All right.

Um good evening and uh welcome to the May 4th Community Development Board meeting.

Um called to order at 603 Montana or Mountain Daylight time.

Uh thank you for joining us.

We welcome the presence of those uh here in the city commission room.

Before we start this meeting, I'd like to remind those not physically present here of ways in which you can follow this meeting and provide public comments.

You can watch this meeting in real time and provide public comment uh should you so choose by joining us via video conference.

You'll find the link to join us by going to the city's website at uh Bozeman.net, click on departments, then on City Commission, and then on live stream and videos.

Find this meeting under the upcoming events list and click on the copy of the meeting agenda.

It is highlighted in blue.

Then click on via video conference, also highlighted in blue in the second paragraph of the agenda and follow the prompts into the meeting.

Um if you are joining us via video conference, and if you would like to offer public comment this evening, use the video conference raise your hand feature when it is your turn to comment, staff will call on you by name.

Uh please know that we will take public comments from those physically present here first, followed by those joining via video conference.

Uh in addition to joining us via video conference, there are three other ways you can follow this meeting.

These are for viewing or listening only, and you will be unable to provide public comment.

You can dial in and listen to the meeting.

You'll find the phone number and access code under section A of the agenda and under the via video conference heading on the city's website described above.

You can watch this meeting on cable TV channel one ninety.

Uh and you can stream this meeting under computer.

Go to Bozeman.net, click on departments, then on City Commission, then on live stream and videos.

Find this uh find this meeting under the upcoming events list and click on view live event event.

Um you can always provide public written comment before meetings by sending an email to comments at Bozeman.net.

Um, which I think will become or it has become comments at uh Bozeman MT dot gov, or by visiting the city's public comment uh webpage.

Any public comments received by noon on the day of a meeting will have been distributed to the board.

Um I don't believe there's anybody uh participating uh remotely.

Um so I'll start by introducing ourselves, uh, starting with you, Mr.

Bonnett.

Eric Bonnett.

That sure is sensitive.

Okay.

Lauren Maitro.

Um Jason Delamu uh Vice uh chairperson uh handling this meeting on behalf of our regular chairperson Ben Lloyd.

Mark Eggie.

Joey Morrison.

And uh also at the DIS with us, uh city staff.

Chris Saunders?

Sam Seigner.

All right, thank you.

Are there any uh disclosures from any board members?

Uh hearing none, are there any changes to the agenda?

None.

Thank you.

Um public service announcements.

Well, in my usual fashion, I'll throw out that the latest issue of the uh Bozeman Beat podcast came out, and uh once again it's a very uh informative and interesting.

Um I imagine if you're seeing this in some manner, you probably would agree.

And the rest of the community that's not, maybe, maybe not so much, but uh for us uh government aficionados, it's it's good stuff.

Um other public service announcements.

All right.

Next item is E approval of minutes uh from our prior meeting, which I believe was uh April 20th.

I'd entertain a motion.

I can provide a motion to approve the minutes from the April 20th meeting.

I'll second.

Okay, great.

Um there any uh comments or corrections that need to be made that anyone saw?

I would uh and I'm curious from either staff if this feels necessary.

Um so there is uh the the motion on the main the recommendation on the handsome lane um ZMA uh says motion carried six zero, but it was seven zero.

Um right below it, it has all seven board member names.

So it feels more of correcting an error than necessarily an amendment, but didn't know if staff had a preference as to how we would go about that.

I think it's been recognized on the record.

Um checks will do it as a correction.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you for catching that.

Uh anything else from anyone.

All right.

Um, Mr.

Sachsetter, would you call the vote, please?

Mover Eggnets.

I was it second or Egggy.

Yes.

Yes.

Mayor Morrison?

All right.

Board Member Mitro.

Aye.

Board Member Bonnet.

Aye.

And Vice Chair Delhi.

Aye.

All right.

Um moving down the agenda.

Uh, we have no consent items today or special presentations.

We have three action items.

Uh the first of which is a work session with the forestry division on the uh urban forest master plan.

Chair, while he's setting up go ahead.

Uh I'll just touch quickly on on why this is here for you.

Um, as the board's well aware, the state recently changed uh the planning laws for us, and that includes what are called issue plans.

It's a topic or subject specific uh plan that dives into greater detail.

And uh the city's had a forestry plan for a while.

The forestry division is working on updating that as an issue plan.

This body does have a responsibility to uh review and participate uh on its way to the city commission.

So we felt it'd be valuable to uh help you engage at this stage when it's just just getting kicked off.

Um just as a refresher, um issue plans, land use plans by state law are not regulatory.

Um this is a policy setting uh process, which would then be followed up as required with uh formal separate processes to identify uh specific language uh for any kind of regulatory element.

If it's not regulatory, if it's separate, uh more of an incentives or something like that, that would be something outside the jurisdiction of this board.

Uh would stay over with uh sustainable um urban parks and forestry board.

So all right, thank you.

Thank you.

Can Chris can I ask a quick question?

Sure.

Delay a little bit here while they're setting this up.

Um will this come back then before us?

I guess in November, I believe it was, prior to it then going to the commission.

Well, we kind of have another review of it.

Yes, there will you folks will need to hold a formal public hearing and make a recommendation uh on on this one.

Okay, thank you.

It's pretty sensitive.

Mic check, mic check.

Woo.

Good evening.

That's loud.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's it.

Just give me a bottom.

Great here.

Well, good evening, board members, city staff.

Appreciate being here.

Um, and I'm happy to do that.

Uh talking trees is the business for me.

And I hope that we're not just talking procedural, but we're also, I mean, I think it should be a little bit fun.

Um things get a little bit more complex when you're talking about urban environments and taking care for trees and also people that live amongst them and talking about public safety and talking about budgets and staffing levels and all those things.

So a little bit of that background that Chris already explained.

Um the forestry division is myself and four full-time employees.

We also hire in some uh summer seasonals.

So it's a fairly small operation to handle I think the breadth of what we cover.

You know, the nuts and bolts kind of work is we're planting trees throughout the city, we're removing trees when they reach end of life, and in between that is probably about a century of growth and maintenance that needs to take place.

What happens when there's a storm event, and you need to, you know, pivot and take care of an emergency item.

Uh those things come into our core operation.

We're also assisting with planning and development items where I would review landscape plans at development review, um, other items like that, and we're really feeling the pressure, I think.

Um constantly striving to increase our awareness and let folks know that we're out there.

Um the vast majority of our work is street boulevard trees.

So when a new subdivision comes in, we've got a whole new suite of trees to add to our inventory and map and track and record their health and development, and then it's a whole new series of homeowners that have trees in front of their house, and that's my tree.

It's like, well, we're here to take care of it, and it's our tree.

It's a community's tree.

So that's the bulk of our work, but we're also here to I think be non-profit motivated experts.

You know, so it's a it's a five-person team of arborists for the city, for the community, and in a lot of ways, we're here for outreach, education, and to sort of set a high standard and uh not only provide residents with the right information for their own landscapes, but work with the private tree care industry in town, uh, work with MSU.

So I could go on and on as Joey uh implied.

This might be a three-hour session here.

So I'll do my best to trim that down a little.

Uh the management plan that we currently have is on the forestry division website, um, dated from 2016.

And it's really feeling like we've accomplished a lot of those goals.

It's really feeling a bit dated.

It's time to do a refresh, uh, help us prepare for an uh current situation, current constraints we're feeling, and really set us up for the next 10 years.

So a little bit of background uh to set this up.

We've we've chosen our consultant team after a fall 25 request for proposals and um judging and grading and scoring and picking a consultant that uh we feel fairly confident that they're gonna get us to the finish line, and it's been a great experience working with DGNA as a local state um entity, and then they've subcontracted with Planet Geo that specialize in tree inventory and GIS type work, and so management plans being somewhat of a niche request.

Um, they're absolutely professionals and knowledgeable to grant us the outside perspective.

So I think that's a key component is that we don't want to just write our own management plan.

We want to work on this as a team, taking in feedback and involvement from the public, from other city departments and boards, and also from an outside consultant team.

And I will say at any point, if anyone has questions, just chime in and interrupt me.

And uh I think that'd be preferable to just trying to wait and hold off at the end of things.

Uh we've again back to the fun part.

I think we've had a lot of great questions uh speaking at our own urban parks and forestry board and and other guest boards like sustainability recently.

So again, happy to be here.

Um I'm stealing slides from some public uh PowerPoints that we've already given, but it's just me today.

But we've got a good team, well credentialed working on this project, and it's really been great to just have a group that's that's really again bringing an outside perspective.

So I'll kind of go through a little bit of the process here.

Again, it's 2016.

We're doing a tenure reset and to provide us for guidance through 2036.

We're largely in phase two at the moment, and uh this is to just kind of give an overview of of some of the key components through our process.

Um we've had one initial virtual public meeting.

We've had a few what we call uh coordination meetings where we're going and meeting with other city staff from relevant relevant departments, and then we're really kind of launching that public engagement a little more full bore.

Um initial virtual meeting to sort of just share the structure of what we're gonna do going forward, and then May 18th, we have our first in-person virtual meeting.

We're also launching a public survey.

So just a lot of input that we want throughout this process.

Uh, we do expect that to go into fall and winter.

Uh, in addition to the public survey, we have a public comment period, and we're working again with our urban parks and forestry board.

And when everything's really finalized and developed into this planning document, uh, we'll be presenting that to the city commission for final approval.

Again, some of the core items for this process, uh, public engagement.

We have the coordination meetings that I mentioned with other staff, and we have work sessions.

So I really think that is in a lot of ways public engagement.

It's it's to hear the perspective from a specific board, but it's also a chance to get public comment at the board meeting itself.

And on the right here, we're really um splitting it up into some of the different topics that we decided we really need to cover.

Community engagement aside from the process, to me, is um how are we doing our volunteer programs?

We have a few initiatives in place where aside from the work that we do, we're fairly limited, right?

We can feel the pinch on our staffing on our budget.

And uh a great example is uh our summer volunteer planting events.

So we do work with uh Gallatin Watershed Council as a local nonprofit partner, and we've really forged that into a larger initiative called Branch Out Bozeman, where they can help us with a lot of that legwork to pick sites to coordinate volunteers to set up efforts like that.

It's it's quite an undertaking to do volunteer work sites for fun, you know, and it gets you realize that it's work on top of other work.

So community engagement items like that, uh, also trying to educate folks.

Um we get to be the eyes and ears of every single neighborhood.

You know, we work on each and every street, and you see issues uh pertaining to the landscape.

Maybe a classic example is like uh young trees should have a plastic trunk guard at the base, and they should should be mulched as well.

But given our environment and given our aesthetic preferences, mulch disappears.

You know, it'll the grass will overtake it within a year.

So now you're all gonna drive around town and look for mulch rings.

You're like, I don't see any, you know.

So that's that's a concern when uh mowers and string trimmers can repeatedly impact young trees and unnecessarily harm or lead to premature removals.

So community engagement, tree infrastructure is really looking at kind of nuts and bolts work for how we track and record the trees that the city is responsible for.

And if I didn't say that already, we talk about the urban forest being all of the trees that are in our community, and if you want to get cold with it, you know, city limits or the growth boundary, maybe that's what we're responsible in our area, but we don't go into your backyards or anything or private properties.

That's what we're responsible in our area, but we don't go into your backyards or anything or private properties.

So that's the urban forest, all of those trees, everywhere.

And then we're responsible for city maintained trees is largely our parks and boulevards and city properties like here.

So tree infrastructure, we track and record individual trees.

When we inherit new trees with development, we add those to the system.

We note what species, what size, what date we added it.

Same thing with our own planting efforts.

We delete those and record removals when we have to remove trees.

And then again, in the middle, all of the pruning work, all the storm response.

And you get vast, I think, management implications from all that data.

And you know, what's taking our time?

What type of work, what type of tree, uh, what's going well, what's a healthy tree, what the species diversity, we can catalog all that and split it in a in a hundred different ways and really uh get the value of our forest and what's working well and what's not.

But to have an outside professional come and really just dive into that takes a lot off of our plate.

Staffing and equipment, again, I've sort of set the stage that we're a little bit of a small division under parks and rec.

And you know, if we need to grow, we need to be able to plan for that and budget for that.

And I think we want that outside perspective again.

I'm gonna say that a lot, probably, but a good example is um you know, we have some fun equipment.

We have the core items would be two bucket trucks, so we can get up in the canopy, two chip trucks, and the trailer chipper behind it.

Uh and everybody makes fun of us and talks about the movie Fargo with the little chipper.

I would never use that thing.

It's it takes way too long.

So our chipper can eat a 15-inch trunk.

So that guy would be gone.

Um, but our equipment's super efficient, and we're really proud of what we have.

A good example might be is it time for a third bucket truck, new chip truck, and chipper.

That would come with associated staffing.

That's a market expanse of our impact.

Or is it maybe more efficient to increase our contracting budget?

Those type of things for staffing and equipment.

Planning and development, I'm gonna save that for last.

Uh, insects, disease, and disaster preparedness.

It really helps us not only handle Montana normal conditions, which can really throw us off, especially late snow after the leaves have just come out, or early snow in the fall when the leaves aren't quite shut down.

That's when we get our storm damage.

Um, that's an issue.

Summer drought can be an issue, hail, um, anything can be thrown at us, and then you also factor in climate change and I would say, you know, just that we're in a global economy, and the trading back and forth introduces pests, introduces invasive species, things like that that are a consequence of the modern world.

So we do need to be prepared for new disease issues, new insects, and I think increasing volatility in our weather conditions uh as we go through the 21st century.

So planning development integration.

Uh we'll we'll just we'll dig into that in a moment.

Everything's up on engaged boseman.

Um the work sessions mentioned here are with the Urban Parks and Forestry Board.

And then, yeah, three more public meetings coming, two in person and one more virtual for the public, and then we'll be updating city commission in the middle of the process fairly soon, and then at the end for a final presentation.

Everything is on Engage Bozeman, that's super helpful, right?

I'm sure that's similar to other major planning efforts.

Um, I'm assuming you've been involved with UDC and having that on Engage Bozeman, the one-stop shop to keep everybody informed and updated and having schedules posted and uh social media outreach and all that good stuff.

So back to these items.

Um I'll kind of glaze through this.

Community engagement.

We'll get to the good stuff since I've already explained this.

Okay, this is what we're all here to discuss.

I I think that for the forestry division, we we really interact with other departments a lot.

Um we help out streets and engineering pretty extensively with construction access for street rebuilds, when there's utilities being replaced, when there's repaving, chip seal routes, all that good stuff.

Um we work with a lot of other departments, and so we're happy to see where they intersect.

And I think everyone should think of trees as other units of infrastructure for the city.

And it's that is the reality of you know, they are beautiful, and we appreciate the environmental benefits and everything, but they're also city infrastructure.

And uh working with these other departments is kind of like how everybody else does it.

It's like let's help out where we can, we're all busy, let's scramble, and there's always ways to refine that.

So I think um that's a big part of our plan, and I don't have specifics right now, but I do have specifics for everything else here on this chart, and I think that'll be uh more the meat of the conversation here.

So when we talk about uh tree protection zones, that's really an industry standard uh term from the arbore culture industry and coming from national standards uh relating to trees and construction.

So a tree protection zone would be something we'd we'd see fairly often for landscape plans from you know at development review, for example.

Um we'll see those come in, and I think there's a distinction uh between public and private property and what we can do with a tree protection zone currently, and I think part of this planning effort is to explore what can be changed, what can be refined.

So a good example is let's say someone uh tears down a building and you're you're building a new development on the site.

Let's say you have existing boulevard trees.

We we maintain those and we're responsible for those trees.

So we can certainly stay within our realm and say you need to have a tree protection zone prior to construction with this set of standards, you know, fencing around the perimeter of the tree canopy, don't store any materials on the root zone, keep it watered, things like that we can do for a public boulevard stretch or in a park, say.

And then a tree protection zone for a private property, we do see those often, but we don't currently, you know, I I largely have an obligation to be advisory for private property trees.

And so that's something we're exploring is what what is an increased capacity we can do for tree protection zones uh concerning private existing trees and construction impacts.

And um go ahead and can I ask a question?

Yeah, sorry.

Well, because I'm just so I'm I make sure that I'm following, and maybe everyone else is too.

So if I understand what you're saying, um the city, yourself, our um jurisdiction kind of ends at the boulevard.

So it's the trees that line a boulevard.

If I had a 12-inch ash tree in my backyard, um, and I wanted to cut it down.

I don't, but say I did, right?

Um, would I um could could I go out there with the chainsaw, take it down?

Would I have to get a permit to do that?

I read I was reading, I think it was Article 5 in uh in our code.

16.

Is it 16?

16 not five.

All right, not fair either.

That's why you make the big bucks.

Um 16.

Um, and it and it was kind of it maybe it's a little bit squishy in there in terms of okay.

I'm gonna take down a tree, I have to come in, I have to get the free permit.

That's fine.

I have to have you review it, or some or I think it's you review it and say, yep, this is a tree you can take down.

But what I'm hearing from you is that I guess our jurisdiction really is just that bull, or your business jurisdiction is really just that boulevard.

Is that correct?

Yeah, I would say, and it it would be like a city maintained tree.

So yes, the boulevard, or you know someone wants to for some reason affect a park space or city hall here.

Um those are the permits that we would approve.

And if it's a 12-inch tree in your backyard, uh that's your private property.

And um Chris, if you have anything to add, I mean, if you want to chime in on maybe what the scale would be to trigger something like at development review, we might say things like recommend you keep that tree and erect a tree protection zone around it as per industry standard.

Uh but yeah, but you can't forget it.

Pardon?

We can't mandate that at this point.

Okay.

Yeah.

And Alex touched on an important point, which is the difference of types of development.

So if it is uh what we call sketch plan, so typical uh one-building duplex, triplex kind of thing.

Um the standards that are applicable to that, other than the the boulevard tree standard directly, that's about as far as the regulations currently go.

If you're going into a more extensive review uh site plan or something like that, then there is additional requirements for documentation.

Folks need to show us what's on the site, give us a bunch of information that's been expanded with the most recent UDC.

And uh so that does become a review component.

Again, we do not have a regulation that says you cannot take it down, but it does become something where we start looking at it and saying, all right, are there reasonable design options to avoid um these trees?

And one of the the tricky pros and cons is you know, if it's a you're in your example a 12-inch ash, somebody planted that long ago under potentially very different conditions.

And so looking at what are today's conditions, there's always frequently some tension back and forth between is that still the right location?

Um did they put the right tree in in the first place?

Um some trees do better here than others.

Uh some are more likely to be a nuisance than others.

So species type becomes part of the factor.

Um places where we do explicitly have regulations are things like the boulevards, those are very explicit, those are in every single district and elsewhere in the code.

Um areas along water courses.

We have explicit standards about um not only protecting what's there, but also vegetating if it's not um if it's not suitably uh in place.

Um many of those areas have been plowed at some point in the past.

Um and then wet water course, excuse me, water course, and then wetlands.

So there are some areas where there's a broader set of regulations which incorporates trees as one element.

Um but for most private property, unless you're getting into those kinds of narrow areas or a more intensive development, um, there aren't specific regulations for those.

All right, perfect.

Yeah, you you picked up right on my line of questioning, which is um there's and this there's a thrust of effort, right, to uh maintain as much of the mature vegetation that we have in the city.

Um for many of the reasons that were listed in your presentation here, and you're probably gonna get to them.

But um how do we um on these 40 60 hundred-acre lots that come in right into the city, how do we um incentivize keeping those because so often I see those lots scrubbed and stripped and leveled, and then we start from scratch again.

And I know we do that because it's efficient and cost effective for developers to not plan lots around trees, but instead basically create a grid, right?

Develop the lot and then sell those off because they're efficient lots.

So yeah, that I think that yeah, that's my line of questioning.

And I think if um that becomes something that is incorporated in the new document or you know, incentivized, that would be huge.

So I think just to reiterate, you know, this this is sort of the intake and brainstorming phase, and it's the perfect time to hear those comments and concerns because uh we're not saying we're gonna get answers right this moment.

We're that's the whole effort of the plan uh is to explore what we can do.

And uh what I liked when we initially chose our consultant was they specifically mentioned the require incentive spectrum.

And so somewhere in there, we hope to find some creative solutions to just that concern.

I think probably seguing into this third item, private property development.

You know, one thing I think that's really effective right now, and and Chris kind of jogged my memory is uh wetland and how we absorb like park spaces.

You know, a lot of times what seems like established uh tree canopy on a private lot for a larger development is almost a default spot for park space.

It I'm not gonna be a very eloquent explainer of that because I'm not a planner, but it tends to be that way, and that tends to be an opportunity for us to say I am at development review, this is going to be the park space, so it will become city maintenance and responsibility.

So we do have a set of standards and conditions for making that.

So another great example is going to be Fowler connection.

We have some some pretty big concerns about inheriting new trees, retaining that stuff, but also having safe openings when we talk about expanding intersections.

So, you know, my crew knows where the south end of that is at Huffine and Bozeman Ponds, and that's park space already, and we already have pretty intensive work zones when we close Fowler right there to just do some safety work on those cottonwoods that line the street.

So now our next concern is what are those phases going north, and how will we be responsible for not only making sure that as that project takes place, the right trees are preserved and the correct trees are removed, but we need to have that safe spaces.

We don't want to uh compromise and then have something potentially hazardous right near a new roundabout as an example.

So private property development, we we do chime in in the areas that are currently appropriate for us to chime in.

And if that's something that we can mandate because it's going to become city right-of-way, we will.

And if it's something that's still staying private property, we can still offer general recommendations.

Alex, if I could just jump in for one other second.

One of the complicating issues for all of this stuff is there's the landowner, there's the city, and then especially in this area of the valley, there's the folks that own the irrigation works.

And they have a essentially absolute right to maintain that, which can include removal of vegetation.

Um, and so frequently during the the development process, there's some back and forth happening between the landowner and the the owner of the irrigation works.

And the city generally stays out of that.

That's a private to private conversation.

Uh, but the the folks that own those irrigation works, that's a property right that they have.

Just the water itself plus the ability to maintain it.

And that can add some very interesting dynamics to some of these kinds of issues.

It doesn't happen on every project, but um especially as you know, a new annexation's coming out into area that's been recently um under active agriculture.

That's uh not uncommon um sticking point sometimes to get resolved.

So I'll move on to heritage tree program.

And we have a few years of background on this through historic preservation advisory board, and it's now moving over to urban parks and forestry board once we get through this planning document.

So it seems like a lengthy process because it is, and I think we want to do it right, but uh we hear loud and clear there's there's demand for some type of heritage tree program from our community, and we've done some background work with HPAB.

Again, that outside perspective.

We want to hear from a consultant team to maybe get some success stories from other communities, you know, what's been effective in other towns.

And I think largely just to take a hypothetical guess.

I think we'd end up with some type of program to recognize exceptional trees in town that are on private property, that'd be kind of voluntary.

Do you want to do you want to nominate a tree in your yard?

And then we'd sort of work on a set of conditions for that.

If you want that tree to be a heritage tree, you need to water it pretty readily.

You need to mulch it.

You need to have a certified arborist come inspect it once a year.

And we'd probably end up with something similar like that on probably city park spaces, would be the easiest way I see this kind of playing out.

But again, it's it's not me making the decisions.

It's the community, and we want to just have an informed process there.

But other communities have similar programs, and maybe we're uh putting a tag on the low branch or a sign in front of those trees to inform and educate, and just really I think it's a feel good thing, but there are some some pretty exceptional trees in town, and it takes a long time for trees to grow here.

So uh we really want to highlight stuff that's that stood the test of time or has uh uniqueness for history or uh any other cultural reasons.

So uh that's a component of this master plan as well.

Third party tree installations.

Um what I mentioned earlier is we work in each and every neighborhood, and then we're we sort of watch and we get to see everything going on.

It's like, oh, there's a new place over there, there's a new restaurant over here.

Maybe we need to work over there around lunchtime.

Um that doesn't happen, Joey.

Swear.

Um, so when new developments come in, our process is is fairly informal right now.

Um we might be working nearby, we see the construction is taking place, we see the streets are paved.

We see some homes are being built or the park is in place.

Now all the trees start dotting the streetscape.

Um we we have a fairly informal process of people are living there now, we see the irrigations on, lawns are in.

Now it's probably time to go in there and start adding trees.

Again, mapping the trees, marking them, and then coming up with our plan for you know, the first round of maintenance is to come in in a couple of years, a year or two later, it's time to get those low branches off already so that we have street and sidewalk clearance.

Um we could do a lot better in terms of um getting a more formal process of it's your time, this is your trigger to go and accept.

And at that point of acceptance, those private property trees that came in with development are now public property.

And that's that's a main rub of what we do is if we go up to someone's house, you know, my dad planted this tree.

Well, he donated it to the city, you know, and uh at the development scale, we could we could very much benefit from a clearer process, and uh a common item with any landscaper or uh arborist putting in trees would trees would have a one or two-year warranty for survivability, and it would be great to have a clear timeline of when that warranty starts so that instead of uh informally just well, we just roll with the punches, we've got some new trees, um, we'd have a clearer timeline, and if we need to get things uh replaced or modified, it'd be a lot easier.

Yeah, please.

Um, I'm curious if you know um, you know, those kind of newly installed trees, what the average lifespan is.

Um ideally including the ones that get replaced during warranty.

I've just heard it short, and I'm curious because you know the the life of a street tree is can be hard.

Right.

I'm just curious to be on.

Yeah, there's there's a few ways to split that, and I think the main stat that probably gets out to the general public is is a short lifespan for urban trees, and I think that's largely considering like our main street, surrounded in concrete in a four by four well.

That's the hardest life for a tree, and that really is probably a five-year average.

Uh, I think in neighborhoods, it's probably um a longer average lifespan.

I wouldn't say I have a data-driven answer for that.

Um what we observe being issues is the order of operations.

Um a lot of times trees might get planted and then the lawn's not there yet, or the irrigation guy comes out two months later, or the trees are put in in August when it's 90 degrees.

If they'd have done that in May, it might have been a little bit better.

So we do see, I think as young neighborhoods and subdivisions start to really get rolling and start to mature, we swap things out gradually.

That does happen.

Um planting program, our main program works directly with residents, so they can reach out and say, you know, oh, my tree died.

It's I need a new one.

But we certainly can't scale up replacing you know 500 in a failed subdivision as an example.

Um yeah, I wouldn't say I have a good number for it, but those those type of issues really factor into uh less than successful planting, is that timing and working with so many subcontractors, I think.

Thank you for that.

Yeah.

Informative.

Uh I think in addition at the third-party uh tree installation, you know, it's not just subdivisions.

If it's individual homes, we do have a good, fairly good uh process in place.

We have a free permit, and so we just say, you know, fill out a brief permit, and that's spelling out some of the quality control items for an individual property.

That's easy for us to keep track of.

Um, but there's always stuff that kind of falls through the cracks.

If folks don't know that they have to reach out, or they don't know that the city maintains the boulevard and approves new trees.

Um we you know, we may have to go knock on doors and inform the residents of the issue, or we may have to talk with code enforcement, and that's just not as much fun, you know, being the bad guys.

So um it almost caters to the outreach portion too, is that letting people know uh what we're responsible for.

So, in terms of policy recommendations at the end, um Chris, you mentioned uh section 16 is kind of more section 16.5 is really nuts and bolts stuff for the forestry division, and then we also have tree impacts under UDC.

Um we're gonna look at both of those sections of code.

Um, and as we discuss all these other topics, it's very likely that we'll be coming up with some new language at the end of this plan for some of those specific items, and then that's a new process after plan adoption.

The next task is to work on uh code amendments if necessary.

Yeah, and just to build on that, um as this body's seen the the code process is lengthy and uh involves a lot of folks.

Uh Alex mentioned working with other departments a lot.

This is going to be an area where there will be more information, more exchanging between departments.

Um all of those trees that are in the boulevard are also in the right-of-way where the streets go.

Um so there's just lots of back and forth.

Um looking at our we're getting more areas that are downtown-esque in the sidewalk.

Um, and so looking at um, you know, can we have a better spec?

And if so, where does it live so that it's not just a four-foot cube that is the tree base?

Um, and so there's lots of areas where there's going to be back and forth between a variety of different disciplines in trying to figure out how to get the best overall outcome.

Yeah, I think that's a great example, Chris.

And you know, currently the standard is um, and and really a standard across the country, it seems to be, is yeah, uh 48 by 48, you know, four-foot well uh with a cast iron grade on the base with irrigation underground, um a vertical guard to keep people from locking their bikes on it and scuffing it up.

Uh now if you drive down North Seventh, where we have quite a bit more infrastructure on those street trees.

Um I won't get into the structural cells, but uncompacted soil supposed to play nice with utilities, and then permeable pavers on top of that.

We've observed pretty fantastic growth on those trees.

They've been in the ground for a few years, and that's an example of what's pretty expensive infrastructure, specifically to benefit the landscape.

Very successful from our end.

And what we want is feedback from other departments.

There, uh you have regular sidewalk, and then between the sidewalk and curb, permeable pavers.

So they'll absorb rainfall and items like that, but it does need to be vacuumed.

It needs to be maintained so that it's not clogged up.

So streets or storm water ends up with that type of maintenance, and that's not something we necessarily think about.

But that's an example of a very uh unique example in town, and uh certainly an expensive one to add quite a bit of quite a bit more than just a four by four cut into the concrete surroundings.

So yeah, continuing on with kind of the uh a rehash of the process.

Um work sessions are coming up with Urban Parks and Forestry Board.

Uh we have three more public engagement meetings, a survey will launch soon, and as that public survey is open and then closing later in the summer, public comment period will take place in the fall.

There's our meetings for the public.

You know, again, this is really an opportunity to get folks' concerns and comments throughout the process, and I really think to just have transparency.

You know, if if someone's commenting early on, or they missed it early on, they can attend something later.

And you know, I'm really trying to encourage that if folks maybe can't make uh public engagement meeting, they can make a board meeting and at least provide comment or just get online and provide public comment at any time.

Yeah, we're aiming for November and December timeline.

It's it's a good bit of work on top of our regular workload this year, but um this is a big effort for us, and I think it takes it takes a team effort, and adoption in December, I think is pretty aggressive, you know.

But we are moving at at a good pace right now and um getting a lot of good interaction with a lot of good parties here.

So it's it's fun and engaging so far.

So I'll take any questions relating to this process and general questions about how forestry operates.

I got a couple.

Um you mentioned your five-person um team.

Um does that team take care of all the trees in the parks as well, or do you get some help from parks parks uh staff?

Sure, there's there's a bit of trade-off, and I think when it comes to safety of the team, uh we generally don't want the parks crews to get into anything too big, you know, and a lot of those uh guys and gals have some type of background, you know, that's related, and they might have some chainsaw experience, but you know, my number one thing OSHA, ANSI, you don't go above the shoulder, and that's why we have a bucket truck, so I can go 65 feet with and never move a chainsaw above my shoulder.

So uh we have the specialized equipment and techniques and knowledge uh to get into the big stuff, but uh parks will assist with lighter duty work in the parks areas, but that's a great example of you know maybe a question we have is uh will this plan result in a recommendation that we launch a parks crew, a dedicated crew.

And I think again that goes back to that's an additional truck or two.

And um our parks work is very reactive.

Uh we have a few projects lined up this summer that again, if we've worked in the boulevard nearby, we know that we've we've seen some concerns, we need to address them.

Uh it tends to be reactive.

We'll we'll do some work in Linley before the sweet pea or the farmers market starts up.

We know that we're uh losing some elms in Cooper Park due to some disease issues.

So we jump in when we sort of have to, but it's the parks work is not very proactive currently.

Thanks.

Um my other question was just the um just I'm just curious how the boulevard trees that we have got so big.

Um like I think of like the tree root zone is kind of being sort of like as big as like the canopy.

Um so I mean, we talked about the four by four box as not being ideal, but I mean most boulevards aren't very wide, even if it's a grass boulevard that's permeable.

Um is our standard that the sidewalk slope towards those to drain water into them.

Um then I'm thinking like the street.

I mean, the street drains into the curb gutter, which doesn't probably get into those trees.

Anyway, I was just curious how we have such a beautiful uh bunch of really large boulevard trees in our older parts of town in what is a seemingly not awesome uh environment.

Hundreds of years of growth.

Well, that's a real good question, and I've got a few thoughts that could become an answer here.

Uh number one, the soil is pretty amazing here.

And even when we've removed trees on Main Street and pulled back old concrete and stuff, the soil's black, rich in organic material.

So there can be really high quality soils throughout town, but I think just a larger growing space, period is a better growing space.

So wider boulevards tend to work better.

Um but I think as trees grow, they'll push through anything to expand their roots.

And a good example is like maybe seeing recent SIDs, street improvement districts, South Tracy or South Black, when we'll come in occasionally to address a safety issue when the streets torn up.

And roots will take up the entire boulevard stretch.

They'll be in front yards, they'll be in the street.

So the sidewalk and curve isn't necessarily limiting.

But generally in that really urban environment where you do have the four by four, well, it's it's pretty rare that trees will exceed that, but of course, the large trees that we do have downtown are pushing through.

So it's really just seeing maybe how tenacious Mother Nature is.

And I mean, trees will expand anywhere that they have uh soil and oxygen and water.

All right, thanks.

Any other questions from the board while we have Alex here?

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, a couple other questions for you.

Um I'm curious.

Um I think one point, I think you didn't talk about it when you run over your slides, but reading them beforehand.

You I think you talked about I think of something like a short-term action for a long-term vision.

Um, and I just found that really compelling way to think about you know how one might make change in the world, let alone an urban forest.

But um, I'm curious, you know, you could talk some about kind of like the impacts of climate change in terms of disease and I I'm curious if you've also thought about um you know, kind of the ability for our urban forest to function in like a larger ecosystem context.

Um, like I know I was able to do our tour of an urban forest in St.

Louis a couple years ago, and they were really kind of intentionally working with adjacent ecosystems to kind of bring species in that were kind of losing out with climate change, you know, further south and help them migrate north and kind of share seeds.

And I know you have a million other things to do, right?

But I'm kind of curious to hear a little bit more about your thinking um not only of how we can help set our urban forests up for kind of long-term resilience to climate change, as well as how you know this kind of like island of trees in these largely open valleys might perform uh you know useful service to the ecosystems that we kind of more broadly reside in.

Yeah, I I would say it's a major component of how we work today.

So we have to work with what hot dry summers do and long cold winters do to limit what can live here.

And in the years that I've been here, it's been working extensively with the crew to you know, can we try to get a few of these?

And let's bring in a different species that maybe we'll experiment with it.

It's it might be introduced and non-native, but it's not invasive.

And then when we do look at native trees, um, there are a few that work well in our boulevards, but often they're causing conflicts with a limited growing space.

So cottonwoods, for example, you have very large cottonwoods are great to have in park spaces and backyards.

Um this picture here has a lot of evergreens, and people say, you know, I got a pine tree in my yard.

Well, you probably have a spruce.

I don't even have to go look.

You probably have a spruce.

And so almost every evergreen in town is a spruce, and every hardwood broadleaf tree is a green ash.

And that is an example of a planning decision that we've inherited, you know, and have to deal with it.

That's a 50 to 120 year old decision that we're stuck with, good or bad.

And every day going forward, we're trying to uh broaden the palate.

And uh that can offer just a wealth of benefits in terms of ecosystem services and for our own habitat, right?

Um variety of flowering times, variety of uh actual tree habitat for different insects, pollinators, um, things like that.

And I think also increased resent resiliency to these storm damage issues.

So we know that certain certain varieties we've focused on in the last few years don't tend to have any storm damage, and that would be a big relief for the city forester that's working here in the 2070s.

It won't be me.

Thank you.

Um yeah, that that was yeah, really interesting to hear.

Um I think the the other, yeah, I don't know if this is really a question, but um, you know, we did have a kind of public comment, or not a kind of public comment, a public comment that was suggesting kind of a change to the the vision statement of the master plan.

And I guess I just wanted to provide my you know, kind of take on that, which I think uh is twofold.

Uh on the one hand, I think that you know, kind of like the question I just asked of kind of considering a little bit more explicitly, you know, how our urban forest um fits in uh on several ecosystem scales, I think is is appropriate.

Um I also think I guess I would disagree a little bit with the public comment in terms of um like I think that the the previous vision that that was crafted 16 years ago, I think does a little bit better job of kind of articulating that there's multiple purposes that are our kind of tree tree canopy and forest serves is ecological, but is also a number of other things as well, too.

Um, and so I do I do think that balance is appropriate and should be retained.

Um other thing I think that it kind of suggested was was maybe articulating some of those benefits a little bit more explicitly, um, which I think you know you might explore.

Um, and one thing that that I'll bet is in there somewhere that I didn't see, you know, it is that I think there's a a huge and disdemonstrable positive impact of the urban canopy in terms of urban heat island.

Um research in in like London, for instance, uh, you know, they had a heat wave 15 years ago, maybe, and you know huge number of people died, thousands of people died.

And you could very closely correlate the fatalities with the the robustness of the urban tree canopy.

And I think our climate, we're moving into a similar place as maybe they were where you know a lot of structures in our urban environment don't have air conditioning as we get a hotter climate, um that's gonna create a public health hazard beyond just you know the value of the trees themselves.

And so I think that's uh kind of important intersectionality that um would be good to you know factor in and call maybe already as fact, probably already is factored in, but I just wanted to share that perspective.

Well, thank you.

And I think that's a great comment.

I I can say that the tree infrastructure section is gonna be a doozy, you know.

Um there's a lot of that factors into our analysis of what is your urban forest composed of and is it resilient to uh urban heat island and are you focused on that?

And so one part of that is going to be analyzing, if you will, our portfolio of everything that we have existing, and then another component of that will be um sort of our canopy analysis and to give us goals to look at that uh large aerial view, um not delineating species, not delineating property to look at the canopy coverage of the city.

And that's really I think where a lot of government organizations and communities um pertaining to urban forestry, that's where things are moving today as a modern uh management goal.

You don't want to say, you know, we're gonna plant 2,000 trees next year.

Um that could fail in a lot of different ways.

But if we say we're gonna increase canopy by X percentage, it implies maintenance and the planning efforts behind that and the flexibility to say that if a planting project doesn't work, then preservation over here needs to ramp up.

Or if we don't have the budget to buy trees, we need to increase volunteering or business partnerships.

And so canopy cover and having a percentage goal is uh definitely something that we're looking and asking for from the consultant and specifically to what I mentioned earlier with Branch Out Bozeman, our partnership with the watershed council.

We are specifically eyeing up and looking intently at our volunteer sites on the basis of water quality, equity, and urban heat island.

So those are the three factors we'd look at when we're um searching for volunteer planting sites.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Um I have a I have a couple, but I'm just gonna curate them to just a few.

Um first of all, thanks because there's a lot of information here that I never knew we had um out there.

And so this kind of forced me to dive into it.

Um my question is this um as part of this process, is there also an effort maybe to curate consolidate and improve wayfinding to all the different documents and all the different information that's out there.

And that's not a fault of yours.

It's just one of those things for I think 2016, maybe the singer legs.

And I mean, there's there's a website, there's a the homepage, there's the UDC, there's our chapter 16, article five, right?

So there's all these different touch points.

Um that's all just uh has that been mentioned.

Uh I wouldn't say that's been mentioned explicitly.

I think we don't quite have an idea of what the final plan is gonna look like, aside from like a draft outline of the topics and structure.

I think for the planned development process, it's extremely helpful to have engaged Bozeman.

And with the forestry division's website, we kind of do our best to put everything front and center at the top of the page that kind of flows with the seasons.

So like right now we're we're a little more pushing our our planting programs and opportunities for the public on that topic, and it changes, you know, by the time we get to summer, we hope to be done planting by June or in June.

So we move other items to the top of the website.

Uh but it is a challenge, right?

And certainly code is is pertinent and maybe not always the most exciting to the general public, right?

So that's a challenge to get it all in the in the one spot.

But um I do feel that that's something we've worked on in the past, and our our permits are a good example.

Um a planting permit, if you want to plant your own boulevard tree and the removal permit, if if you if we were to authorize someone removing a tree, um those are readily available on the forestry page.

So I will probably have a clearer answer to that question when the plan is getting finalized.

All right, perfect.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, I almost I like the 101 version in a sense for the public.

And then if you need to dive into the 200-page document, which is great.

And I did, man, I went through that thing.

You can.

And so I think that you know, curating uh based on your audience is a great approach.

Um another question.

I have a uh property out northwest corners, um, and it's probably about five years old now.

Um so a couple of things.

Um some of the trees are dead, some of them are um have little guards around them, some of them don't have guards around them, some of them have the posts still in.

Some of the private homeowners have taken the the guy posts out, and they're just kind of flopping in the wind.

Um, and so um, and and they were all small, they're like one inch, one and a half inch trees that went in.

Um I guess my question is this you talked about the process a little bit and kind of how you take over, you know, when the plant private landowner goes, you know, when that transition happens, it sounds like it's a little bit squishy.

But um uh my other question is this can we increase the calipers of the trees that we plant?

Is that been discussed?

We gotta give these trees a chance.

One and a half inches is like a stick.

Yeah, so can you increase?

I I would say no.

I would say the demand for high quality tree stock in our region is pretty high.

So most of the stuff that comes into town is coming from northern Montana or Idaho or Oregon, and they're all selling to everyone else that's developing in the Rocky Mountain West.

So there's a very legitimate concern to find anything higher than two, two and a half inch is pretty exceptional and also gets more expensive.

Um we kind of have a stance as as an operation that uh inch and a half to two inch is really a sweet spot in terms of the viability of the tree, and then it's it's still a good starting size that it can readily establish, and uh in production scales, when you size up, you are moving that tree into different fields and ripping up some of the roots every time you move it.

So uh jump starting to higher sizes can be a bit of a mixed bag, and it's just hard to find in general.

But I would say if the if a one and a half to two inch tree goes in at the right time of year, being generally spring or early summer, and it's watered and it's in a finished landscape and it's mulched and someone's there to take care of it, that's ideal.

But if it's if it's out of order, and then somebody buys the house then after the next winter, then nobody knows who whose tree that is.

All right, got it.

So supply demand and cost.

And private homeowner, me.

I'm the one who's screwing up my tree.

Okay, then I'm fine.

Um last uh question that I'm done.

Um what um uh how do I say this?

Um maybe I'll just ask the question.

What's like what's the ideal vision of this plan put in action?

And I mean that in that like is there an example around the city here that you can look at and you're like, hey, this is we nailed it, this is perfect, urban um delivered perfectly on the the master plan.

Um that that's all and maybe maybe there's multiple examples because you can't take something that's 50 years old and apply it to to 10 years and then five years.

But I don't know what what is an example of like, all right, this is this is what we want everything to look like.

Yeah.

Well, I think number one, I don't want to be provided that answer by myself.

And that that does play into the again, the community process behind this.

Um I don't want to be the only person or my team being the only person behind the decision making.

Um what I would say though, if if we think about examples of what's working well around town, it's um it's very exciting to see what I would call teenage neighborhoods.

And what I mean by that is the tree canopy is doing well, it's growing, and um, as we go through young neighborhoods, like I said, we'll go through and hit everything, just low branches.

You know, you gotta be able to park under it and walk through the sidewalk.

Now we do that a few more rounds, the years go by, and then we reach the last stage where those low branches are the pole saw branches, and the next time we come back, we're bringing in the aerial equipment.

And the next time we come back, we're bringing in the aerial equipment.

You know, so those are maturing trees, and they're becoming shade and they're becoming canopy and really enhancing the neighborhood.

I think I think that's a good example.

Um, but I tend to really focus on the whole system, you know, system wide.

And uh the big issues right now are our species diversity and um I would say age diversity as well.

You know, we we have a lot of old trees that are all green ash uh in the downtown core.

And um the vast majority of our work, just by nature of being responsive is is we're spending a lot of time on green ash for storm damage, for routine pruning, for removals.

Um we're not planting those anymore, right?

So that species diversity lets us observe the changes over time.

Are we pruning this less?

Is this needing less water?

Are these dying more or after the winter?

You know, so we we're you know uh evolving as we go, I'd say.

And the teenage neighborhood is 15, 16 years old.

Pardon?

Sorry, they so that that that teenager, as you said, it it's the teenage.

So it's after 10 years of growth or 15 years of growth, that's when you're really you're starting to see that mature canopy, the shade happening, all that.

I'm thinking specifically of uh uh Brentwood subdivision.

Okay.

Definitely that's what uh a lot more aerial work now.

And uh I've I've been here nine years, and we've trimmed the Harvest Creek neighborhood probably three or four times, and that's starting to feel it's getting there.

You know, it's those trees are getting bigger, they're doing well, and you have engaged engaged residents that take care of their lawns and take care of their irrigation.

So it's getting close that the next time we're in there, hopefully we have a few years, you know.

Hopefully we bought time.

But yeah, yep, those are those are good examples.

All right, awesome.

Thank you.

Um two questions.

Um, this was listed as a work session, but I'm uh not necessarily thinking you need specific guidance, but if there's some kind of feedback more than what you've gotten you want from us, let us know.

Um, and then probably we should take public comment.

But not necessarily in that order.

Um yeah, you can you do need to take the public comment.

If you have further questions, you can share them with Alex.

We can continue the discussion, or else um you can call for the public comment.

I do have one question for Alex.

Yeah, go for it.

Um you mentioned you have five staff.

Um so how many trees are you maintaining with those five staff?

Approximately to the nearest to the nearest two.

Well, we do have it to the nearest one.

I don't have that, but my crew does because they planted this week.

Um we're roughly at about 28,500.

Um, and then when we finish our planting in June, and if we pick up a new subdivision, um, you know, we're kind of watching uh Ferguson Farms, right?

Those are new trees that are in, at least partially, right?

But the homes and stuff aren't built, so maybe we don't go in there yet.

But uh we'll we'll definitely crest 29,000 this year, and that's sort of a question, right?

There's there's probably an easy analysis to say what's an industry standard or what what tends to be an average across other communities that are doing well of an employee per X number of trees.

So yeah, I'm sure we're we're spread a little bit thin.

And again, we we do add quite a bit of capacity with summer help to tackle the busy season, but we're definitely feeling that pinch and and feeling that need, I think, for guidance.

You know, we're we're up against some constraints and to grow, we don't just want to react and increase our budget and hire more people.

We want again a data-driven uh plan of action.

Trevor Burrus, yeah, go ahead.

Uh got a just quick comment and then uh a question um kind of pertaining to our business support.

Uh comment with respect to the heritage tree program.

Um I don't know how many of your five-person forestry staff uh are trained uh historians, but I did want to suggest that perhaps the Montana Historical Society would like to establish a statewide heritage tree program.

Just throw it out there.

Um as a board, we primarily review development applications.

Uh there's uh you know, oftentimes there's strong feelings from community members attached to that for a lot of legitimate reasons.

Um the loss of trees is certainly one of those reasons that we hear as a as a board why folks are concerned about new development.

Um course, from our perspective, the decisions that we uh we make or that we advise on, you know, they get cast into concrete, and so we tend to look on a 20 plus year time horizon.

So I guess I'm just I'm curious if you can kind of fact check my thinking here.

Like when I see a development coming in, and let's say there's a proposed development, there's 20 mature trees, the developers are gonna come in, they're gonna bulldoze those trees, and they're gonna plant 100 new trees.

Um I'm looking to one of the years in the future and saying, great, like we just five extra inventory, we maybe we replaced some spruce and green ash trees with uh some young trees that better match our water use standards and our species diversity targets, and we have more trees.

And so when I look at that, I'm like, well, like from 20 year perspective, like a new tree planted today versus a mature tree today, like they're the same tree 20 years from now.

And I guess I'm I'm curious.

Am I thinking about that in the right way?

Um, are there benefits to mature trees that would um that that would that would justify code provisions for uh providing special protections for mature trees versus um like if there's a tree that's in an inconvenient place, like cut it down and plant a new tree.

And yeah, I'm just just curious what how how once you think about the value of an existing tree versus planting a new tree.

Sure, yeah.

Well, there's certainly value to an existing tree.

And I would say if a tree is going to experience a change in its environment, if it's going to experience changes to the soil compaction addition of concrete nearby, addition of utilities, you know, these are all competing items.

And that's really the the core of what we deal with in boulevard spaces specifically, because there's so much packed into boulevards.

Um if an existing tree can play nice with all of those additional factors, then it should be considered uh for being retained and saved.

Um if it cannot, then I think that's what that's the perspective that you have is that if that needs to be removed and with all the other factors behind development, it's deemed the right move.

Um you have that long-term planning benefit of a robust landscape plan with a wide variety of species and uh the various requirements that we have in UDC to uh landscape and have a minimum requirement for trees on the private property, but also boulevard spaces, park spaces, cash and loo.

Um I I think it's it's uh a push towards refinement at every level of scale because that's kind of what we deal with every day.

If it's a small tree or a hundred-year-old tree, we're looking to better our process every time.

So that's what I've got for that.

Any other questions?

All right.

Well, I'd like to take a public comment then.

Uh we'll start with folks in the room, and then we'll see if there's anyone online that wants to offer public comment.

So thanks for having me, everyone.

Yeah, stick around.

You might uh you might want you might want to pipe up depending on what gets uh Daniel Cardi, Bozeman residents, speaking for myself.

Thanks, Alex, for the presentation.

Thanks for all the questions and comments from the board.

It's always fun to debate working definitions like visions, missions, goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics.

These all have specific working definitions.

It's important to know what they are.

The city's urban forest management plan will be a 10-year aspirational plan that has the potential to inform changes to the city's unified development code.

Changes that could help protect Bozeman's natural environment, a city commission priority for 2026 and 2027.

To maximize this potential, the most important sections of the UFMP will be an updated vision statement and an updated mission statement.

However, the current draft lacks updates to both these statements, which could very well lead the UFMP to becoming just another aspirational plan sitting on just another aspirational shelf.

According to working definitions, a vision statement outlines an organization's or plans, long-term goals, and aspirational impact, or as a mission statement outlines an organization's or plans daily operation and who it serves.

A vision statement is more foundational than a mission statement because a vision statement outlines where you're going in the long term, or as a mission statement outlines what you need to do to get there.

Arguably then the most important section of the UFMP will be its vision statement.

And I offer the following language for an update to that statement.

The vision of the UFMP should be to protect and enhance the ecological function of Bozeman's urban forest, all trees on public and private lands, and protect and enhance the non-consumptive beneficial ecosystem services that Bozeman's Urban Forests provides to the community as a whole.

If this language were to be adopted word for word as the UFMP's vision statement, then the UFMP could inform meaningful changes to the UDC that in turn would help protect Bozeman's natural environment and help achieve one of the city commission's most important priorities for the years 2026 and 2027.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Marcia Cavaney, Bozeman resident, and thanks to Alex for a great presentation, flying solo tonight, Alex been part of this urban forest management plan update, starting a couple of years ago, just starting to learn about the 2016 plan and reading that.

And so I thought you had a really great discussion tonight with the questions.

And I really liked hearing all of these different thoughts.

So I should say that I'm also a co-founder of the Bozeman Tree Coalition, and tonight I'm speaking on behalf of that group, in addition to myself.

But just thinking about you guys as the board that you are in a way that would be great for your contributions.

And so I'm gonna, this is in no specific order of importance.

But one of the first things that was talked about was this interdepartmental uh working.

And one of the things that was in the introduction of the 2016 plan was how that could have been better from the author's perspective.

That boy, these meetings were happening happening simultaneously between different departments, and if only there could have been a way to communicate with each other, you know, it time could have been saved, money saved, you know, just better communication, and that was 10 years ago.

So I we would love to see that be built in more so that all these different, you know, siloed sort of departments are speaking to each other about things like our green infrastructure.

Um thinking about your expertise in particular, even though the policies won't come out until after the plan you know is approved.

If this year you could be thinking about how to incentivize developers to plan around the little groves of trees that they have, especially the native groves.

So rather than turning, you know, doing the bulldozing and taking down the native cottonwoods and willows and turning a green space into a brown field development.

Um, I think the parks department is now accepting, as Alex said, a lot more wetlands and little tree groves for parks.

And we learned with Canyon Gate, you know, gosh, almost five years ago, that that wasn't part of it then, but a little forests were lost, 200 trees or so, and along with them, like 20 some species of birds that don't survive in downtowns.

So if those willow and cottonwood, that was mostly a cottonwood forest, um, had been preserved in a natural park, those tr those birds might still be existing.

Things that, like certain warblers or um the house wrens and um flycatchers and different species like that that need standing dead trees.

80% of those birds are cavity cavity nesters, so they need they need places to put their nests, and we don't always get those with these new saplings.

We need some of these old groves protected.

So I'm thinking you have the background to be thinking about how can we encourage this with our planning.

Um and I'll be helping to look into different what different cities are doing, like Bend, Oregon is now using an incentive program and a regulatory program for keeping mature trees.

Um the other thing is to be thinking about wildlife corridors during planning, and when you see something come across your desks, it's like, oh well, let's let's move this over here or suggest it so that a wildlife corridor can go from north to south in town or east to west, but following the water usually.

I'd also like to encourage you to think of the non-native species as you're talking about them, like the truly exotic non-native species that are going to be resilient to some climate change, but think of them as art and sculptures and providing a nice shade umbrella.

But if they're not regional or not native, they're not producing a lot of food for the birds and insects.

I thought it was fascinating with Doug Tallmy when he came to speak in Bozeman that one chickadee nest, uh the parents need to feed their young in just one nest, a thousand larvae.

And those larvae are only produced on these on mostly native plants or regional plants, you need to have the insects producing something soft because the little baby birds don't eat seeds.

Um, very interesting.

Another thing was hearing about the success on North 7th, which is terrific to have noticed those permeable uh pavers.

I think that's great.

And again, with the developing um, when developments come through on North 7th, there were two large, very large old spruce trees in front of what is now a excuse me, it's the seventh and aspen uh affordable housing.

And they took down the two spruce trees, um, but there's no boulevard there to put in new trees, and there's a lot of infrastructure underneath the sidewalk.

But those massive trees really could have helped a lot with cooling from the western, you know, west sun, dust from the road, uh general pollution, and also um just shading or uh blocking the wind when it comes up in the winter.

So I think in this affordable housing unit, those two trees would have been really helpful for you know, heating and cooling bills.

Okay, I'm sure you guys are using the timer, lucky me.

Okay.

Um I think that's it, but also thinking about mature trees, and I thought uh board member Egggy brought up some good points.

Like, why are mature mature trees more or why are they important?

Are they more important, or can you plant new trees to take the place of them?

And there's this great uh group that Alex has been working with the NASA Green Infrastructure Center, and they would um a lecture that they did here, uh, or group session, work session they did a couple years ago, they talked at at length about the expense of planting new trees compared to just maintaining the mature trees that you have.

The mature trees, most of them downtown where I used to live, we didn't water those trees.

They've already established themselves, they've proven their success rate.

The even these uh Angleman spruces that we have so many of, they house the owls and um bats probably, and a lot of other birds that need the they need that kind of dense shelter.

And we don't even, you know, we used to have owls in the northeast side of Bozeman.

I don't know if they're still there, but they also capture a lot more carbon and hold on to it, and they provide better heat island prevention.

Um that's about it.

But thank you very much for all the work you do and this this great discussion.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Is there any other public comment in the room?

Seeing none, we can see if there's anyone online.

We have no one dialed in tonight.

Okay.

Um thank you.

Um those public comments do um make me wonder.

Um I guess what do we think is the sort of regulatory extent that I guess my impression or understanding of like how a subdivision or a new neighborhood gets laid out is I mean, we want the existing streets to connect.

Those streets have a grade, the streets need to drain.

And umce all that goes in, you might end up with existing tree areas that are not in like the best location anymore.

They're either gonna like not get water or get too much water.

But assuming that there are some instances where you know we've connected our street grid as we need to, or we've you know, kind of curved the streets around it reasonably.

What extent can you know the community benefit of these longstanding groves be uh protected?

You know, or to put it another way, could their destruction be you know prohibited or or limited.

It's an interesting question with a lot of parts to it.

So I'll hit on some of them and we'll not pretend to hit on all of them.

Uh when the city does subdivision design, as you noted, there are many different factors that fit into that.

Um public safety is the top uh of all of them.

Um and so that is a factor we would consider.

What is the nature of the trees?

Are they conditioned?

Is there some sort of hazard affiliated with it or not?

Hopefully not.

One of the things we do have an option to do, Alex alluded to it, is consider where we accept parkland.

Um sometimes that is strongly associated with existing vegetation, maybe there's existing stream corridor or something that can be integrated into a park design.

One of the factors that we have to consider is um any exaction of any type has to be logically connected and proportionate to the purpose for which we're saying that it's being assumed.

So if we do parkland, we're saying this is a recreational facility.

That's the sole reason that it exists.

So when a park plan comes forward, if they're proposing we want to save these trees, we want to integrate them in with the park design, great, that's totally acceptable.

But there needs to be the documentation that says this fits in so that the people who are going to be resident from this dedicating subdivision are going to benefit from this to this method.

And that's one of the changes that happened in the most recent um park plan in 23.

The prior plan in 2007 had an extremely strong policy thrust that said we essentially want play fields.

And that was and some walking trails to go with it uh to connect them up.

And that was kind of the summary of the plan.

The 23 plan is much more open to saying there's a diversity of recreational needs, uh variety of different ways we can meet that.

Um maybe a smaller park that's more intensively developed is actually a superior outcome versus a larger but undeveloped park.

So all those kinds of factors get evaluated in the discussion uh between the park staff and any folks who are proposing development, and ultimately as it goes through the approval process.

So there is room to look at those things, but there are also those kinds of sideboards.

If we go outside of those sideboards, then that's a significant problem for the city and can lead to significant jeopardy that would be very counterproductive for the well-being of the community.

So we do have to be careful about making sure things are properly documented, making sure we've got the appropriate structure all the way through, and that we're staying inside the legal legal bounds.

Um I I mean I I can see the sort of mismatch between a park versus some of these more like natural areas.

Is there a is there a limitation or a prohibition um that's unique in this regard?

I mean, I sort of think of like the general welfare as I mean the tree canopy could be the general welfare heat islands and are not having them, shade, uh wildlife habitat.

I mean, the all these all seem like things that could fit under the general welfare, and um much like a stream setback is is an exaction from the property owner in the sense that it's part of a private parcel that isn't amenable to development.

Um I just and I'm not trying to say like go crazy, but um I would think that the value of some of these areas is um I mean it could be adjacent to a park or part of a park.

Um and you know, it there might be some danger from old trees, but if it's in a place that buildings aren't right under or cars aren't parked under, then maybe it doesn't matter if like some branches fall down or something.

But um, yeah, I'm just trying to think if there's um I don't know, I would think that um some of this natural environment is a community asset and benefit that um our regulations could to a reasonable degree um you're absolutely right, and our our code as it stands today, for example, says if you're gonna put in a park, you are gonna put in all the street trees around the park.

And our our code as it stands today, for example, says if you're gonna put in a park, you are going to put in all the street trees around the park.

That wasn't the case years ago.

That's a change in the code over time.

Um so there are definitely ways and places where we can looking at all the sideboards, come up with reasonable justifications and uh documentation that says this is a reasonable thing to ask.

Um especially when we're talking about a park that's transferring into public ownership, that's a little different than if I'm putting my hands into private property and uh becomes a question of so if you're going to do that, then you have to have a permitting mechanism, you have to have a review mechanism, you have to have the staffing to support that.

Um how are you going to address it if you say no or yes?

Um, how do you document it?

Um there's just a lot of complexities that are different between we're reviewing a subdivision, there's going to be a decision made, and then properties transferring to the public, whether it's a boulevard boulevard or a street, versus managing something which is ongoing on private ground.

Okay.

So meaning like if this fictional area or hypothetical area we're talking about weren't to be dedicated to the city as a park, regardless of whether it's a lawn and playground type of park, but it somehow fit into the category of park as opposed to like it's retained in private ownership by like an HOA, for example, and then it's not the cities, and therefore it's their responsibility to maintain issue.

Private property, it's private property, and they decide what they're going to do with it within the bounds of the law.

So private property may include a stream setback, and we have standards for maintaining and not doing too much maintenance within those areas.

Um the city does and can accept or purchase property for uh open space.

Story mill park south of Griffin Drive is an example where big chunk of the East Gallatin River goes right along the banks, there's a bunch of wetlands on site, it's a very popular part of the park.

So there's definitely those kinds of openings to pursue.

Um it there's just a lot of detail.

Um there's a big jump between moving to the from the non-regulatory to the regulatory in any area.

Um but it seems like we have a lot of regulatory anyway.

I mean, we're we're exacting land for streets and curbs and gather, we're exacting money to be spent on stormwater infrastructure and we we do all of those things, yeah.

And um interestingly enough, for a long time there were folks across the country who said, well, all of this Supreme Court jurisprudence that says um exactions have to fit inside these sideboards, um, that only applies if you're doing one-offs.

If as long as the governing body adopted it, that's not a problem.

Supreme Court a few years ago, in a case called Sheets, said, um, there's nothing in the Constitution that has any kind of a legislative out from these principles.

And so they made it very, very clear that whether it's an individual condition applied to a project or it's a regulation adopted that's broadly applicable, the same sideboards have to be accounted for.

And um, so that's just part of what we need to do.

And we certainly will uh on any proposal that comes forward.

Um, by the sideboards, are those the same sideboards that limit, I mean, that's just the the general sideboards that limit, I don't know, like yeah, you've got to be able to have that rational basis.

You've got well, first of all, it has to be the government's business at all.

So that's substantive due process.

You have to go about it the right way.

That's procedural due process.

And then you've got to have uh the rational connections and the proportionality to it.

So things like streets, um, you know, it's very hard to have a workable piece of property with no transportation, with no water, with no sewer.

So those things can be readily demonstrated.

Um we're also very careful as a community and have for many, many years to not overreach when we're asking for right-of-way, for example.

Um we make sure that we're looking at what is the appropriate design for the street, how much land does that take, um, what kind of street is it?

Is it an arterial street or a local street?

All those kinds of things are reflected in the code that we see today is lots and lots of years worth of consideration of all those factors.

Okay.

So aside from like those sort of like constitutional sideboards, which are non-negotiable and must be adhered to, are there other um is there like any kind of uh I mean, so we've just done the UDC update, and now we're talking about only an urban uh forestry management plan.

But I mean, is there some legal framework in the code that would need to adjust a little bit if we were gonna have a slightly more expansive idea of um trying to protect for the public benefit some of this nap these natural features?

Yes.

Um Lupa, which sets the general planning framework, has the parameters in the law that says you need to account for these kinds of things.

And so an issue plan like this plan or the transportation plan or sewer plan is subject to those same laws now.

And so when Alex and his team are working on the draft, that's going to be something that they're gonna be looking at carefully, making sure that we uh have an accounting for all of those kinds of things.

Um we're gonna look at the land use plan.

If you look at the land use plan in um chapter five, page 67, there's a series of definitions about this is how the city thinks about certain kinds of issues, wildlife wildlife habitat is one of those that says um we as a city have made a policy determination that there are some species that are not a good fit for an urban environment.

And so um chickadees is one thing, bears very obviously something different, right?

And so that kind of thing also comes into the consideration, not so much with boulevard trees.

Although I'm sure I think every year we pull a few bears out of boulevard trees.

Um, you know, those those kinds of things, as strange as it may seem, um, also become part of the factors.

You know, how do we create an environment that is good for the people, good for the trees, good for the critters, um, just collectively all together.

And there's undoubtedly some some push and pull there.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, my understanding is that it's probably probably somewhat rare that the sort of you know, going from the large field to the neighborhood would make like the these pockets of existing natural, whatever we want to call it, environment.

Um, it's probably not such a high correlation between what could thrive prior and what could thrive after.

I mean, by the time you've maybe graded stuff, and and I don't even mean like optional grading just for your own project's benefit, but I mean, you know, the roads need to basically be level, they need the stormwater needs to drain, it's gonna drain through gravity.

I mean, so once you've met or once you've sort of dealt with all those factors, um, it's probably not like necessarily so high a percentage of these existing natural areas that would still be like a thriving area afterwards.

But um I guess I'm just trying to um understand if it's possible.

Um, because by the and I don't know if it's that the developer gets to count it towards something or gets to have it in exchange for something like, well, we'll let you have less parkland if you preserve this thing.

You know, we'll give you we'll give up a little bit of the community manicured park benefit in exchange for the community preserving some natural uh features benefit.

Anyway, that's I'm just just kind of a broad um broad question as we go into this planning to I guess try to be mindful of you know if we need some adjustments, or to at least be thinking whether making such adjustments would make sense.

Well, I I think as we're having this conversation tonight, it sort of feeds to this theme of we're talking about a set of conditions that would be good for keeping existing trees and keeping them healthy, right?

And if it's if the grading and the slope changes and it pulls water away, maybe that's disastrous.

And um I think we're also talking about this split of does it end up becoming city-maintained park space, or does it become something else for the HOA?

Umtimes, you know, the the everyday resident has no idea what the difference is between park space and open space.

They just see it as green space in my neighborhood.

And it sort of lends itself to this, you know, what are the sets of conditions that again, even if we're not able to make any requirements, we could clearly list these out in the plan with some visuals and have that in a specific area of the plan that uh these are some of the main things you need to do.

You know, oftentimes if we're preserving existing trees, now there is some type of green space around it that's a little more manicured, and those trees are actually benefiting from the irrigation for the lawn and for the other landscape plants.

Um they're also benefiting from a lack of compaction due to you know heavy paved surfaces around.

And I think a few things that have come up in just the last few minutes, you know, we're I'm now thinking about I think successful developments that that we've observed over the years.

Um Story Mill is a good example where uh the playgrounds lined with a row of willows.

That's a little bit of extra maintenance for us, but we do go through there every year and clean those up, and that's a significant wild grade change on that hillside to have playground elements drop down into the lower section, and that took careful consideration, right?

It was deemed reasonable to preserve those trees because the last thing I'd want to do is, you know, well, it's not viable, the developer needs to remove those, or we miscommunicated the development goes through, and now we're responsible for a huge safety concern, and we have to remove those trees as soon as you ribbon cut the park, that'd be terrible, right?

So I I do think this is it's just heading in that right direction, right?

Where um we're continuing this conversation with a broader audience and hopefully finding some some good results.

And we do have a lot of latitude in working with proposed park designs.

So on a site-by-site basis, all that kind of analysis, Alex has been talking about is uh is something that we do as part of the process.

And lots of different departments get to weigh in and say this would be a big big problem for us, or this would be great if we were able to go this other direction.

So that is very actively um considered.

And uh if there's a multi-party win, hurrah.

Uh staff would love to see that.

Um we just gotta keep it within the bounds.

Yeah.

Well, I guess I just I guess my concerns were like maybe twofold.

One was if we if something on the sort of legal requirement side needed to change, you know, within the sideboards.

But then also, you know, it could be some like we talked about some flexibility, like if right I mean the hallmark, right, of like the taking that you're trying to avoid is like trying to claw too much stuff for public benefit without paying for it.

But you know, if you start saying, well, okay, your manicure park could be smaller if you're if you were preserved this stuff, or maybe you let, I don't know, let's just say there was a street grid of four by four, we're gonna go through there.

Maybe one of those doesn't need to go in for whatever reason.

Maybe not.

I mean, maybe it's like, well, no, our our street grid is our street grid for a reason.

Um but I guess the point was just to try to figure out if there's anything legal that needed to change or code that needed to be changed, but then also if potentially some of the some of the flexibility or trade-offs between one type of public benefit versus another that maybe doesn't require exacting more from the I don't know from the developer.

It's a good point, and you know, there's a lot of things Alex mentioned coming up with uh kind of defining the conditions, getting some illustrations to help say this is what we're really talking about.

So there's that clear communication.

That'll go a long, long ways in helping folks identify.

I've never met uh a design team.

I won't speak to the people who own everything, but the the design teams who want to do a bad job.

You know, this is their reputation professionally that's gonna follow them around for a long time.

They want to do good work.

So if we can help them do good work, then they win community wins.

And I think it takes conversations too that uh again, we're under parks and recreation, so uh working with parks maintenance and our parks planning.

We often have conversations with outside developers, and um not even to pick on an outside developer, but they might have something in mind, and they don't have a good sense of what the local community is here, you know, they don't have a sense of the vibe.

And uh when we talk through, you know, any of the uh bullet points from any of these master plan documents that we all have, you know.

Of course, so under parks and rec, we have uh the Pratt plan.

So we explain some of those things that have been results of that planning effort, and it's like, well, um you want to put a pathway through all these existing trees in your park.

That's gonna impact the roots, that's gonna involve removing them.

Let's have a pathway over here that aids in our connectivity goals along another corridor for safe routes to schools, for example.

You know, when we get those opportunities to explain, you know, uh face to face, I think that helps aid some of that uh design process.

But that's you know, very fair point.

Nobody wants to do a bad job, they might just have misconceptions of what a standard development is.

Yeah, go ahead.

Just jump in with a couple ideas here.

I mean, I think um, yeah, I mean fully agree with this idea that most people are not trying to do a bad job at their job.

Um I do also think, at least based on my experience, there I a I would and I think you kind of already mentioned this that part of what you're interested in is hearing best practices from other communities, and I think clearly this is an area of interest in our board of kind of how is this negotiated elsewhere?

And you know, you mentioned kind of incentives, but on the scale from regulation to incentives, um it seems like there's interest in hearing more of you know what's what's worked elsewhere, and obviously some of those things might not transport to Montana, but um hopefully some will.

Um I guess one other thought I had was uh you know, in the way that we you know, with like zone map amendments, there's you know certain number of items that people need to meet, and other ones that you know they kind of need to at least write about that are maybe a little bit performative, um, but you know, have some underlying value, at least I would argue.

I mean, I think we could also say, because I would think we could say that you know, hey, trees have you know these benefits for you know the public welfare, health, health and well-being.

And so as part of your application, if you're gonna on you know, your private area come all down, um, you need to explain why that's better than leaving them.

There may be no teeth to that, but at least as you know, I think uh a designer, if I'm asked to write about that, that's gonna get me to think about okay, like is there another alternative here before I even submit anything?

Um, as I'm preparing the application before I even have that conversation.

And so to me, I I think that could be one, you know, one area that I think could um could have value.

Essentially the presumption is you should should keep them.

So tell me why you shouldn't, you know.

Um, and and that could be like okay, I buy your argument, but um I think uh that's certainly how how our practices approach this trees.

So I don't think of the UEC and uh the design uh code, right?

And you have to choose three of these or fulfill maybe three of these requirements.

Um I guess kind of what I'm hearing you say is that um if you think about the future of this and how it intersects with the UDC, is there a way to kind of write almost that non-prescriptive yet prescriptive code around okay, this is what you do uh with existing vegetation on your site.

Um it sounds like that's happening, which is great, and in the conversations that are are are going on maybe behind the scene with planning with with different developers and their uh design teams, uh, but at the same time, it seems like there isn't maybe as much structure put into it as what I think I hear you saying as well.

And so that maybe even maybe my question is that I mean, is there a way to be a little bit more structured in the approach?

And then you know, memorialize that as part of the code.

Again, I use the the design code as like a reference point.

Choose three of these things.

Um here's the park, here's the walkway, and this is how the trees intersect all that.

Yeah, and I I think that's a great question, and um certainly leads to like these are conversations outside my expertise, right?

And that's why I'm keeping Chris close by.

I got both cell phones.

Um, it's it is that conversation, and and that this is a big project for us, and we we don't have the answers ourselves.

So we need to be moving forward with that.

It's if it's not working currently, it needs some more detailed language.

And I think we have examples of that in section 38 and section 16 where we need to make some changes.

Um again, I don't want to be providing myself with those solutions.

I want to be reaching out to other experts, and and that's just gonna be the process here.

You know, we we have the consultant team and we have our other uh departments and divisions here at the city.

So um if if anything, I'm excited for this effort to just highlight and put attention on these issues because um it's not just concerns from the forestry division, you know, it's concerns from from other board members, from other departments, from the public.

Um, I really think it's gonna be uh exciting to get to those kind of group decisions.

Right.

And think about stack ranking, what we want vegetation to do on each site.

And I mean that in that we've talked about heat island effect, right?

And you know, putting a cluster of trees up in the northeast corner of a site doesn't do much for mitigating heat island effect, right?

You want the trees near the parking lots near the buildings, um, and you want a certain type of tree there.

Um so if that's one of the goals and it's the number one goal, as to say, then um our approach is gonna be a lot different than um protecting the chickadees, right?

We need the older trees, the cottonwoods and other things that might be that okay.

Well, then we need those trees in the northeast corner of the site, they need to be mature and they need to be existing.

So again, I think it's just you know, what do we want vegetation to do on each site?

And and then maybe that becomes the north star for how we approach each one of these sites.

Yeah.

Okay.

It sounds like the uh urban uh well, I guess it's what's the what's the advisory board call?

Is the urban parts and forestry?

Is that the name of the board?

Um, I mean, it sounds like they're the ones who are gonna have the multiple um work sessions and and be the main um body to kind of work through this process.

So um we it sounds like we probably won't see this until it's maybe in like again until it's like in a draft form, but so um I guess um, you know, hopefully this discussion, uh, and at least you know, sometimes too, it's like in the growth plan where it says, you know, should we grow or not to grow, and it just kind of says, well, you know, we don't really think we have a choice, people are coming, and we think that dealing with it this one way is better than the alternative.

So it could just be that it's addressed, and that it's you know, it's just kind of explained, like, you know, we realize that as part of not the town becomes the town, we're gonna generally replace open fields with streets and housing, you know.

But you know, we also don't need to just needlessly destroy stuff.

Um, and so if it's like something can be preserved, especially if it has a benefit and it's and it doesn't, you know, it's either quite compatible or um you know it's not a huge deal.

It's like, well, why not why not preserve it?

Or go a step further, we're willing to make we're willing to trade some public benefit for this other public benefit in order to achieve this thing.

Um but anyway, we're you know, I guess it's a plan that's gonna just so it's like the growth policy, except it's a subset of, you know, in this case it's more of like a topic than a like a geographic area, but anyway, um it'd be nice if at least I think it'd be nice if this kind of trade-off is taken up in the process, and some sort of explanation is maybe made part of the resulting plan.

I I think a major component that's gonna talk about this item is the canopy coverage and analysis of that.

And so I can't say exactly right today how that'll be split, you know, how granular we're gonna look at tree canopy across the city, but we did talk about uh analyzing it from the growth boundary perspective.

Um, maybe examples could be there's a loss in canopy in this part of town because there was a development and construction took place, and then over here there was an addition of canopy because the development's complete and all the trees are in.

And I don't want to have that bias from the operation of our division of well, we know we're losing trees, or we know we're gaining trees.

We want the canopy analysis to tell the story.

And um, I do know that just from some of the draft reporting our consultants have provided us with, there are maybe different scenarios to choose from.

So if you want to increase your canopy by X percent, it's gonna take this many trees.

And that's gonna take years and years, and there's no way you can do it in-house.

So if you're solely talking about tree planting, it's not gonna work, or it's gonna have to be split with a large outside resource.

Or again, it needs to pivot over, and you know, if if we put this out there, that increasing canopy is going to take such a mammoth undertaking, it it might just become a natural incentive to say uh preservation is gonna be the more practical way to get there.

And I I think when this reaches final adoption by city commission, they need to factor this against other things that have already been adopted and stated as uh city goals, commission priorities, and and how do they uh help each other or conflict each other, you know.

So at the end of the day, we want to get all the information out there and be held accountable to find solutions.

Yeah, I would I would take inventory of um all of the sites right outside of where the city is right now, and how, and then assume okay, this is the direction in which we are growing.

Um, and then I'd like to I would love to see the numbers, the canopy numbers on those sites.

Because I can look at them on GIS and they are just they're just blank fields, most of them.

And so, and and that's that's okay because that's been how they've been used for hundreds of years.

And when I say blank fields, it's agriculture land.

Um, so they may have 3% canopy on those sites.

Um so um I I think no matter where we are developing right now, we are improving the canopy, even if they're little one and a half inch trees in 30 or 40 years, those are gonna be much larger trees, big canopies.

So um I guess I I understand.

I think it probably is more viable what you're discussing in terms of this inventory of canopy, right?

Maybe a little bit closer to city limits.

And uh maybe land that is either greenfields that are inside the city limits, like those last outhold annexations that are there, or it's looking at existing neighborhoods and looking at saying, okay, this is what's really looking good right now, this is where we want to be, and then applying that to each one of those sites that we are annexing in.

Yeah.

And that's that's a really interesting comment because it gives us something to run with, right?

When the plan is adopted, now we have to implement it.

Man, we got more work.

Um that's an easy thing to start looking at.

If if we're given a set of parameters for addressing canopy coverage and maintaining or increasing it, um we're already kind of working towards that and anticipating that.

So working with our GIS and asset management teams.

Um we are scheduling and funding on a three-year frequency to have fly over uh land cover data sets with the leaf on imagery.

So it seems that other city departments and and operations need the leaf off so that they can clearly see from an overhead view various infrastructure.

Um, and we want leaf on to yield tree-centric data.

Um, that'll help guide us.

And my major concern with this plan is that we're not just lump sum one time paying for some guidance.

It's that we have support from other departments.

So we will have that to continue working with GIS and asset management to build our own mapping layers and really monitor that canopy because that's what I see as as the main driver behind how is this urban forest growing or declining uh without our own sort of management bias.

Like we just want to tell the story.

So I think that's true.

I think that's a good point that adding growth, especially to the West, we're probably gonna be additive canopy, but it's still it still requires us to have a focus on where we have native trees and we can keep them that is that value for really just some something that the community values and its habitat for wildlife and extensive carbon sequestration.

I mean, there is something very different to a large tree that I think just maybe subconsciously you appreciate too.

Yeah, well, and to follow up with on Chris's point, I think that the idea is um I mean for sure tree canopy tree coverage is important, but I mean I I think the idea that's being um expressed or that that we've been hearing some um input from the community is um it's just more like preserving where it makes sense and where it's reasonable, and you know I mean I'm sure there'd be differing opinions on like where we'd strike the balance, but the idea would be there's some existing natural resources that could be and maybe should be better protected.

We should make a policy shift to do that.

Um and it's not necessarily about tree canopy, because if you've got a big area, let's say it's 20 acres and there's just one little spot where it's low or the little you know, swale or the uh what do you call it?

Yeah, the seasonal water comes through.

Um that's just not I mean maybe it's a bunch of cattails, yeah, still significant habitat.

Um but uh anyway, that might not be much uh as to the whole, that might not be much tree canopy.

And especially if you look at the post-development 20 year down when you've got a bunch of streets with boulevard trees.

I mean, you could have you could have net increase in tree canopy, but that's not necessarily the analysis because the thing's gonna become a neighborhood anyway.

We know that there's gonna become boulevard trees and street canopy anyway.

But the question is just is there a spot or two where it makes sense to preserve existing natural resources?

Um and just that this I guess that the regulatory analysis or not even analysis, the regulatory requirements might shift some, and then there might be some, like I said, some different trade-offs between one public benefit for another.

But it's more it's more for the sake of the existing thing than the future how the future tree canopy compares to the pre-development tree canopy, at least as I understand the concern.

I think as we go through this plan, I'm gonna be sharing stories of of examples that work for me, you know, just what we've seen over the years.

And uh maybe a good story is Bogart Park.

When I first started here, uh they were just finishing that overflow kind of uh if if the creek spills over, it's gonna flood into the park.

Um that's a nice feature, and there was a lot of additional landscaping to it, and then it was fenced in so that probably so that dogs wouldn't get in there, right?

Or people, but probably dogs.

Uh it was fenced in for a year or two, and all that landscaping was covered up by seeded in cottonwoods, right from the bank.

And so you didn't need to plant anything, in my opinion.

You know, you change the condition.

You you remove the traffic and you remove the lawn maintenance and trees came in on their own.

This is because they were reinforced by the existing riparian zone that was always gonna be there, right?

But maybe if we hadn't created Bogur Park whenever we did, could have been vulnerable to development, right?

So those are those are examples to me where we can clearly see the benefits of existing mature trees, and that they are a different component of the urban forest than just street trees.

You know, street trees, we can offer tremendous variety and fit a form and function for desired spaces, but they're kind of like little soldiers.

You know, we have to space them apart appropriately, they have to be interspersed with stop signs and hydrants and water and sewer lines and driveways.

So uh you know that that could be a component of the plan that we're specifically talking about different use cases, yeah, you know, for trees.

Um it's also been brought up that you know, preserving stuff for habitat is really just something I would I would say we're exploring in the last few years, you know, primarily in park spaces.

If we have to remove trees, uh is it less work to not drop the whole tree?

You know, that's a few more chainsaw cuts.

That's the heaviest piece.

We might as well leave it for some for some habitat.

And you know, that's an example that we're exploring in parks that we can't do in boulevards.

You know, we're not gonna leave a trunk in front of somebody's house.

So uh I definitely think there's uh a theme of like different different types of maybe it's a conservation type theme, but uh not every tree in an urban environment is just a kind of utilitarian.

This is my street tree, we trim it, we trim it again, we water it.

Um yeah, there's there's different themes here.

Yeah.

No, I really appreciate the different the nuance of those different contexts.

I mean, I think that's probably exactly what this issue is kind of kind of talking about.

Yeah.

But yeah, well, anyway, uh any other questions, comments from the board.

Thanks for your time.

Thanks for uh bearing with us all these questions.

This is kind of our first or our sort of first and only chance to maybe have an influence on this uh project, because you're gonna go and do most of the most of the uh nuts and bolts with uh different board.

Yeah, um sorry if you're feeling a little bit of jealousy, you know.

But you're you're welcome to come into the urban parks and forestry uh work sessions.

Or at least we wanna share this process with as many people as we can.

So I'm happy to be here.

Um happy to answer any any further questions you might have as we move through this.

Um reach out to myself or Chris.

And again, I think having everything laid out clearly through the outreach efforts and engage Bozeman.

We're trying to keep everyone informed on the process.

And it's it's a bit of a bear right now.

Um getting into busy season and trying to keep all these pieces together, but that's that's why it's a team effort and it and it helps me keep my head on straight.

But this is the fun part of the job to me.

This is hearing why other people value trees and hearing ideas.

Um we we make a decision together.

So I appreciate everyone having me here and yeah, thanks, Chris.

You're welcome.

Yeah, thank you for coming.

Appreciate it.

All right, I think that's that for that agenda item.

Um I think our next agenda item is uh to talk about whether we want to cancel our next meeting, is that right?

Yeah, we do not currently have any scheduled items for that meeting.

Um so at this point, um just wondering if you'd like your Monday back.

Yeah.

That's fine.

Let's you want to talk the trees somewhere or well um bring Alex.

No, I do uh I have thought that it would be nice to maybe um not necessarily in two weeks, but have in mind when uh one of these blanks comes in our schedule to maybe have something teed up where we could try uh more um like a work session, but that isn't the same format that we always have, it has more like uh give and take um with some of the more like thorny issues or the more uh complex issues.

Um I mean the discussion we just had it would be a great example.

Um not to say we should, but you know, it's the kind of thing where someone from legal could be here to like say what the legal constraints are.

Um from like or multiple people from like the landscape uh architecture community.

I mean, just to have a more informed discussion, folks from like the Bozeman Tree Coalition, for example, to have more of like um a work session where ideas are discussed and people with knowledge would be able to respond to them because we never we never can really do that in the way the meetings are are formulated.

Um, like someone could say, oh, I don't know if there's like a suggestion, and then someone from who knows might say, well, what about this?

What about this?

Someone from street says or some stormwater says, and we have maybe a more uh meaningful exchange with um about a topic than kind of the more formulaic stilted version.

I I am in support of that, but I do want to be cognizant of two things.

One which is the city's time.

Because it it does take time to set those up.

So I would love to hear their thoughts on that.

Um and then number two would be you know uh what is the thorny issue?

And my question would be is that decided by us, or is it something that the city's been noodling over and they provide a recommendation?

Yeah.

So those would be my two thoughts and like I mean again, time and and I want to make sure that the issue is as valuable as possible if we are sitting here debating it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I could go either way.

I mean, as far as if the if the city professional staff had a sense of like here's something that would be nice to try this thing that maybe folks in the community would benefit from hearing, um, whether it's stuff that's uh either it's an issue itself that's difficult or an issue that people seem to have misconceptions about or something.

I don't know.

Um it it's not an uncommon thing for um organizations like this board to host those kinds of events.

Um to Mr.

Ignatz's point, those usually take several months to get identified the issue, find the right people, uh, pull something together.

So that would would definitely be a longer uh than the next two weeks.

Yeah, longer lead to it.

No, for sure.

The fact that we I think it was March, both of our meetings were canceled, and then this happened again, just had it in my mind that oh, I wonder if we should I now maybe that's not amenable to something that you have to plan so far out, because if it is something that we want to work on, uh that's something obviously if we're having other departments and things come in, would need to coordinate with them.

Um if it's that far out in advance, then we could probably schedule around it.

Um it's the things that you know pop up at the last minute that make it difficult, but um we can certainly uh keep that in mind, and this is somewhat of uh relevant to your next issue as well.

Um chair, just uh a comment on that.

Um I think uh the the discussion is good.

Uh I think combination of the fact that development has slowed down a little bit relative to the Pell ML pace that it was a few years ago and lupa.

I think both of those things indicate that we may have less on our agenda.

And well, maybe we'll have more on agenda when we get to the next next agenda item, but we we may have less on our agenda um in terms of regularly scheduled items than had previously been the case.

And so I know that the city commission did just uh adopt uh an aggressive uh set of priorities um for the next two years, and you know, perhaps we could uh ask our uh ask Mary Morrison to convey to uh his colleagues that you know we have some capacity and be interested in helping in any way that we can.

Yeah.

So that was a little bit of a oh go ahead.

I just wanted I guess say that I generally am in favor of that type of discussion.

I think that especially coming out of the UDC that I think was you know, perhaps left a lot of elements of our community feeling like they're in conflict with one another.

I think having something that was a bit more of like a round table style conversation that was kind of seeking more common ground and wasn't so time pressured.

You know, I think it seems to me like there's value to pursuing this as an idea, um, you know, within the constraints that um I think have been duly noted in this conversation.

Thanks.

Not too uh not to derail too much from the the simple question at hand, which is should we uh cancel May 18th?

But if there's if there's nothing for the agenda, then uh I don't know.

We're not gonna be able to make something in two weeks.

Yeah.

Unless it's just a happy hour where we don't have to worry about violating quorum because it's been noticed.

Kidding.

But uh well, so do you need a motion to to not have a that would be preferred.

It just keeps the record clean.

Okay.

Chair, I move to cancel our May 18th meeting.

I second.

All right.

Discussion.

Yeah, any uh other discussion?

I happy uh happy hour idea is a good one, but another occasion.

All right.

Okay.

Three.

Three.

Maybe a formal motion or DD.

Yeah, yeah, we'll take.

Yeah, just okay.

Mover.

I second or Bonnet.

Hi.

Mayor Morrison.

Hi.

Board Member Agnatz.

Yes, board member Mightra.

Aye.

And Vice Chair Telmu.

Aye.

Okay.

All right.

Uh motion passes uh with six zero.

Um okay, next agenda item, uh community development board work plan.

Uh community development board work plan.

Yes.

So as the cover memo mentioned, um, as part of the high performing boards initiative.

Um the commission adopted an expectation for a uh work plan every two years.

And um that's generally been uh focused on direction given by the commission.

Uh in the case of this board, you have considerably more uh duties that are required from outside circumstances, the law than uh pretty much any of the other boards.

And so um we did take a run at um trying to identify, make some best guesses on the work that's likely to be on the horizon, and we'll dive into some details in the bottom.

But um things like zone map amendments, uh land use plan amendments, those kinds of things, appeals which we haven't dealt with yet, um, are specifically charged uh for this board to weigh in on.

And um we usually end up with um maybe one land use plan amendment per year and probably six to eight, six to ten um zone map amendments a year.

Some of those, as you've seen, are very quiet and quick and go right through.

Others have considerable amounts of public engagement and concern.

Those those take longer, but that's uh one of your primary responsibility.

Um focus area two um related to that is looking at uh the UDC uh changes.

Uh we have three active code amendments that are underway right now.

Uh landmark design guidelines.

Uh both of those are going to be vigorous in the discussion, I'm sure.

Um there's another one that's coming through on your June 1st meeting, which is uh an update to our wireless requirements.

Uh we're catching up with some changes in state in federal law and and integrating that.

There's three more that are queued up for uh expectation.

Uh hopefully May 12th, the city commission will say yes, go, and then there's probably another half a dozen that are in the queue waiting to figure out when they they move forward.

Some of those are pretty substantive.

Um, and so we would expect uh this activity to use up a fair amount of your time over the next couple of years.

Um of the other less demanding but regular activities is the impact fee updates.

Um that's something where you have an obligation to weigh in on the CIP.

Uh we're not doing any studies right now.

Um, so that's uh less of a thing.

Those will come back around in a couple years from now.

Um training, certainly an ongoing kind of activity.

Uh we've done that a few times this uh last few months.

Um then number five, the annual report.

Um that's more you're receiving the information.

That's something the staff prepares for the process of documenting the work that's happened with the the plan updates and those kinds of things.

And then the last one is the issue plans.

Um you just participated in in part of one of those, um, and there's several others that are underway.

Uh integrated water resources plan, uh the Gucci sub-area plan, which is actively underway.

And then in this July, uh, we'll be kicking off an update to the transportation plan.

So that'll be in 27, probably before the the real meat of that uh happens at this level.

So there's a lot of things that are already in the queue.

Um, but um there certainly could be additional items um as the city manager works with the city commission to sort out sequence of uh their priorities and when they want to have certain things moving forward.

So as was mentioned, that's a recent action, and we we expect that we'll continue to see some work flow out of that as well.

One question.

Uh yeah, this this all looks great.

Um we've done this most of these before.

There were a couple that jumped out at me though, and one of them one in particular.

Can you just embellish on the Gotch Hill sub area and plan?

Um, a little bit about what it is, and then uh we will be involved in it.

Yeah, um first and foremost, there is an engage boson web page for it.

I I went on there and I've read it.

Oh good for you.

Okay so we're we're good.

So the city does its infrastructure planning and uh the sewer planning sewer collection system is one of the most important of that because it drives so much other activity.

The next big band of service capacity down the west side is dependent on a lift station at the intersection of uh Harper Puckett and Valley Center.

The Gooch Hill plan that's about as estimated $16 million investment not including the pipes.

So the the Gooch Hill plan sub area plan is an effort the commission asked us to take a look at it's being run through the utilities department and we're joint staffing that with them.

And it's looking at roughly 2,000 acres in that northwestern corner and there's been a lot of planning work already happen out in there both at the infrastructure and land use levels.

But pulling all of that together into coherent document refining that a bit doing some focused public engagement in that area and helping to um just kind of organize that into a more holistic one point of of access document.

So they the plan for that is moving forward there's working on starting to schedule stakeholder groups here in the next few weeks and so I we expect to see that probably coming forward through this body towards the end of the year.

And so it's being processed as a sub area plan or excuse me an area plan.

And so it may end up making some recommendations for modifications on the land use map tweaking some things or other um other outcomes from that and uh so that's that's what that is.

Thank you.

As far as the word plan goes it seems like um I mean there's a lot of statutory things that uh we do as the new um what was it planning planning commission um as well as impact fee um so to a large degree I mean applications come when they come and then the city engages in its various updates and plans you know sort of as needed and so I mean it doesn't seem like there's much uh there's much there's much to for this board to say other than like oh yeah we see it and we we know it's our job or is is there some different ought to be a great place to start um if there are areas um the resolution that creates the board's clear that the direction comes from the commission to the board and from the commission to the city manager to the staff.

But if there are suggestions you mentioned the idea about hosting some sort of um discussion on a particular topic that would be something you could pass through your liaison and the you know commission could think about that and decide if that was something that they wanted to say we we see you've got a a full plate but it's not an overflowing plate so try and fit this one in.

Yeah I mean other than like uh like I mentioned the idea that uh more um yeah exchange type um work type session could happen I mean the idea too would be I mean I guess the first time we did it it might not be the smoothest but you know once that thing exists I mean it's streamable people could know like oh hey if you want to want to hear a really interesting substantive discussion about topic X or Y like no it's a good point it's a a way of exploring things we've had some discussions internally at the staff level about certain ideas about what would this kind of an approach similar to what you're describing more of a panel discussion kind of thing be helpful you know what what would it help with how could we do it the best one of the challenges um becomes this room is set up to focus on this physical space so I'm not the expert in all the technology um but um that's certainly something we could look into yeah it in general I like the plan I don't know if feedback um and I guess the Jason's point um I see a couple items on here that actually you know are in that space of policy continuous improvement of the UDC that's been documented on here.

But that's certainly something we could look into.

Yeah.

In general, I like the plan.

I don't know if feedback.

And I guess to Jason's point, um, I see a couple items on here that are actually you know are in that space of policy continuous improvement of the UDC.

Um that's been documented on here.

Um I'm personally excited about seeing those start to come in front of us and and engaging in those really substantive conversations around okay.

Um, you know, the design guidelines, right?

Um looking at I don't know what is on um tier one and tier two, I think housekeeping, but you know, seeing what's on those um and then engaging.

And and you know, I looked at the gotch if I'm saying that right.

Um and I um from difference proof.

Yeah, yeah.

I but it but again, I think like that's that's it seems like that's almost like large-scale master planning, like looking at okay, even before annexation.

Like what do we want this space to be?

And I think that's a place, at least in my tenure here that we've asked to kind of get even up in front of.

And so um again, back to substantive conversations.

I I really like that.

Like not just that one, but the if there are other areas of the city, also that um planning is considering in the future uh of like you know, getting in front of even the the land use map.

Um I think those would be topics that I'd be really interested in, and also seeing populate kind of our our to-do list.

So those are my thoughts on this, not that we're doing a formal motion on it, but um yeah, it's a good good body of work.

And I'll just add a few pieces that are are are floating around in this as well, is um figuring out where we want to populate and which of the commission priorities um will go in front of this body and and advisory boards generally, as well as as we're undergoing uh you know, some reconceptualization of what the boards do generally and what things do we want to put in front of boards.

And so both of those are ongoing.

They're gonna be um probably early summer, mid-summer tasks of figuring out um what are all how what are the functions of the boards, what are the things that are working well?

Um, and that convert that question of you know, the sort of the the less formal recommendation time and ideating fireside chat style of community engagement has been um wrapped up in those conversations as well.

Thanks.

Yeah, go ahead.

Well, I certainly like the idea of adding some fireside chats to our work plan.

Um just I guess one comment on question.

Uh comment.

Um transportation master plan is coming up.

Uh we should remind the uh the transportation engineering division that the uh the best transportation master plan is a good land use plan.

It would be great for this body to get to be a little bit involved and have that conversation around um how the land use plans that we have adopted and where we're anticipating that there'll be growth and density in the future um could be better reflected in the the long-term vision in that plan.

Um question, I don't I don't see a growth plan update in the work plan.

I assume that uh I'm not missing anything.

No, we just you are not missing it.

That is not currently assigned by the commission.

Great.

I mean we did technically, we just did the technical update, right?

We did, yep.

Um and it's uh at the pleasure of the commission if they well, at least for almost five years now, four and a half.

Um if they say we we feel like now's the time to tackle a more comprehensive look at it, or if they want to jump sooner or later.

So my general impression is they have a lot of other things I'd like to work on too, and spend your time and our time as the staff on.

And so um I think there's a desire to see some of those other action steps get taken care of.

Yeah.

Any other comments on the work uh work plan?

Did you I see in the memo it just said receive the document and recommend approval to the city commission?

Would you like a motion on that then as well?

Yes.

Okay.

If you're comfortable making it I'll do I'll I recommend a motion to approve the community development board work plan 2026-2027 as proposed here.

No amendments for now, but welcome uh any other items to populate this based on this discussion, knowing that there may be some free time on this board as we move forward.

Second.

Went a little win a little windy there, but seconding the the motion for approval.

I I can do that sometimes.

I apologize.

I'm trying my best.

It's late.

Any other uh discussion?

I just wasn't amendments here.

Member Aggy, if you are suggesting that we recommend inclusion of the transportation plan.

Or I believe it is already included.

Oh thanks for clear.

More of I took that as more for for the staff who do who are maybe listening in currently, if not probably first thing tomorrow morning.

Or at least they'll hear it on the uh Bozeman brief podcast.

That's right.

All right.

Any further discussion?

Mr.

Sagstadter.

Mover Agnatz.

Yes.

Second or Morrison.

Hi.

Board Member Egggy.

Aye.

Board Member Mitro.

Aye.

Board Member Bonnet.

And Vice Chair Delmu.

Aye.

Motion carries 60.

All right.

Hang on before we I guess you could you you could you could pack up there uh liaison.

We still have a couple yeah, the couple agenda items.

Yeah, the including uh general public comment.

All right.

Uh having gone through the action items, uh, we'll open it up through public comments on non-agenda items falling within the purview and jurisdiction of this board.

Uh is there anyone in the room that would like to make general public comment?

All right, seeing none, and then uh Mr.

Sachs said you said there was nobody tuned in.

Is that right?

That's correct.

Okay.

Um we'll close public comment.

FYI discussions.

Yeah.

So we do not have anything scheduled for the May 18th, uh, as we talked about earlier.

Um the other FYI is just um director George uh sent out an email to the members of the board.

Uh just encourage you to um take a look at that, give it some good thought and send it back in.

And that would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

Any other uh FYI?

One random thing, and I don't know if this is a comment to address to anyone in this room, but the the new microphones, I don't know if they're wireless, but there seems to be like a millisecond delay, like a microsecond delay in transmission, and it's a little bit.

Uh I hope I get to keep this microphone.

That's all I'm gonna say.

So I don't know.

All right.

Anything else for the good of the order?

All right.

All right then.

At uh 8 45 p.m.

uh Verizon Mountain Daylight Time, this meeting is adjourned.

Goodbye.