But I might say maybe he said that.

Welcome everyone.

I'd like to begin the Parks and Recreation Committee.

Let the record show that my committee members, Mr.

Pungo and Mr.

Binder, are present.

And today we have a variety of presentations and discussions.

The Environment Zero Advisory Council and your report.

I believe Kyle is here for that.

Whenever you're ready, we can come up and start.

All right.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Kyle Ropsky, 528 North Berk Street.

I'm chair of Allentown's Environmental Advisory Council.

So tonight I'm gonna be giving you an annual report presentation.

So this is a presentation format of our required annual report.

Um, as it says in the ordinance, we're required to submit every year.

Um the report this year is about 13 pages.

Last year it was 27, so we're getting a little bit better and cutting it down.

But um this is obviously top level, so this is much shorter than that.

But I'll just preface this by urging you all to read the report.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out.

So for starters, um, I've been chair of EAC for around two years now.

Uh, one of my main focuses since I um got involved was ensuring that the AC is meeting the goals of its purpose statement, that we're doing exactly what we're intended to do by ordinance.

Um so, in line with that, I just wanted to bring it up to the top uh so we can address it at the beginning so you know what kind of is guided everything, guided the report and the presentation.

Um I'm not gonna read the beginning, but it runs on five main pillars to be advised as to environmental issues within the city of Allentown to encourage sustainable design and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, including the use of renewable energies to protect and preserve natural resources within the city of Allentown, to maintain possible uses of open land in the city of Allentown, and to promote community environmental programs.

So, this is our purpose statement in the annual report in this presentation.

I try to use this as a guideline so I will organize everything and put everything into at least one of these buckets.

Um it's just for organizational purposes for mine.

A lot of them do have overlap, but that's gonna be a guiding theme of this.

So for first, last year, um, in regards to advising on environmental issues.

We did a lot of research on litter reduction strategies.

If some of you remember our work on containerization, um, we're interested in that.

Uh, we I want to give a huge shout out to the Sweep Department.

They were very helpful in allowing us to do this research.

They met with us, they attended one of our meetings and allowed us to ask questions.

Um there will be more on this in the coming months, but as you all know, litter is a major issue.

Um, and we will be doing some more cleanups this year to kind of deal with that.

I also want to talk on invasive species management through the Mueller College's Office of Community Engagement.

We were provided a summer intern, um, and she focused her research project on invasive species, um, what they are, how they impact the city, how we deal with them.

I also want to give a major shout out to the parks department for helping our intern out with that.

And as you can see, it resulted in this joint resolution here that was passed in December, um, where we are committed to using less herbicides as well as pursuing sustainable land management practices.

I would love to see uh goats uh eating our grass.

Thank you.

Uh moving on.

Also a reminder all of our meetings are public and they are not only for you all to attend, but also for city residents to attend if they want to.

Last year we saw a numerous presentations, including in the beginning in January, we saw uh inventory of greenhouse gas emissions presented by students involved in Penn State's local climate action program.

We also saw a presentation from the Little Lehigh Watershed Stewards on winter salting and local waterway impacts.

That's that one's really interesting.

Um then as you can see on the right side here, these are also included in our report.

Um Mulenburgh College had a class called local sustainability, and that culminated with students giving final presentations and reports.

As you see, there's a report and a presentation just like this, um, where the report is a little bit lengthier on key aspects that we could include in our upcoming climate action plan.

Now, uh I know Veronica's gonna speak later on, but a critical part of this plan coming up is that these will be included.

So I would urge you all to um read these, they're they're pretty uh informative.

All right, two, moving into the next bucket on encouraged sustainable design and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, including the use of renewable energies.

Again, I don't want to steal Veronica's thlinder too much, but we have the upcoming electric vehicle pilot program.

This is something that we've been advocating for for numerous years.

Um, when we were finally able to get that to the finish line, which is um very successful, we're gonna see that hopefully rolling out this year.

Um we also have been supporting a climate action plan.

Uh this has been uh a focus of the EAC since before I was even involved with them back in 2019.

It was included in um Allentown Vision 2030.

We were the only city out of the valley to not have one, so now we're finally catching up to speed, and we will have a climate action plan, which is gonna be occurring this year.

In addition to that, we have an urban forestry master plan coming up, which we are have supported, and that was one of the key pillars that we used to sort of bring on the sustainability coordinator and managing that grant award.

Lastly, I would say one of our biggest wins last year within this category was the Allentown City Planning Commission reviews.

I want to give a major shout-out to our new member Craig Beavers.

His expertise has been critical in making sure that we have these.

Again, we want to be meeting the needs of our purpose statement and ensuring that the environmental perspective and some of the things that we advocate for are felt.

And with this and through these reviews to the Allentown City Planning Commission, we have made sure that these non-binding advisory comments are applied to land development projects.

So it's been pretty pretty big to have that happen last year.

Three, protect and preserves through another EA or Office of Community Engagement intern.

We had a Caitlin Linton prepared some educational materials here on Tree Bochures.

This is again resources for the public and for the city to go in line with a lot of our urban forestry projects occurring.

Four, uh, last year, if you guys remember my presentation, um, I did not have anything for this bucket, so I'm happy to have something for it this year.

Um I'm proud to say that we did the EAC had representation at all of the comprehensive parks master plan public meetings.

We made sure that we had somebody at every single one of those to share input and provide guidance on things not just about maintaining the use of open land but also environmental perspectives.

Um we submitted recommendations to them as well as a letter of support.

Same thing for Zone Allentown.

We were very engaged in that process.

Um we met with the team and we provided recommendations as well as a letter of support.

Five, uh, commute promote community environmental programs.

So this is the last pillar in sort of our purpose statement.

One of the things that we were involved in was the Youth Climate Action Fund.

Um we participated as one of the members on the review committee for this.

We had round one and round two.

Um, really excited to see a lot of the projects that our residents were able to come up with, and I'm always happy to see money coming from billionaires to our kids.

Next, uh the Lehigh Valley EAC steering committee.

Um, as one of the uh major cities here in the Lehigh Valley, um, well, uh I don't have anything on the last picture, but you would you can see from the last picture is we had a lot of members come from uh across the Lehigh Valley.

This is all of our municipalities from Lower McConji, Easton, Allentown a bunch.

Um, and we held both a spring gathering where we brought everybody together as well as a fall gathering where our sustainability coordinator Veronica gave a presentation on plastic reduction.

It's really critical for us to be involved as one of the three cities here in the valley, but also so that we're able to understand what our other municipalities are doing, especially ones that are different from us, because as we all know, gathering more perspectives is always gonna make a more well-informed decision.

Um five, also uh when promote community environmental programs, we did maintain our uh Birdtown PA gold status, uh which is a pretty big achievement.

I know the city posted that on social media just the other day.

Um of the things that we're pushing that was introduced last year is the PA Audubon Society's Bird Friendly Habitat Program.

So this is a program where residents can go online, fill out a form and certify their lawn as a bird-friendly habitat, and then in partnership with uh the parks department, after that's filled out, uh they can go there and pick up a sign to present this in their lawn to let everybody know that they care about the birds.

Um not in one of the buckets, but another major accomplishment uh for the EAC is the addition of a website for us finally.

So in gathering everything, I would a big part of this has been making sure that we have the infrastructure to do everything that we want to do in a proper way, and the city website is great, but this was a way that we could sort of centralize all of the files and everything that I could possibly scrape up since like 2017 on everything that we've pretty much ever done.

Uh all of our agendas, all of our meeting minutes, everything has been located here on this Google site, totally free.

We have no budget.

Um this is definitely a helpful place to get resources, and as I said, um, as we continue and try to grow on our community engagement, it's really critical that we have this place where somebody can just go to it and see what EAC has, what recommendations we've submitted and stay up to date.

It also has a calendar with our EAC focused items.

So, with that being said, that's what we did last year, uh, moving on to 2026.

Um, we do have a lot of overlap in the EAC with what we do with our sustainability coordinator.

So, a big priority for us this year is going to be to support our sustainability coordinator in the climate action plan, whatever ways we can increase community engagement for that.

In addition to that, we want to um make sure that the public and everybody is aware of our urban forestry master plan.

That's a critical thing that's gonna be coming on this year.

Next, improving community engagement.

We're gonna stay involved with the Lehigh Valley EAC network steering committee that includes our spring gathering and fall gathering, and we've recently started implementing monthly breakfast meetings, several of which have been held in Allentown as we're kind of driving the force behind this.

We're gonna make sure that we maintain our our Birdtown PA certification.

For those of you that are interested in trees, this is similar to like the Arbor Day Tree City USA thing.

Like we've been doing this for numerous years.

We got to meet some certain qualifications.

This is the one that kind of lives in EAC.

So we just want to make sure that we're continually meeting the guidelines to keep up our Birdtown PA certification.

There's signs like around the city that show this, so that's pretty great.

And lastly, we're always interested in doing policy research and recommendations.

This year we're still focused on our litter reduction, be on the lookout for our containerization survey.

We're going to be hammering some of the details out with those questions in the future.

We're also interested in doing some stuff regarding residential stormwater reduction and the nationalized landscape ordinance.

So there's a wrap.

Thank you for listening to me.

As always, if you have any questions, please shoot them my way.

It should be attached to the meeting agenda now.

It's also on our website very much under the annual porch tab.

So if you have any questions, please I'll take them now, or you feel free to just email me at the A Town EAC email or my personal if you have it.

Thank you, Kyle.

Record time, by the way.

Oh how to done.

Great, great.

All right, I'll take it.

Yeah.

Any questions from my committee members or the DIES?

All right, awesome.

Good.

Thank you, Kyle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And then I believe we have our sustainability coordinator Veronica coming up next.

Thank you.

Hi everyone.

I don't think we actually plan to have these two on the same day, but it worked out really well.

Because everything that Kyle mentioned, a lot of the things I'll be able to go in a little bit more detail.

So I made a similar presentation a couple of months ago with Penn Future.

They asked me and my counterparts from Bethlehem and Easton to make a presentation about what does a sustainability coordinator do.

So Mandy attended that presentation and asked me to do a similar one for you all today.

And the purpose was to secure grant funding from federal, state, and philanthropic sources to engage the community on some of these issues, to serve as a subject matter expert not only for municipal operations but for also residents and businesses on these issues, and also to develop projects and programs that improve environmental quality in service of future public health, safety, and quality of life.

So one of the first programs I wanted to mention, Kyle talked about it a little in his presentation was the urban and community forestry program.

So a couple of years ago, Allentown received about a million dollars to launch this program.

More specifically, what we're doing with that funding, we conducted a street tree inventory, which as of last week is complete.

So we have information about the species location and conditions of 15,000 street trees in the city and in some of our parks.

How can we ensure that we are stewarding our urban forest and ensuring that the benefits of those trees are more equitably distributed?

Right now, there's a lot more trees in certain sections of the city than others.

So, how do we how do we spread that out and make sure that all of our residents have can reap the benefits of those trees?

We also, as part of that, are creating a species selection plan.

So there's I think eight different bio types.

So we are looking at the condition of certain sites where trees might be planted, looking at the size of where you're planting it, what's surrounding the tree, um, are you in an urban environment or a more suburban environment?

Are there utility lines ahead overhead and making sure that we can give people a list of what trees are appropriate to plant in certain locations so that they're armed with that information if they want to plant a tree?

Um they're less likely to see some of those negative benefits, like the um roots uprooting the sidewalks or getting into the utility lines, things like that.

Oh, sorry.

We're uh also as part of that program.

We are uh planting up to 600 street trees in environmental justice areas and removing and replacing some hazard trees in those areas as well.

Um, before you move to the next, I just want to mention we have a survey out right now to inform our urban forestry master plan.

There's a QR code here on this um on this slide, and I think this presentation is on the agenda as well, um, and it's on the city website.

We're specifically looking for a lot more input from the South Side and the East Side, but overall for through the city, we'd like a little bit more input.

This will be open through the end of March.

Then talking about the electric vehicle fleet pilot.

So over the past couple of years, Allentown has received about 250,000 through both federal and state grants to purchase up to eight electric vehicles.

We've purchased seven of those so far.

We are also using some of that funding to install charging stations for those vehicles at the Bridgeworks building.

And then we'll be collecting data from the use of those vehicles to further inform electrification opportunities to better understand how electric vehicles perform in our fleet.

We were able to purchase six of those vehicles before the tax credit expired.

So we're actively working to try to get an additional $60,000 back in tax credits.

There were bike repair events, community gardens, some theater and social media, even like an AI-powered hydroponic system that was created and then shared with Allentown school districts.

So there's a lot of really, really great projects that came out of this.

We have applied for another two rounds of funding, and we'll find out in April if we receive that money.

Next, we have our climate action plan.

So as part of this plan, we have a lot of community outreach planned for this.

So we expecting that to start in the late spring, early summer.

Overall, I hope that this plan is really community driven and it will be focused on setting the greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.

We have our inventory completed, but now that we know where the emissions are coming from, what's what's our goal to reduce them?

And then the plan will work to identify specific strategies, either that the city can do alone or that the city could influence or work with other entities to implement.

We'll also be looking at how we can better prepare for flooding, heat events, and other extreme weather and improve public health, housing quality, neighborhood resilience, and then also support workforce development and training citywide.

There's also a survey open for the climate action plan as well.

And last, I wanted to mention this is hot off the presses.

We we received word last week that we received some funding from the Urban Sustainability Directors Network as part of their catalyst fund to launch a citizen science pilot with community bike works, Penn State University, and the City of Easton.

So with that funding, we will be purchasing air and air quality and heat sensors that community bikeworks will collect data with on their group rides for six weeks in the summer.

And then we will work with the youth leadership team at community bikeworks and Penn State to help them analyze the findings and then ultimately identify now that they have that information, what do they want to do with it, and how can we support them in advocating for their community needs?

So that will start in the next month or so and continue through September.

So that's what I have for you.

I'm happy to answer any questions if there's any, but uh thanks for having me here today.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, any questions from my committee or the dais?

Oh wait for the committee.

Anyone from the committee?

I just had one quick little thing.

So just you mentioned going for another rounding for the youth action fund.

Um, want to stay positive here, but what if we don't get that?

Like what are there any programs that we're already doing that we would want to keep doing or are there things that we already have that you know we'll take on or sure.

So, as part of the climate action plan, um we have one of our subconsultants' Lehigh University Small Cities Lab.

Um, with that project, we will be working with a fellow at Lehigh University to work with community groups to identify five pilot projects so that we can implement some potential strategies within the climate action plan while we're doing the planning process.

So people can you know bring forward, I want to do a project focused on this, I want to see this happen in the city, but let's start to do some of that work and start to do that groundwork so that while we're doing the plan, we can be better informed and be better prepared to continue that work beyond the planning process.

So that's one of the things we also have as part of the climate action plan uh contract with the consultant, we have money set aside for community groups and community ambassadors to help do some of that outreach.

Um I've done that successfully in other cities in the past, and I've been really impressed on um when you arm community groups or individuals with funding, what they can do and how creative they are about the the work that they do.

So I when I um developed the request for proposals for the climate action plan, I really wanted to incorporate a lot of community and some of that action that we saw in the youth climate action fund into the planning process as well.

Awesome, thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else from the committee?

Cece, did you have to?

Yeah, just two things on trees.

Uh so the first one is uh we've had conversation up here about sometimes the concern that people don't want trees.

Yeah.

Um is there a way for someone in a legal um or formal capacity to opt out of having a tree placed in front of their home or business?

And if not, what would that look like?

Would that be a legislative type of thing that we would need to do?

So the um the shade tree ordinance is uh what regulates the trees that are in front of their house.

So um, like I would refer to the to the shade tree ordinance more specifically with the grant funding where we're um planting trees, we're uh reaching out to areas where we know that they're out of compliance with that ordinance and offering them an opportunity saying, hey, we're we're you we've identified your property as being out of compliance.

We have um you're in an area where we're planting trees, so we're planning to plant a tree in this area.

Um if somebody has received a letter like that and wants to have a further conversation with us about um their options, we can talk with them on a case by case basis.

Okay.

Um my second question, and something we have to vote on tonight.

So I'm glad we have this now.

Um, I didn't make the public works meeting.

Um that fee in lieu of since the price of everything has increased, is that fee that people that developers or whomever have to pay in lieu of planting trees, has that kept up with the cost of planting trees is no.

It's pretty it's pretty low.

It's about it's um between four and five hundred dollars per tree that they don't plant as part of their that like that they pay in lieu of.

Yeah, um, so in some cases that will cover the the cost of the tree, maybe some supplies, but it's not going to cover anything related to the labor um or what it takes to actually plant those trees, and it definitely doesn't if we if stump grinding needs to happen or any like site prep needs to happen prior to a tree being planted, it definitely is not taking that.

Um it doesn't cover that either.

How roughly how much wood on a typical, not with the which you grind your grinding.

So yeah, not without that, yeah.

Just a typical um just to plant the tree, to plant the tree and yeah, the labor to you know, do the whole deal.

Um, so for a contractor, maybe $750 to plant a tree to stump grind could be maybe depending on if you are doing a bunch of them at a time, you could get a lower price, but um maybe a thousand dollars for that piece of equipment could be it could be pricey depending on how many you're doing.

So and remind me again how much the fee in lieu of is it's 400 and and something.

I don't know the exact number.

It's based off of um pen dots, how they value a tree.

Um, so that that's what we use.

We reference pen dots.

Um, and I I don't know, I'm not familiar with uh there's any legislation today to increase that fee.

We that would be my next question to increase that fee.

That would be a legislative action because it was a legislative action to create it.

We'd have to amend that ordinance.

I think yes, I think we're passing to or voting on tonight.

The one thing to note is that most of the time when a development's happening and they're creating a new sidewalk in street, you're not gonna have to do a stump grind because there's usually it's like a blank slate to start, usually.

Um redevelopments, there could be some tree removal and replanting.

So it really could vary pretty widely depending on the kind of project it is as well.

So okay, understand.

Seems like in general it does need to go up though, regardless if it's stump grinding or not.

I would I would think that it is not it to me, it doesn't seem like um it's definitely cheaper to pay the fee than plant a tree.

Which is why they do it.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right, cool.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Ms.

Apple.

Uh touching on what Ms.

Touching on what Ms.

Garlock said about a homeowner declining this.

You said they you have c'll have conversation with them and um there will be options.

Uh you didn't say what options where what options do they have.

Well, I can I can try to answer that.

So we we send a letter, and and if they say I don't want a tree, the ordinance does say that you're required to replant a tree.

So and Mo'er mentioning not in compliance.

If you remove a tree, our city ordinance right now says you're supposed to replace one for the public good, similarly to how you have a sidewalk that you have to have in front of your property to for a public space within the right-of-way.

So the places that we are targeting, some of them are out of compliance, meaning they had a tree in the past, maybe it died, maybe it's a stump now.

So we're coming in with a resource to say, let us help you get back into compliance and grind the stump and plant the tree.

Um so if they say no, then that's I would say more at their own risk where they could continue to be out of compliance technically, um, and could be held accountable for having to replant a tree, if that makes sense.

I'm still confused.

Why am I still confused?

In other words, they almost have to put a tree there.

The way the um ordinance, the tree ordinance is that it values what um trees bring to property values and and the environment.

So, yes, it is written in a way that they are aware of you.

They get a list or are they aware of the responsibility they have for this tree.

Um things that may happen with the sidewalk, they may it uh have to trim it.

It's hitting the lines, it's because I went through this, and this is why I'm asking, it was very expensive.

It was actually a very big pain in the neck.

And I had to trim it, I had to turn it to their specifications, and at one point it got into my water system.

I mean, it's really um, and I don't think I think homeowners should have the opportunity to at least know what to expect when they have this tree in front of their house, it's very pretty, but you have to maintain it and it's very costly.

And if a lightning should hit it and part of us, you're you're responsible for taking it down.

There's a lot of responsibility and very expensive to have a tree put, and I I don't see how fair this is to homeowners when they they don't have a choice, and if they did if they didn't want it, then maybe the city should be responsible for all the trimming and everything else that has to be done with it.

The one one sort of thing I'll add that we are trying to get creative in our in thinking about ways that we can help low-income homeowners that can't afford to um manage a tree into the future.

So right now we do have some federal funding, so we're doing things in areas that are lower income and trying to target um places where we can make them affect the most change and help people that need it the most.

But moving forward, um, we're trying to get creative and think of ways that we can create uh mechanisms that would be able to continue to help people into the future without coming out and saying that you know all street trees are the responsibility of the city, but maybe creating a way that we can support people that can't afford it.

Well, I'm not just talking about low-income people, not all presidents.

I mean, West and East Side don't have to be low income to all of a sudden you have a 10,000 dollar bill here.

Do you know what I'm saying?

So I feel that homeowners should have the choice whether they want the tree or not.

Um had I had the the choice back then, I wasn't living there at the time.

Across the street, they didn't have the trees because they didn't want it.

Um and I had that tree forever.

It cost me a lot of money, it obstructed my business.

It was there were so many problems with that tree.

And I I just believe that homeowners should have that choice.

Uh if you're going to gift these citizens with a tree, and what you're doing is the city of Allentown is gifting them a tree.

And um, if if this is what you're is something that you you do they have to have, I believe that the city should help them uh maintain it then also, uh, or at least they should have the choice not to have a tree in front of their home because it's their responsibility.

And it doesn't matter if it's a low income, if you're the wealthiest person, I mean that it's still a lot of money and a lot of maintaining.

And once those roots can get into your water system, this really is a problem.

Okay, let's let's thank you, Miss Apple, for your comments.

Um, and the interest uh or do you have a quick comment?

Yeah, um, just very quickly.

Um, I wanted to add we had a Lehigh County workshop um a couple weeks ago, and one of the nuggets that came out of it was they are uh may have a department for community gardens and hydroponics.

So I just wanted to encourage you to to collaborate with the county whenever possible to to reach some of these goals uh because they are uh more equipped than we are at this point, and uh it could be an opportunity to get some of this, some of these ideas to the finish line.

Um also I just want to thank uh my colleague uh Miss Natalie Santos for being our liaison uh to the EAC.

So uh thanks for thanks for taking that on.

So yeah, Mr.

Binder.

I'm just uh just wanted to put this out here because I did see uh I know the recent letters that went out um trying to figure out how to articulate this, but maybe we could make them a little softer or make there be more buy-in because I think to some residents when they receive it, it's a bit I understand it's the law and it's it's outlying it, but we can maybe make it a little more friendly.

I can't it comes across as as as very uh direct.

So um just kind of putting that out there just so I got some feedback.

So okay, thank you.

We'll look at it for next round when we send out letters to make sure it's not seemingly too too much.

So thank you.

Thank you guys for your comments.

Um and then last thing, uh Ms.

Tilino, do you have any updates for the parks and rec?

Um, not at this time.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Well, that is all that we have on the agenda for today's committee.

Oh, I'm sorry, any public comment?

Hi, I'm Mary Tomlinson, 373 West Liberty Street, and I'm just reiterating what has Bretton brought up and what I'm hearing in my community about people who are like becoming averse to trees and uh have run into high maintenance bills and are uh concerned about being forced to um entail that all on their own.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other public comment?

Seeing none, um I will adjourn this meeting and next up we have public safety.

Thank you.