Thank you. Good morning, everybody. This is Sherry K. Part with the Environmental Task Force. I'm now calling the Environmental Task Force meeting to order at 1032 AM. And Dolores Anderson, would you please read each member's name so we can confirm everyone is on the call. Yes, ma'am. Miss call. Ms. K. Pardt. Good morning. Good morning. Dr. Fawar Myers. Present. Mr. Shepherd. Present. Ms. Mollies. Present. Thank you. Thank you, Dolores. Before we begin, I would also ask you to explain the format we're going to use today and to lay out any of the housekeeping rules. Thank you, Miss K. Hart. Can everyone hear me? Do you speak up just a little bit? It's hard for me to hear you. Okay. Can everyone hear me now? That's a little better. Go ahead, yeah. Okay. My name is Dolores Anderson and I will be assisting with the technical aspects of this meeting. I want to mention a few items before we begin. This meeting has been held by telephone so that we can advance the public health goal of minimizing face-to-face meetings, also known as social distancing The public toll free dial in number to access this call is 833-268-8354. Access code 898-858-8358-8358. The public toll free dial is 83533-268-8354, access code 898-858-449 pounds. This information along with the agenda packet containing information to be discussed during the meeting is also posted on the city's website. Here are some pieces of basic information and we want you to know about this call. This meeting is being recorded and this recording will be posted on the City of Olympus website. The Environmental Task Force will not be voting during this meeting. All speakers, including Council members, must identify themselves by name every time they speak. I will remind speakers if they forget that we have a full record of this meeting and so that the public may have a full understanding of the discussion. Presentations and other materials for this meeting are posted online as a part of the agenda for this meeting. The agenda may be found on the city's website at www.arlingtontx.gov by clicking on Agendus. For the members of the Environmental Task Force, please ensure that you are in a quiet place where you will not be disturbed during this call. That ground noise can be very challenging in a meeting like this, so everyone has been muted. If you wish to speak, please unmute yourselves and I will call on you. If any members of the Task Force have to leave the call for whatever reason, you are requested I'm going to read your questions. I'm going to read your questions. I'm going to read your questions. I'm going to read your questions. I'm going to read your questions. I'm going to read your questions. I'm going to read your questions. I'm going to read your questions. I'm going to read your questions. I'm going to read your questions. I'm going to read your questions. I'm going to read your questions. I'm going to read your questions Thank you. Hearing none. Thank you, Dolores. Can you tell me how many people are on the call in addition to the committee members and staff? Ms. Kepart, that display is not working for Dolores today. So I'll let you know we have. We have 13 individuals on the call. All are either committee members, staff, or the two individuals I mentioned earlier from the public, members of the public, who are on the call. Thank you, Jennifer. Sure. We will now begin the meeting. And for each item that's discussed or presented, I will call in the presenter for that item. Once the presentation is completed, I'll ask if each committee member has comments. I'll call your name so that you may speak one at a time. Following comments, I will ask if anyone has additional comments and then we will move on. Does anyone have any questions and any committee member in particular? Hearing none. As you know, we had originally scheduled this meeting for an hour. It's been reduced to 30 minutes simply because there was a scheduling conflict that happens at 11. So we'll have one presentation today, Richard Gertzmann from staff will present the tree ordinance, which is the assignment staff excuse me the council has given to the environmental task force to make recommendations for an update to our tree ordinance. So at that Mr. Gertzzen I will turn the presentation over to you. Mr. Gertzzen you're muted. Thank you very much for that. Good morning, everyone. This is Richard Gertzinn, assistant director of planning and development services. Hope everyone is doing well this morning. If you give me just a moment, I believe I can do a share and you can see the visual. No, Richard. Richard. Yes. We can't share the visuals on this. Can you take that down please? We have to. It's okay. It's okay. We just have to televised the meetings if we have visual elements to it. So they'll follow along. I think everyone has a copy of the presentation. Gotcha. Okay. Well, I'll begin with the first slide. I was asked to give a summary of the previous two presentations that have been made to first the council as a whole during a work session back on February the 25th and then to this committee on March the 16th. And so my very short presentation here is designed to provide that summary and then lead to whatever further discussion the committee may want to have at this point and provide any direction for staff. A way of summary, we looked at about a half dozen other cities and the Metroplex, including some of the cities around us, such as Mansfield and Fort Worth and Grand Prairie and a few others. And we compared the Arlington Tree Preservation and Mitigation ordinance to those communities. With respect, and I broke it down into four categories, two of which just had to do with applicability, and we, all the cities are pretty much even in that regard. But it was when we start looking at standards and enforcement, and I'm referring now to looking at standards and enforcement, and I'm referring now to slide two standards and enforcement, is where we have some differences with a few of the other cities. With respect to standards, on the four residential development, you'll recall that we require that the residential developer preserve 35% of the caliper inches of the inventory of the tree inventory on the site. And we then we then here in Arlington break that down for inventory purposes and preservation purposes, depending upon the type of tree, and to some degree the size. You'll see on the third line there, understanders with regard to preservation, we do give a premium, if you will, a two times premium to small oaks. And I believe on a previous occasion, Councillor Neill, a shepherd actually gave the rationale to the committee on how the city derived that a number of years ago. On the non-residential side, we require a straight one-to-one ratio. So if you take out a caliper inch, you will replace a caliper inch. with regard to inventory when it comes to the building pad site if there are trees within the footprint of the proposed building that are less than 30 inch 30 caliper inches and that's a large tree obviously that's a two and a half foot diameter tree trees less than that size are not counted at all. So a lot of trees are not factored into the inventory and therefore never are considered when it comes to preservation or replacement. Outside that building pad elsewhere on the site, then the inventory must count everything over six caliper inches. With regard to preservation and replacement, we allow anything to be counted if it is over three caliper inches in terms of replacement. And once again we give a one and a half times bonus for certain types of bonus trees, of which notably the oaks that are native to the cross-timbers are included in that bonus list. We also do the same thing for significant stands which is defined as three or more trees within less than 10 or six or eight or 10 feet, excuse me, of each other. The surveyed cities did somewhat the same thing, but their ratios do deviate from ours in that with respect to some of the preferred trees, some of the cities do one and a half times going all the way up to one three quarters times to two times for replacement purposes. On enforcement here in Arlington, we do require, of course, a tree preservation plan. Notably, and this has been, and I believe I've mentioned this on several occasions, notably on non-developmental tree cutting. We don't have a specific ordinance that addresses that. And we do have a tree removal permit. We have the form, we have the fee, we have all of that. But we don't have an ordinance which specifically addresses non-developmental clear cutting. The surveyed cities, on the other hand, for the most part, do have a both the tree preservation plan, which we include, as well as a specific tree removal permit that applies even in the case of non-developmental tree cutting. I also pointed out in previous occasions certain best practices having to do with inventory surveys, that is surveys of a large thicket or stand or forest without having to do the whole. I also talked about phantom lined plans and that some cities actually require inspections after the trees are marked for cutting before they're actually cleared. Miss Kefark, I'm sorry to interrupt, this is Robert Shepard. I am looking at a presentation that has four slides at about 80% of what Mr. Gertzzen just said is not contained on any of these slides. Am I looking at the wrong slide deck? For half, Mr. Shepherd. So the last slide, the title of the last slide, mine also is a four slide presentation. It says enforcement Arlington? Yes. It, yeah, and that's what I've got. There's just a ton of information that Mr. Gertzins just kind of blown by that's, is there a packet somewhere that I'm supposed to be referring to? I'm sorry, is it in the upper left? Does it say slide two? sorry is it in the upper left does it say slide two? Uh, yeah, I mean the summary says slide two, but you just talked about, Oh, okay, I'm seeing it now. I've already moved to slide four. I thought we had advanced my problem. I apologize for the bogging down. Thank you. And no problem. No problem. No problem. Continue, Mr. Gerrison. Yes, sure will. So the very last line of slide two is the mitigation fee. Again, this is the replacement of trees once the inventory is done. And it's determined how much of the, how much caliper inches must be either replaced or planted. In the event that the developer is not able, perhaps physically just because of constraints of the site, to replace all of those caliper inches or choose as not to in some measure, then the developer must pay an in lieu of mitigation fee. You may recall I had a graph which showed that of the cities that we had surveyed at $100 per caliper inch, the city of Arlington is the lowest of the surveyed cities. The average of all the cities currently is $175 per caliper inch. The next closest city is just next door to us here. That requires $150 per caliper inch. So it jumps from our low of $100 per caliper inch. So it jumps from our low of $100 per caliper inch all the way up to $150 per caliper inch. Now we'll go to slide three. So with respect to standards, I believe that the question has been honed down to essentially how do we incentivize the cross-timbers oaks of Arlington for both inventory and preservation purposes On the residential side of things the 35% of preservation Based upon the survey appears to be appropriate certainly appears to be in line with what other cities are doing. So I think we're in good shape in that regard. Now with respect to inventory and preservation, and this somewhat applies to both the residential and not residential, but with inventory and preservation, you can look at both of these from the standpoint of size or specimen. We do both here in Arlington to some degree, so do other cities. But as I've already mentioned, some of them give greater credit for larger trees, larger oaks, all the way up to a two times credit in some instances when it comes to preservation. On non-residential, we have our current ratio of one to one. Some of the other cities do differ from that, not by a great degree, but somewhat, but we have a straight one-to-one ratio requirement. Once again for inventory we can vary that by size giving certain credits for certain sizes 18 inches, 24 inches, 30 inches or a bispessimum and this is where you could certainly look at certain types of the cross-timber species and give greater credit to. And on the preservation side, the final question I really ask with regard to specimen is whether or not we wish to give a greater credit for bonus trees. Again, for oaks, which is one of our bonus trees we give a one and a half times credit. Finally on slide four, with respect to enforcement, was looking at two questions or two issues to protect against non-developmental clear cutting and then secondly to provide tools to review the impact on trees during application review. With respect to tree removal permit, again we may want to consider adding clear language in our ordinance that requires a permit and a process for non-developmental review that's not connected in other words to a site plan. Currently, there's no express ordinance and it does affect enforceability. I might just very quickly say that just within the last week, we have had an instance pop up out near Eden and Forest Park where there's a forested area and a landowner there is is talking about the prospect of some clear cutting and wants to establish some agricultural and that's permitted on his property but it would involve some non developmental clear cutting and At this point we've informed informed the landowner that we do have a process for a permit. But once again, I want to say it's not real clear in our ordinances how we get from where we're at now to enforcement mitigation. However, if I could stop you there, we're going to quickly run out of time and I'd like to be able to give staff some direction before our next meeting. So I'm gonna open it up to the committee. So Richard's kind of giving us a real quick rundown of several items that are outstanding. And I need to hear from the committee if you have any interest in the staff bringing back some recommendations and let's start with the last one that Richard just brought up, which is non developmental tree cutting. So there's no, there's no mitigation in place for that at all. And as we've heard from Richard, mitigation does exist in most of the cities around us. So, I'd like to hear from the committee, should we pursue that? I would certainly support it. I'd like to know from staff, if they could bring us back some relative numbers about how we would have that mitigation, and particularly mitigation with regard to the native oak. So committee, if I could hear from someone, let me get some feedback from you, I'd appreciate it. This is Helen. I have a quick question. Sure, Go ahead. If we were to put that kind of ordinance in place, can I mean, this is a question for Richard. Would we define the particular tree? It's a we're saying that anyone who wants to cut down a tree has to have a permit to cut it down? No, just in just in land, I think Richard Cretney if I'm wrong. Just an non-developmental permit. Right. Right. So it's not like if you own your home and you want to cut down a tree in your front yard, no. You don't just count to. That's correct. I just wanted to be clear on that because I think it was a little bit unclear. So it's on undeveloped land that you're not scheduling development on at the immediate future. And what it would do for us, Richard, if I'm wrong, is by requiring that it keeps someone from just blight it, scraping their land even though they don't plan to develop it right now. That's correct. Certainly make them think. Richard, you're muted. Richard, you're muted. I am. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Okay. That's correct. It would certainly make them think twice before they indiscriminately clear-cut. And I don't mean to sound harsh in saying that, but from time to time our folks who, for whatever reason, just want to clear it out. Now we're not talking about underbrush and scrub and that kind of thing. We're talking about the trees. And so there would be a mechanism for them to get to a prior approval before doing that. And then forcible mechanism, I should say. So how would we notify all current owners of raw land in Arlington that they can no longer cut randomly? I mean, I guess we'd have we did some find a way to make it public knowledge. Well, I would propose that it should be go forward with this and eventually the council adopts changes to the UDC that addresses this, that in that process as well as online with all of the information we have available on our website and so forth and we could publish it in that manner. It's going to be impossible to catch everyone of course because there are quite a few absentee owners, corporate entities and so forth that are holding land. Right, right. That was my concern is equal and fair enforcement for everyone I think would need to be a goal. Ms. K. Park. Yes, Mr. Shaffer. So since you're, we're running out of time here, I am in favor of more information from staff on this point, but I will say this is an area that I am somewhat conflicted about. And so I know we have measures or believe that we have measures that are currently in place, whether they're effective or not, I don't know. It sounds like they may because I'm aware of a couple of incidents, incidents recently where clear cutting has occurred, and it's certainly not a good thing. On the other hand, where my conflict comes in, if I own 20 acres, and I want a graze cattle and I can't graze cattle because there's a bunch of trees on there and no grass will grow. I'm not sure that that is a whole lot different than if I have a bunch of post-okes on my property and no grass will grow and I'm a big fan of San Augustine and I cut all those trees down. So there seems to be at least least in my mind, there's a, I'm conflicted. And I would like some more information about it because I know the couple of incidents that I'm aware of and Miss Kate Part and I experienced near South Cooper Street several years back. As examples of indiscriminate clear cutting for no apparent reason is a bad thing, but I'm still worried about me being able to do what I want to with my property, and if leaving it undeveloped as a grassy field, is what I choose to do, I'm worried about stepping off into that. So, and Mr. Shepherd, I agree, but this wouldn't prevent that from happening. It's just that they will, they would have to notify the city and then in my head, if they are some of the, part of the cross-timberous forest and some of those oaks were trying to preserve, because you can't go to the nursery and buy another one, then you got to mitigate it. And there would be a fee you would have to do or something. So, but I think I'm hearing Victoria, I've not heard from you. Are you in agreement for staff to go and develop kind of what those rules and regs would look like on this issue? Yes, and in fact, I just wanted to say in terms of my preference is to for preservation over mitigation. I think we do need to looking at this last slide for the phantom line plans. I would be in favor of the inventory survey. I think is appropriate. I'm hearing that as a standard. And I think if we're going to put a premium on our on our oaks, then I think we also need to be strongly considering replacement, increasing the replacement fee as well. Since that again, my I'm leaning more toward preserving as opposed to mitigating so. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question another thing for the staff to bring us back is I'd like to know where the boundaries of the cross timbers forest are in the city. And we know it doesn't really exist north of 20 any longer. And then maybe look at having some kind of overlay for that area of what's less of the cross timbers forest to see if we can focus more within that region wherever that is on preservation of those trees, whatever that means and however we might achieve it. So if the committee is in agreement, I'd like for staff to work on that mapping of where this cross-timber's forest is and what a preservation initiative would look like within that cross-timber's forest. Information only at this point to see if we can put something in place that we think will help with preservation of that cross-timber's forest. As the committee, okay with staff bringing us back that information at our next meeting, or not at the next meeting, I don't think they could have it by May, but May 5th next Tuesday. The soon as we can get that together. Yes. Miss Caper, this is Victoria for our. I have one other addition if I may. Sure. If it's agreement to the committee. I'd like to have that overlay map, but I'm also interested. We had an our presentation about historical designation for trees. I know there's a couple that have been historically designated. And I'm kind of interested outside, you know, we wanna preserve the cross-dimbers, but I'm also interested in other trees that may have gotten that designation or should have that designation throughout the city. I don't know how much information we have about that, but I just wanna loop that back into that presentation we were given a few meetings back about how that is transpiring in our city. And I certainly want to make sure if there are certain trees that need to have that, that we take account of that in this ordinance. Okay, very good point. Thank you. Other comments committee? So, um, staff also, if you could work on, um, on what the mitigation effort would look like with regard to, um, if they've taken down one of the native oaks, and I think that's just Blackjack post exist in our neighboring communities, so we're going to have to kind of create this as it applies to Arlington because other cities don't have the asset, but we do. So we've got to preserve and enhance that asset as best we can, we're in a sense of property owners' rights and fairness, but still being mindful of an asset that doesn't exist anywhere else. So any other comments committee before we sign off? Anything else we should ask staff to bring us back at the next environmental task force where we can deal with the tree ordinance and it may not be next Tuesday. It may be the council meeting after that. This is Helen. I'm fine with what we're doing. Okay. Robert. That's good. Victoria. No, that's good. I'm an agreement. Okay. Staff, do you have any questions as the committee? Have we made it as clear as we can make it at this point? This is Jennifer with me. Miss Kepard, I think we're good. We can circle back. I know you all have to go with the staff will circle back. I think that's good. That's we can all. I'm good. I'm good as well. Okay. Great. All right. So at that, there are no other presentations that we're going to have today. So now I will adjourn the environmental task force at 11.0 to 8.m. Thank you committee thank you staff and thank you to the public who are helping us listen in today and help provide comments is needed but thank you everybody. Thank you. We are adjourned.