind of present that phase one all that work that we just did will unveil the results and then we'll.
Pivot and talk site specifically about harvest so we to this point we just kind of asked generally what is missing in recreation what do people want.
And as we go into phase two we're going to actually start to focus the what those desires and needs are talk specifically about the harvest site we're anticipating four town hall meetings.
To write on site to make sure we're touching that local community one of them will be completely in Spanish.
We'll do a city council work session to hear from city council kind of what their.
Their desires are for this the future of this property and then do about 10 to 15 stakeholder focus group meetings you all are obviously going to be a very active see if you didn't know already you all are going to be very active stakeholders.
In this process and continue to do you know.
As much as we can connect with the community so there that there are aware of their opportunity to participate and there's just aware that this very exciting thing is is taking off community events local neighborhood outreach civic organization outreach.
And then we will transition into phase three phase three will focus on programming and design alternatives.
It is ultimate the ultimate goal we are working for is to be at two design concepts by the end of twenty twenty six so two ultimate kind of concept designs of what the potential layout would look like and what the cost associated with those two alternative layouts looks like.
So once we have these two concepts they'll be three community design review meetings where we can talk through the pros and cons the cost alternatives kind of the options associated with each of the two designs again continue pop pop up and outreach community events local neighborhood.
Outreachable likely do another online boating tool or survey where the community can vote on what what their preferences.
And then ultimately at the end of phase three that we will be hopefully selecting one of the two design alternatives and then we will transition into phase four which is to really communicate what the final concept design is.
Make sure we're updating stakeholders educating the community and which design alternative is actually transitioning into full the design development phase and ultimately construction documentation face.
So because we're excited we know the community is excited to get this started as expeditiously as possible the city released an RFP request for proposals to select an architectural planning and design firm they need to have.
All the subs on board as they submit their proposal and we will have the planning firm actually lead the community outreach so they're hearing first hand kind of what the community desires.
And if all goes according to our tentative calendar council could potentially be awarding that agreement as soon as May 5.
And again with the phase two community engagement hopefully kicking off in August.
So that is very high level kind of overview of where we are headed here over the next couple of months.
And I'm happy to answer any questions you have either about material I went over or just about the property in general I know.
Just a couple of click on to be on a remind me is this I essentially plan just for recreational use or but will city offices be included is their housing what what are the elements.
According to the city's general plan and in council certainly reserves the right to give us direction in either way but the general plan was just recently adopted and it calls for 2.53 acres of high density housing on the site.
So ultimately it's a 27 acre site so we're looking at 25 solely for public recreation great.
Who was who was running the gym and the track in the fields before the city to cover I mean if these folks were using it didn't they have to like book it and pay the fee to somebody who was running it.
This will distract us okay even though they tried it down they'd still okay.
Yeah Brian this is state of California have any.
You're doing with the building this you know they development this I get to work with the state at all they get to satisfy anything from them so.
Not that we anticipate all of the funding for the development of the site will be local dollars. The city council established a JPA, so that they are positioned to be able to issue an ultimately issue a bond to be able to develop the property.
So all local funding.
Brianna, I got to tell you, I'm really impressed that the job you and your staff have done with this to wrap your arms around this project and plan it to this extent.
It's really impressive.
But I assume this has created a major workload for the department.
You mentioned shifting some field staff over to the school. How are you coping administratively with it?
We did request and thankfully were granted some additional maintenance help because 27 acres is a bigger lift for Jeff and his team, so he's getting one limited term position and one promotion for another lead worker.
And then we thankfully got Ali Konig, some help. Another limited term position was approved, so we have another management analyst who started this week.
So Ali now has a full time staff working with her who will hopefully be able to take on some of the smaller part projects so that Ali can stay more focused on harvest.
And you know, that's just to get us through this design and construction process because once we know what's going to be built there.
Whether it's, we know the pool was the number one ask in both the community survey and the city wide survey.
So once we know that a pool will be built or what size that pool will be, we'll have to start wrapping our head around the ongoing operational costs of staffing and lifeguards and operating a full facility of that magnitude.
Okay, so it's under under control. Hopefully.
Does the city view this as a potential source of income over the years?
It will offset some of its expenses in revenue, but it will not fully cost recover.
Yeah, if you can get a facility even to 50% then that's good. So there will be some subsidy.
But that subsidy would likely come in the form of property taxes and develop perfees. Where would the offset measure G.
Thank you very much, measure G.
Yeah, the solar panels and that part of the package.
Yes, we now own a solar field.
We transferred the solar purchasing power agreement over to the city.
I want to turn it quite a few years left on the agreement. We do have an out clause as well.
It's it's operational and we'd like to keep it operational as long as we can unless the design for the site, like it must make sense to put something there and it just needs to come down.
We're hoping to keep it as operational as long as we can and even once we do have a design for the site.
It's likely to be a phase construction. I mean, this is just a really big project.
So ideally if we could take the solar field down in like phase two or phase three and keep it up a little longer.
That would be ideal, but all that's going to be dependent on the actual design that the community lands on.
Okay, thank you very much.
Next up is item six B discussion on the 2026 PRTAC goals and work plan.
So typically in January, we do the chair vice chair, beak pack wrap, but if you haven't noticed we're still a little light we're down to two positions.
We have applications in so that's good. We have a student application in as well.
Interviews are tentatively scheduled for February 9th.
So we in applications are still open. People can still apply and still be considered by council on February 9th.
So hopefully we'll be getting you guys some help shortly.
And once we do that, then we'll look at the chair and vice chair and be pack wrap. So that's why that's not on typically on our January agenda and is not tonight.
I did want to at least look at your goals for 2026. So what I put in the packet was what you did in 2025 and then I highlighted.
The things that we didn't get to and there was not a whole lot. We did pretty well last year.
So we didn't necessarily have a specific nap of light at our festival highlight and we did not have course code golf course come out, but they're actually scheduled to come next month.
So we're just a little behind schedule on that.
Ultimately, I think we need to move forward and come up with a plan for 2026 and then starting in 2027.
I would recommend we kind of do a two year work plan to align with the two year budget to align with the two year council focus areas, but
We'll at least need to tackle 2026. So one thing that we know I need to weave into your 2026 plan is all the hardest related items.
So that's going to be like bringing you back phase one community outreach and what we heard from the community and what they're asking for.
And then you are stakeholder, you're serving in a stakeholder capacity once our planning and design team is on board.
So we do have those two things to add in here.
What I suggest that open the floor and you guys can tell me what worked well last year what you might recommend changing and then I can take that back and type something up and bring it back to you at the next meeting on consent.
I do know like in 2025 that was the first year we did two park tours, you guys always want more park tours, so I should do two this year.
So those are the things that we changed and if certainly open to your.
In what recommendations.
Just for everybody's benefit, I dropped to be on a note regarding the park and recommendation presentation.
I think we can take that off of the schedule for formal presentation next year and what I'd like to do is just.
Add it as a standing agenda item in section seven just as a quick little read out from park recommendation.
I'm I'm doing that already in my commissioner comment section, but we can just.
Agenda is it to make sure that it stays top of mind for us.
I assume nobody has a problem with that.
Sounds good.
Park visits great. Yeah, at least two, I think those are really valuable.
Do you guys want to get out to harvest sometimes soon?
Yeah, I walked there for my house.
And I was I continued to be really interested in the place or AI data and if there is any sort of annual read out or something about park usage.
Recreation programs, you know, obviously activities downtown.
Something there that shows us where we're we're getting the the highest level of engagement.
I think would be really interesting and helpful.
Great. Yep.
Recommendations.
One question.
I did notice the joint meeting for the.
A playable arch project was on calendar for January, but what's the status of the project is it going forward?
It is all the site preparations have been completed.
They were done in the fall.
We had a slight delay.
We had some horrible weather over the last couple months.
We had some rain delays and we had to redesign some of the footings.
All the equipment is here.
So it was fabricated in Berlin came over on a ship came into the Carolinas loaded on five trucks.
Showed up here at our courtyard at like what one in the morning Jeff.
So the equipment's all here.
And the installation crew is remobilizing on Monday.
So that was a very timely question to ask.
Yes.
Additional concrete additional rebar is going in because of the footing redesign.
So now it's pushing our anticipated construction timeline into April.
That's okay.
Yeah.
And we've relocated because lost florist is closed.
We're running summer camp out of fuller park this summer.
It's going to be the summer camp hub.
So we've got to get that playground in.
Did we incorporate the feedback from the community about enclosing that play area?
We did.
And Jeff and Ali worked with a fence contract and we found a solution and we're going to be able to fully enclose it.
Thank you so much.
That's awesome.
And now the restroom is funded for design the share and construction.
So that was the other feedback we heard was wanting.
And inclusive.
Yes.
So that's also a motion.
Fantastic.
That's great.
Yes.
The fuller restroom.
People love it.
Yeah.
Jeff's got a little issue with the drain going on.
But the community loves it.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Moving along to item 6C and update on the urban forest management plan.
All right.
Long time coming.
Got the grant 2022.
So really excited to bring this item in front of the commission tonight.
Like I said, then a long time coming.
It's been a lot.
A lot of work with staff.
But it's created so many opportunities and avenues for us to learn things that we never knew before.
So really excited to go over at least portions of this plan tonight with you all.
So kind of moving along and a little update of where we are now.
How we got there.
We are at draft two right now and you are all seeing portions of draft two and I'll go a little bit more into those portions and why we strategically chose those portions.
draft one was something that was delivered to staff in a word document in the fall of 25 and it was really meant to for us to take a look and look at the various sections of the plan.
Identify a lot of the items in the plan.
No images, no visuals, no tables.
We had seen the tables in various aspects and meetings but really never seen it put together in a plan package.
So it wasn't until just a few weeks ago that we received this draft two, which is an 85 page plan including all the tables.
And it has four various sections within it.
And tonight we are bringing you a few strategic sections.
And I'll go a little bit into detail about the other sections of the plan.
What's coming to you tonight is really the meat of the plan and what will be probably used to drive changes that we make.
The remaining of the plan has a lot of backup information about community engagement that we did.
It has a lot of the tech heavy portions describing to the reader where we got this information.
And eventually obviously at the end we'll talk about draft three and when that comes in front of the commission.
And then at the end is more information and more data.
So really what you're seeing tonight is really the meat and potatoes of that plan.
So moving on to pieces of the plan.
Tonight what's being asked the commissioners is to go ahead and review discuss and provide feedback on these three specific sections of the plan.
And the first piece of that being this executive summary and what this piece is really describing is is describing kind of what goes into a 40 year plan.
How do you get there and what are the pieces that you use to build it.
Not to read it verbatim as it's in your packet but just to highlight some of those things.
So really this is a 40 year plan to provide the road map to the city on how to care for the urban forestry.
It also provides an overview of the community so it describes you know our size kind of what are a little bit of the history of the community.
And then it dives into some of those pieces I just touched on which is the data part of it so it really leans in heavy on that tree inventory.
And I know I brought to the commission before that software tree keeper that we use where they inventory 34,000 trees.
It also dives into the canopy aspect of that.
Which is something that they use light art to determine how much canopy coverage we do have in the city.
Not to go without saying big highlight 21 and a half percent really that is where our canopy is at and that is a very very respectable number.
You'll see that number called out a lot in here and really you know one of the main goals is to keep it there or grow it you know.
And then another aspect is really just about the benefits of the tree so not you know air quality stormwater all those things that executive summary goes into that.
And then there's a piece that talks about how the how the forest is managed.
So it talks about the work that city staff does to manage what portion of the urban canopy it can roughly about 25 percent.
And then it starts to dive into really where where the the largest majority of the canopy is which is again located on private property.
And it talks about that partnership.
The second piece that was brought in front of you tonight is that visioning statement and I'll go into a little bit more detail.
And then lastly, and probably the biggest portion of what I'll spend the most of my time on is talking about the goals and the recommendations of the plan.
So moving on to the visioning statement. So this was a statement that was developed with baby resource group and with staff and something that we we took a lot of time with and are really really proud of what we produced.
So this is the four-piece and you'll see this four-piece statement kind of transitioning throughout the entire plan.
Particularly, you'll see it touched on in the goals and recommendations. And so again, I won't read it verbatim.
But really it's built out of really four key categories. So you've got preserve, protect, promote, and plan.
And so that preserve is really talking about the support and encouraging a healthy tree structure and urban forest.
That protect is really just utilizing tree protection that we can within the city, but knowing that 75% of our canopy is not located on city property and outside of our jurisdiction.
We're leaning really on that education piece. And then that promote really tied into that private property aspect.
How can the city and especially our city, one of our biggest partners, how can we really be an educator and a promoter of the urban forest and its benefits?
And then lastly is really the plan and that's kind of all the information that I'll go into in the goals and recommendations section.
But how can we be planning for long-term maintenance and care of both the trees we oversee as well those ones on private property as well?
So the next section is really how does that visioning statement and goal recommendation section play into the goals and recommendations which are really really the kind of meat of what we have.
And so how are those goals and recommendations created?
So really at the foundation of those is all this technical data that we got.
So the assessment of the urban forestry is sustainability indicators.
That community tree inventory where we had over nine staff members from DRG out for about seven weeks looking at every single tree identifying its species, its size, its canopy,
any of its needs.
And then review of all of our city policies and practices that we currently do here in the city as far as planning or planning for trees.
Also all of our work practices from our equipment to the number of trees that we've earned every year.
We really, we spent a lot of time doing that information.
And then lastly what goes in these goals and recommendations and you know one of the key aspects is really the input from the community.
You know in themes and priorities that came from that.
And then the other section here on the right side of the screen is really just in your packet you have this as well but I wanted to go into a little bit in depth about what this key is.
So as you see every goal and recommendation you can hopefully kind of understand what impacts they might have what is the timeline.
So the first one is really talking about the departments involved in implementation.
So most of these obviously live under the park and recreation but you'll see public works.
You'll see our legal team you'll see economic development depending on the goal or the action.
And then timeline and again we we already have some input on draft to so we're looking to tweak this section a little bit.
But as far as timeline goes we wanted to make sure that we gave the reader kind of an idea of you know what is our anticipated timeline.
We would start this action not necessarily complete it so obviously in progress is in progress.
One to three years and then obviously four plus would be for longer term items.
And then lastly the money you know what will it take to get these these goals or recommendations moved on and.
You know the single dollar symbol is really something that we feel like we can do with it within the existing funding that we have.
The two dollars something that we may be able to leverage some of the funding that we currently have may need to look at additional funding to try to get that action over the hump.
And then lastly the third is is things that that may take significant additional resources to to be able to complete.
So moving on here.
So as I talked about earlier the visioning statement does really lead into the goals and recommendations and as you read through your packet and you'll see as I go through this you'll see those four peas start to come through and so we broke down all these goals under those four peas the preservation the promote and the plan.
So starting with print one one is.
Is to really go into those goals and actions and there's a lot of them under each one of these sections so what I'm going to do tonight with you all is is kind of give you an overview of each section one one one two etc.
And then I'll talk about the items that are in progress if you have any questions about the other items at the end happy to answer those.
So starting with starting with preserve here.
One one is provide ongoing proactive maintenance to trees throughout all stages of their life cycle to maximize the chance of success.
So this is what all these goals are going to live under is kind of this heading.
We have two things in progress and that's implementing the industry standards when selecting planting and providing establishment and care for new trees.
So that that's two items one that we've already completed and one that's that's almost completed and that is.
A tree care plan that David resource group worked on and it's also our master street tree list that you all had a part of that we approve.
And then the second one is that is contracting out pruning and other maintenance if internal crews do not have capacity so.
We know we oversee 34,000 trees which is more than than five folks can handle in year we already do this there is room for growth that's why you see a two dollar sign there.
Oh, I'm sorry I'm looking at the piece that's in your packet.
So there's some room for growth there but it's something we already do and then moving on to one two here.
Reserve large healthy mature trees whenever possible to maximize and sustain community benefits.
We all know that the large trees play a huge role in the canopy but in many other aspects and there are two sub goals under that both in progress.
It's protect maintained desirable for a stance and focus on preservation efforts on trees.
It's something that departments been doing ever since I've been here and we're just continuing to refine it so it's an ongoing in progress.
Goal here and on the second one is to continue to protect important trees on city property by creating a designation for mature desirable trees on public property under our current municode the trees on our property are already overseen and protected by us so that's something in progress as well.
Moving to one three here plan and prepare for invasive and new and new species including plants pests pathogens to protect napa's forest.
Not as many in this section in progress but there is one so following your integrated pest management best practices when monitoring for and dealing with invasive and new species.
So you saw that their westward hills although not a tree that's another project that we're already in the progress of trees as well.
And touching on one four is increase the species in diversity and new and replacement trees.
Lots and progress here but the first four really around that 1020 30 rule which is not more than 10 species 20 genus 30 as the as kind of the rule to follow in planting trees so if we remember back to the master street tree list and I brought to you some information about what species we have the highest percent of percentage of that.
That oak tree at 10% was one that was hovering at 9.5% so we made sure that every tree on that master street tree list fell within that diversity.
Another area in here is to talk about updating that master street tree list so as you understand how your populations change you update that list.
Moving on to one five and the last under preserve is to evaluate parks and urban forestry division staffing and resources to keep up with city forest program needs.
So again here another one in progress is to utilize the data and public tree inventory resource analysis and work plans to predict upcoming tree maintenance.
So with our current software that we have.
We know which trees need to be pruned we know which trees are prior to removal this stuff is already going into our work plan and is going to our day to day activities.
In addition in this section you have integrate tree maintenance budget into city wide planning efforts this again is already being done with the streets and sidewalk programs.
And as well as something I'll touch on later which is cream street.
These reinforcing projects are already integrated into other departments budgets as well.
And then explore additional funding for trees replacements and maintenance again in progress that's something we continue to do all the time pre plan and post plan.
And then continue to plan fleet replacements and equipment acquisition aligned with operational needs.
We are department that has been blessed with a lot of really great tree equipment that allows us to do a lot more work than a lot of other agencies really can so.
Moving on to protect.
So the first one to protect to one is to identify gaps in existing tree planting maintenance preservation standards and city municipal code.
One just to touch on here in progress is the relevant language for current policies and standards.
A street tree removal notification policy and tree preservation standards these are two policies that drive how we assess trees for removal.
And it is currently being reviewed by the resource group and they've just given us recommendations for how to update that.
Those two plans there.
And moving on to to here ensure tree-related policies in any other related city documents such as approved street tree list street tree planting specifications tree removal and posting policies are updated and updated and aligned.
So we are regularly updating our cities approved master street tree list again an item brought to the commission that's one in progress.
And then again another one touches on our our master street tree list which again is in progress and actually completed and then review and update our tree removal and posting policies I touched on that is something another project that we're working on currently.
And two three developed new standards education materials to address issues affecting napas urban forest that are not included in the current city codes and policies.
So really under the major category that's in progress here is develop a comprehensive tree manual for staff contractors community members to standardized practices and promote maintenance.
Davey reskores group helped us create two kind of two-page documents.
One's really about the education and planting it's called right tree right place.
So it's a cool little pamphlet that gives you know contractors residents just kind of high level information on what tree and why it should go where it goes.
So it refers back to our master street tree list.
And then moving on to promote.
Three one here and promote is communicate important information about the benefits and maintenance needs of napas community trees.
To the general public private property owners potential partners funders and decision makers so really this goes back to.
The amount of tree canopy that falls outside of our jurisdiction so promote was really one of the one of the areas we really wanted to focus on in our goals and recommendations knowing that we needed to utilize and leverage education.
As one of the really key aspects to maintain the forest that is outside of our jurisdiction.
Lots of items in progress here.
And happy to answer any questions but really a very key area within this project that we've been working on.
And then moving on to three two here.
Engage community members and decision making process around current and future tree management and planting to encourage community by and support.
So we're continuing to engage residents to determine preference for trees and infrastructure conflict mitigation.
Including phased or complete tree removals and repairs alternative designs and planner modifications.
So really an every project that we work on with CIP or or with our streets inside walk program.
This is really just an ongoing thing that that we already do but we really try to do our best to communicate with those residents about any and all opportunities that.
That are available for us to kind of make headway in that category.
And then finally three three is strengthen and develop partnerships with residents non profit groups organizations and the private sector.
One thing to note here that's in progress is other environmental organizations to collaborate with.
And that's really leaning on that partnership. We have with RCD to help promote and provide education, urban forest.
And then the last section of the goals and recommendations is the plan section. And so going into 4-1 is to develop a functional and sustainable urban forestry management program with adequate staffing resources.
And support for city partnerships. One area that's in progress is to develop partnerships and increase collaboration between parks and trees, divisions, other city of Napa departments and local decision makers and utilities.
So throughout this whole process, we've really been working hard with PG&E. It's been one of the areas that we've struggled with in the past.
I have now gotten a good contact. And we are getting bi-weekly updates on trees that they're planning to work on. So we are making some really good strides there.
And then I've mentioned just a lot of the internal communication that we've had with our CIP division and with the streets inside, walks our own version of public works.
And moving on to 4-2 managing existing tree and infrastructure conflicts in Napa's urban forest and prevent future tree and infrastructure conflicts.
A lot of things going on in that section, but some of probably the most notable ones is that with our new treekeeper program, we are able to look and identify some of those healthy mature trees that we really want to make
value and efforts for keeping them from being removed within projects. So we're developing a way to allow the engineers to see those easily and not have to have those back and forth conversations with us.
And just understand which ones are really the priorities to save within that.
And then moving here to 4-3. So plant, replace and preserve trees, estrategic levels and locations around the city to align with Napa's canopy goals, achieve an equitable distribution for tree canopy and ensure consistent canopy coverage.
And a lot of these items under this are more long-term items, but just to note a few of the things that we're working on as we do have maps we do understand where our lower canopy sections are.
And so we are kind of in that 1-3 year or 4-plus year to try to develop some priority planting locations.
And then lastly, 4-3 is development, implement standards, data tracking, processes for the city tree inventory, canopy, and urban forestry management plans and goals.
So really the one, the one in progress one there is regularly update resources over time to see how the city is changing and at the program is tracking and meeting urban forestry goals.
So we did see a change in canopy from 2012 a pretty significant one to 2023 when this was done.
So some of the, so we do know that the work that we are doing is helping to increase the canopy that we have.
But a lot of these items are longer term ones that will take some time to see kind of what our efforts will do for that.
And then lastly, our comments are going back shortly to our consultant on draft 2 and then we will be getting right into starting on draft 3 which will be the final draft that we have.
We plan to bring that to its entirety back to this commission timing is a little uncertain but possibly as early as February or maybe March just depending on how quickly we get through those items.
So a lot of information.
Happy to answer any questions that any of you might have and any one of those three sections or just in general.
If you have any comments or any revisions you'd like to see please share them we can note those and get those over to the consultant.
But yeah again no action on this item just provide feedback on these three portions of the plan.
Any feedback?
Anybody want to kick us off?
I mean kick it off.
I'm just curious with 34,000 trees.
You ever hit the feeling that you overlook some trees?
How do you know that you've really reaching every tree and effort or something that you thought unrealistic?
I'm just curious with that many.
Yeah, technology is amazing.
There we do come across a few but just to clarify.
So 34,000 is not every tree in Napa.
34,000 is really just those trees that are in parks and then those trees that are in planter strips.
And in right and in in the island.
So in people's backyards we don't count that tree in the 34,000.
But all the trees whether they be on public property or in someone's backyard get counted in the canopy assessments.
So when we talk holistically how many trees we have in the city we talk in canopy because it captures all those.
But then when we talk about what the city has jurisdiction over and what we can then tell and we talk about the 34,000.
What is that number in this city has jurisdiction roughly from 34,000.
So what we have what we have jurisdiction over.
So that's all the trees in the parks and then all those in the planter strips as well.
And that doesn't count our open space parks.
Those trees we have not counted in the pitch.
Okay.
Thank you.
A lot of trees.
I can't even take care of my own.
Any other comments?
No, I was going to thank you.
Real quick Jeff.
I can't imagine that I would have a question or comment that would have an impact on this because it is incredibly detailed.
And it's you've done you and David have done a great work.
What is the process though for approval and adoption?
Is the draft three going to come to us and we're going to say thumbs up.
We approve and then it goes on to city council or does it go straight to council?
Yeah.
I know that city council is excited for an update.
So we're definitely going to bring them an update.
Being that it's like it's a guiding document.
Yes.
I don't know that there's necessarily any approval your input is very valuable.
The community's input is obviously very valuable.
But I don't know that there is necessarily a need for adoption.
I mean, we will have the plan.
It is a resource for us to use.
It's a long-term planning document that we can use.
So I don't I don't anticipate that we'll have an in action.
But.
So I guess it's easy.
Then I could state the question a little differently.
So city council obviously is aware that we have provided input.
We've been participating in work sessions and whatnot.
But city council is not saying.
Has this plan been approved by park record and trees commission before it was for
It's us.
This is the type of thing that will go straight to city council.
I guess one of the caveats here is count.
The plan will go to council to just show it to them.
They're not necessarily approving it.
So they were taking an action.
They would be looking for your subaction.
If you all are very excited about it.
And please with it how it comes out.
You can certainly take an action just to say.
You as a body are supportive of this plan.
And we would share that with council.
Okay.
But council that is not going to vote to adopt formally adopted.
Yeah.
But there are there are lots of portions and pieces within the goals and recommendations.
It's a require action, but not necessarily is the plan as a whole.
So is that a little bit different than the like a 2040 planning document?
It is.
I think Jeff speaking to like the specific recommendations.
Just because the recommendations are in the plan.
Does it mean we're committing to being able to accomplish all of them or
Find all of them.
Okay.
Thank you.
Another impressive report.
Thank you for the summary of a lengthy document.
Very good.
One little net in the plan purpose and vision portion on page two.
Of the PowerPoint.
There's one sentence that didn't make sense to me.
Says the planning process started in January of 23.
And commenced in March of 26.
There's something missing I think is to what commenced in March of 26.
Or maybe not.
So the grant was completed in March of 20.
Yeah.
The grant deadline for completion of the project is March of 26.
So I'm going to get this.
Since need to be clear.
I really appreciate the use of the dollar signs to indicate the
Sefficiency of funding.
It's very helpful.
I see that they mostly track the timeline.
Yeah.
But my question is how do you anticipate keeping track of when it's time to seek more funding.
And I assume most of the funding would do.
How are you going to keep track of of when to seek funding for these various phases?
There.
So there's a lot of crossover in those goals and recommendations.
So if you tackle a singular goal and recommendation.
It is likely that it is touched on.
So it's in preserve.
It's likely it's touched on in another aspect.
But I think that the approach there is really.
You're probably looking you're looking at individual likely individual projects.
And like if I give you an example of one.
There's a goal and recommendation to update your inventory on on a seven year cycle.
So that would likely come out as a specific request for those specific funds to go ahead and have somebody come back out and read.
Look at your tree inventory and have that have that done.
And so it's really.
It's more specifically tied to the task.
And how you would go about seeking funding to really promote or finish that task in itself as opposed to.
Say what would it cost to do every goal and recommendation within this within this plan?
I see.
Okay.
Will you have these.
Things calendar in some way.
So we kind of we attempted to give the viewer an understanding of that with those those in progress.
One to three years four plus years.
And so a lot of the recommendations are affecting day to day and operations and you'll see those being reflected as in progress items.
So like the master's tree tree list is an example.
It's something we use contractors use on a daily basis.
So it's an ongoing it's an ongoing item and then there are items that.
Talk about update to our our municipal plan and we know that those are longer term things that will require more time to complete.
So it's it's I guess more so than anything it's kind of giving us the flexibility to implement and drive these plans.
When resources allow or when they become a priority.
Some sort of ongoing grant program grant application program.
Currently we do not other than leveraging funds that RCD has from another grant to help further some of these items as well.
That's the only funding source G is funding some things as well.
That was the one I was thinking of city council allocated additional $250,000 towards parks and community landscaping.
It's a little bit general, but that's part of Jeff's new baseline budget every year and our intent in seeking that allocation from council was definitely to be able to start to implement more and more pieces of the urban forestry management plan.
As with any operating budget either whether it's ongoing operating budget or one time requests for like a specific project.
Those would be sought through the annual budget cycle you know we're all the departments that met their requests and council decides what their priorities are and yeah.
So I just did an example of those funds we recently made about a $15,000 purchase of trees to re for us the neighborhood that we hadn't replanted from a street and sidewalk project so we're already seeing the actions come to fruition already.
Thank you.
Any other comments?
On the topic of having the council formally adopt it.
Is that a decision or are you just done sure if you're going to do that or not?
As far as formally adopt the the plan it's entirety.
I don't know that we've really come to that decision the a or nay at this point.
I'm not understanding that was just directed from city managers office that they wanted the plan shared with council but that it was guiding document it didn't necessitate formal adoption.
No, it doesn't but sometimes there are benefits for having it formally adopted it could signal a stronger commitment on the part of the council and that could then turn influence funding decisions.
I'm going to continue for the council to doubt any of its climate benefits.
I'm going to line up with a potential future climate action plan.
So I don't know I would maybe think about it unless you've already been given direction than whatever.
Open won't change the words on the piece of paper whether they do or don't want to just something to consider.
Yeah, we can share your you that's a perspective of this commission and share that up the chain and see if that.
That may make you think something that the council would want to take credit for.
I completely support that.
And also you and your team as well gives you a little spotlight because I agree this is a tremendous document has tremendous value now and into the future something like that.
For those reasons they weren't you know something more formal but you're called obviously I'm the canopy.
Would you say it was 20 or 25% 21 and a half 21 and a half and you had mentioned that that's pretty good.
Yeah, just for perspective, city Sacramento is at 19.
Is there, and I didn't go for the entire packet, and I know this is kind of just excerpts.
But one of the things that came to mind is the way in which the goals are written is to maintain it.
But do we want to not only maintain it, but enhance it and grow it beyond 20%.
Yeah, so we had a lot of discussion, so 21 and a half is our current.
And you know, there's aspects that you can take, city Sacramento is a good example.
They put out a very aggressive plan to get to 30% which required thousands of thousands of
thousands of plantings in order to get to that point.
One thing that we really recognized in this plan, and particularly in the area that we oversee, which is the majority.
The trees within the parks, we have full jurisdiction over and really ultimate decision to plant larger trees, so that's an easier task.
Obviously, we have areas that we wouldn't plant trees in the middle of soccer fields and baseball fields and playgrounds and things like that.
That would make interesting.
But probably one of our biggest struggles is that tree conflict with sidewalk curb infrastructure.
And we are blessed with a lot of things, but one thing we are blessed with here is narrow planter strips.
And so a lot of the where release trees probably recent good example.
A lot of those trees were planted with species that would no longer be acceptable on our master street tree list.
They're too large, they don't fit into those larger areas.
We've also all seen what kind of work PG&E is allowed to and does do on trees around power lines.
So we know we have to anticipate that we're going to have, as we go through, we update our streets, our sidewalks.
We know that we're going to have smaller stature trees in those planter strips.
So we really took that into account when we were thinking about about those goals, those canopy goals and what is achievable.
As we go forward and knowing that we were sitting at a pretty good baseline.
We didn't want to be overly optimistic with our canopy goals.
And we felt that maybe our resources would be better spent with educating where the majority of our trees lived, which is on that private property.
So that's kind of how we landed at that percentage and saying, well, I think that a first stab of this should be our maintain what we have.
Yeah, that makes tool sense.
I'm kind of a long those lines, I guess, in terms of not only promoting but enhancing or expanding whatever that we're maybe.
Is there the ability to inventory, I guess, wrong trees and wrong place, that could then be turned into the right trees right place.
It also have canopy enhancements, I know that's probably a wish list type item and then depending upon money and trees and all that.
Yeah, there could be opportunities there.
Yeah, so a couple of the word, Great Murrow comes to mind.
Highest, possibly 18 percent.
Yeah.
I like wrong tree run place, we're getting t-shirts.
Public works with Bible.
Kind of a two-prong answer there Brian.
Yes, we have the information to understand what trees are technically the wrong tree for that for that plan area.
But our approach is not to just go and say, well, you're the wrong tree you can't stay here.
It's more of an approach when we when we look at them from a strategic standpoint, like are they are they causing infrastructure issues.
So we, you know, we use the word healthy a lot, right?
So not only does the plan talk about mature, but it also talks about healthy, we have that condition.
So when we look at mature tree, we look at it from those aspects.
Is it healthy, you know, does it fit within the space that it's that it's in?
And then the kind of the second part of that is we do know where we have about 3,000 planting opportunities because wouldn't we went and did the inventory?
We identified anything that was a stump and we identified any areas that could be potential planting areas that we have jurisdiction over.
We didn't go into people's backyards and say you have a big lawn area, but what we have jurisdiction over.
And then we also know from the canopy data where our lower canopy areas are.
So if we kind of try to align those things, we do have the data to do it.
It's just a matter of getting the resources to get the education out.
We have street tree planting program.
We're working with RCD on a free tree giveaway program for private and public trees.
So we're trying to kind of create those mechanisms knowing that.
We have five staff and we may be able to put in several hundred trees a year, but we also have the goal of making sure they survive.
So we really need to lean in on those on those property owners.
Give them opportunities to get a tree, but know that we need their support to maintain it to keep it thriving.
As part of the plan and I guess looking into the future and maybe this goes back to the tree list that we looked at a few months ago.
Are we asking ourselves with climate change, what areas, the suitability of the area and whether or not the trees are planting today are going to be able to survive 50 years from now or the trees we plant 30 years from now are going to survive.
You know, the right tree right place based on what we anticipate the climate and the conditions to be chair.
Yeah, so we have.
David provided us a list that is about three times longer than the trees that we brought to you all in the master tree tree list.
A couple of reasons around that.
I took a lot of staff's input to say, hey, you work on these species all day every day, which ones are doing well, which ones have issues.
So we use that.
We also took the avenue of checking to make sure that that was a tree that was available.
We didn't want to put a tree on a master tree tree tree list that we couldn't get.
And then David did that background work with all the other work that they've done with various communities to say, hey, these are species based on your climate that we will that we think will do well.
But then really I think the key to that is if we run into those issues.
We update that tree list, you know, on a on a pretty frequent basis if needed or we least we at least look at it and make updates if we need to.
So I think we've set ourselves up to try to avoid those issues.
And then the other part of that is really just pests and there's a there's a portion of that.
So so sticking with that 10, 20, 30 rule not having more than 10 percent.
Great murders a good example at 18 percent not on our street tree list.
If there was a pest that came in and killed every great mortal we lose 18 percent of our trees.
So we want to constantly keep that diversity up as we go.
Great.
I think that's all.
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah.
This is awesome.
Any other comments or questions?
Okay.
Good job.
Moving on to six D park maintenance and recreation division updates.
Just on behalf of recreation I will remind you all if you haven't been down there already the napalided art festival kicked off on Saturday.
So we've had four successful nights the event runs of full 30 days or through February 17th.
I think that whatever that weekend is middle of February, but the projection will only remain up through next Sunday out this coming Sunday.
So it will be up weeknight so even tonight tomorrow night.
And then through the weekend and we haven't pulled the place or AI data yet because there's like a three day leg but we're excited to look here tomorrow and see what attendance was for the three day holiday weekend.
And then we already spoke about harvest that's been the other big endeavor that our recreation folks have been working on.
Later at festival question.
Well I miss part of what you said is is it still going to be going on the 31st of January and the 1st of February?
Yes, it runs to the middle of February.
So the event runs 30 days but the projection on the church in the courthouse, the three projection sites only run for 10 days and that's the same every year.
But the projections won't be available on the last day of January and the 1st day of February.
So we got to look at my calendar. Whatever this Sunday is.
This Sunday is the last day.
Yes. So the 25th will be the last projection night and then the other 15 installations will stay up till the middle of next month.
Two quick items, more trees. We haven't had enough.
But just to kind of put a bow on a lot of the work.
We've been working over the last year or so really closely with the CIP team on the Comstreet Rehab project.
So just some numbers total of 47 trees were removed in that project and then we replanted a total of 57.
The trees we were planted we went with 24 box. There was a lot of neighbors that were very concerned about the aesthetics of the community.
So we worked really, really closely with them and the CIP and the Comstractor planted all those trees.
So you know, in a really challenging project we met our 1-1 ratio and actually beat it.
So that was a really successful project as far as collaboration goes with with CIP and that project is currently in punchless.
So it's really close to being done.
And then lastly, since we haven't seen each other since October and Ashley touched on it, but we had a really successful Arbor Day.
I know she touched on it, so I won't say too much.
Those were grant funded trees for that project. So 50 trees have been youred park and then some other pretty significant updates.
And yeah, 21 volunteers. I was in complete full ranger that day. It was raining that bad.
So really some really stellar volunteers.
So I moved to the German to the next rigourage that we'll be meeting for the park preparation and tree advisory commission before we do that.
Very quick update from the park and recreation foundation.
We earned $625 through 55 donations in our appearance in the give guide.
We received an additional $3,000 in donations off the give guide platform.
But I'm confident that we would not have received that $3,000 if we weren't in the give guide.
So we are going to claim $9,625 total for the park and recreation foundation.
Good chunk of that.
Probably three grand or so was through the board itself.
So we kind of pumped up our own total a little bit.
But still that is the most successful give guide placement I think we've had ever.
So yay us.
I second the motion.
I'm dragging.