Welcome to business session.

Our first item is approval of minutes from the 22nd of February.

Is there a motion?

So move second.

So move and second.

All in favor indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

Motion passes.

Tree planting initiative.

Mr.

Decker.

Is your idea, right?

The card says.

That's what it says.

That's what it says right there on the front.

Yeah, Forrest Decker, uh, director of neighborhood services.

I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about uh two tree cam tree, two tree issues today.

One, the mayor's 10,000 tree campaign, and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about a USDA grant that we got.

Um yeah, back in uh the dates wrong on here in May of 2023, with the uh budget appropriation of a million dollars, uh the mayor and the city manager challenged me to plant 10,000 trees over three years.

Um this fulfills several purposes.

It's actually fulfills uh section N 1.1, I believe, of the climate uh protection and resiliency plan, um, which calls for a like a 4% increase of street tree canopy and a 15% of private tree canopy.

So this is our plan, and I won't I won't go through the whole thing, I'll just kind of summarize it.

But we've already started this.

We started in uh fall of 2023 uh with the first first round of planting, which um we're kind of doing this under two uh two umbrellas and really kind of adding in a third.

Uh the first one is our free tree giveaway program, which I just sent something out to all of you this last week.

Uh we're getting ready to do our spring sign-up on that.

And that's a partnership with Bridging the Gap and the National Arbor Day Foundation to provide free trees to KCMO residents to plant on their private property, which in the previous slide, as I talked about, uh fulfills part of the climate protection and resiliency plan in increasing private property canopy coverage.

And in the this first year, this pat or this first half year this past fall, we gave away 1,488 trees to private residents.

We also planted 376 street trees and parks under a different set of funding.

Uh that third column is parks funding.

They planted another 425.

So, like I said, I'm not gonna read through this whole thing, but basically the one million dollars funding in FY24, 25, and 26, which will be three years, we'll plant um about 10,600 trees.

So mayor said 10,000.

I'm gonna try to plant 10,600.

Uh if you add in the parks trees too, it ends up being about 13,000 trees planted during that same period of time.

Uh this is uh this is just a map of the first uh 1488 trees that we gave away on private property.

Obviously, you can't see much detail on there, but you can see from this map that it was uh very well received citywide.

Um we had people from every district, you know, most neighborhoods, especially in the west and the south, and then all over the north land.

So this was a really well-received program.

Um in fact, I just sent it out last week that we had a thousand trees to give away, and we've already gotten like 920 reservations, so they're almost gone in five working days or so.

But the uh website there uh that you can see WW Arbor Day.org canopy cover KC.

Uh, that is how you you can go to that website and sign up for up to two free trees.

Uh just some pictures from the tree giveaway.

Uh we we do them over uh three different locations.

We do a north central and a south location.

Um this year we are doing or this spring we're doing uh giveaway up at NNI.

We're doing another one at Ivanhoe Park, and in the south, we're doing it at the Red Bridge uh recycling center.

And this is just what the uh web page looks like when you go to that website.

Uh you enter in your address, which I entered in City Hall on this one, and then you get a chance to like outline your property, and then you pick out your tree and you move it around your property, and it tells you what your energy savings can possibly be from planting a tree in that specific location.

It's pretty cool little program.

All right, now I'll tell you a little bit about the USDA forestry grant that I'll be coming back to you all here.

Oh, probably be in late May or early June to request permission, you know, your your approval to go forward with this grant.

We applied for uh 12 million, or we applied for 20 million.

We got 12 million dollars uh over five years from uh the USDA for a community forestry grant.

Uh this grant focuses very specifically on the environmental justice areas of the city, which I'll show you a map of what those are on the next slide.

Uh this 12 million dollars over five years will fund a tree inventory in the EJ zone.

Uh we anticipate uh removing about 2730 dead and dying trees, uh pruning uh almost 19,000 trees in a block using a block pruning strategy in areas that haven't been pruned in a long time.

Uh planting another 7700 or so additional trees in that EJ zone, and then there was a little bit of funding out of that 12 million, I think maybe 300,000 or so earmarked for community education, uh, which we are partnering with Bridging the Gap and Kansas City Community Gardens to fulfill that.

And this is just a map of the EJ zones of the city.