hello this is commissioner scorner today i'm susan chapman's city commissioner at large it's hot hot hot we're in the dog days of summer and are we grateful for the shade of archery that's what our topic is today trees s trees and sustainability of our city through trees i'd like to introduce you to jude levy citizen volunteer and stevie freeman mond as our new sustainability manager june could you tell us a little bit about why trees are important why trace are important well they have a lot of functions economic functions because people like to shop and eat where there are trees and shade that's for sure with he at index today of one hundred five you want to be in the shade the other thing is they absorb rainwater they clean the air and a group of trees will actually help create breezes and rain they they draw over it so there are so many features and they silently are servants and stevie would you tell us what most sustained ability manager is and what your role is in preserving urban forest definitely so as a sustainability manager i hope the city of sarasota as a business as an organization reduce their environmental footprint environmental impacts so produce or reduce our energy use reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and consume less water all those things and i also do that community wide so i help support programs and projects community wide with that same goal and so i definitely love trees and trees are important habitat for our local species and provide shade and all these great benefits that are important for sustainability so i'm here to help support that too in the last few weeks or than a lot of activities with regard to trees and s o s trees do you do want to tell us a little bit about the last two meetings of s o s trees yes well levon years ago save our sarasota helped save black olives on main street and public space and then we helped create a green space policy that was approved by the commission in two thousand and eleven but then recently we noticed that some trees were coming down on main street in our parks and then i heard that we were losing a lot of canopy trees in our neighborhood right on the edge of town so s o s save our sarasota trees emerged to start talking again an edge educating the public about the importance of these canopy trees so we had one meeting in june we had about forty people at the art center and then this past week we had sixty people come and we have had staff come steve us on our first panel and so  and john miller and we've helped educate and everybody so we're working together staff neighborhoods and downtown and the neighborhoods are really activated about the areas activated they've been so energetic they want to be involved in updating that tree ordinance they are educating their neighborhood and they want to influence the builders and the architects as well so everybody is coming on board i just if you were mine i wanted to build upon that because i feel like the engagement from the community has been is so critical to sustainability and being new to sarasota i'm so impressed with the level of engagement and i'm so happy that the residents are working so well with staff in that we're working together this feels like a productive positive initiative and speaking of working together wasn't the timing great it was perfect timing it was going through budget cycle which is very good timing so the city was really fortunate to get through the budget through commission a new code enforcement officer that will work on the weekends to help really enforce a lot of these the tree ordinance and also a new city arborists or two new city argus really three public works will be hired to and why is it important that somebody be working on the weekends first june and then you stevie well apparently there are some people who realize there is no one to call on the weekend at the city and we've seen very large especially come down on the weekend be taken away on the weekend without any permit at all so we started noticing this throughout the neighborhood came up at the c n a the coalition of city neighborhoods that this was happening no one realized they thought it was only in neighborhood so when we all started talking about it then we said then we approached tim and todd about having someone to call on the weekend so we look forward to the new arborist and  and hotline that people can call if they see this happening without a permit and you mention two names tim and todd you're talking about tim should who is the director of neighborhood sir neighborhood and development services and  who is in charge of our parks stevie tell me about the tree permit in process and what is necessary and what the city is doing to respond to those questions and complaints that happened at the s trees meeting sherwood the city definitely heard loud and clear that residents were concerned about the trees that were coming down on the weekends and so tim our director of neighborhood of element services really has done a great job i feel like responding and getting a flexible schedule for the new arborists that's going to come on and also the new code enforcement officer that will be here and available on the weekends but in terms of the tree permit process if anybody wants to take down a tree that's not a sitter stree they really should come onto our website and look at all the details of what the ordinance says because trees have a lot of protection and are ordinance but with that being said there are opportunities to strengthen it and so we are going to work together in the future on strengthening our ordinance but i do want to just mention that if residents are concerned about a tree coming down in their neighborhood one thing they can do is look on sites and make sure that they see this tree permit posted in a visible location and if they don't it very well might be an illegal removal and big can call the city now there are certain trees that are protected under the city of sarasota street ordinance and the main tree is a live oak a grand jury would you tell the public what a grand jury really is or grand trees tree is a beautiful old growth large tree that provides so much benefit with its canopy and shade and all these air quality and even water quality issues and so it's kind of our house our largest protection attached to it and jud s o s trees is interested in protecting more trees you want to talk about this good we've decided yes the neighborhood canopy but also the street trees downtown and first we thought parks but there are fifty parts so we said we're focusing on the downtown parks you can find those parks listed in a brochure that's provided by that city on the fifty parks but they're also listed in the green space policy which is also you can find on line now and i'm very glad about it as we look more closely we realize that most of the downtown parks that is within the of the downtown area by not going over forty one fruit phil or washington are only tiny pocket parks but that makes them all the more valuable and all the more needed some of them if basically  what's a pocket park a small park with tree canopy with pensions and often a fountain well we have actually allowed a lot of restaurants to kind of take that space or the benches have gone away and you know i was walking on the bayfront park and i thought here's some model there are too many benches so you don't even notice who's sitting because there are so many and the trees and the ben are dedicated and maybe we could think about a program like that for the city and right now pineapple park is at risk again with building right up next to it and it's already had a portion of it lo off by the lemon extension will people need these parks and so we're busy trying to focus on one thing green space is important for is absorbing water when we have these big summer rain storms and  dealing with urban flooding is whoa one of the things they talked about was expanding in the number of protected trees under the at the s o s meeting and under our new  ordinance and is s o s is lobbying for that is that right that's correct and the urban design studio wants to include pines are very important so many of them come down and we need to for our environment but  want the laurel and many other canopy trees so they have more trees protected in that county will look at the trees they protect but tim said he'd be happy to work on this and expand the number of trees now what i would love to see too is you know the urban design studio has done some great work you know looking at the tree ordinance looking at the county what other cities are doing what trees they clued and working with the citizen group to kind of go piece by piece over the next few months to look at all the opportunities with the tree ordinance because i think there's a lot that can be looked up there in fact they're talking about not just in urban transect of buildings they're talking about an urban transect of plant teens and trees and a natural transect of of native plant teens and those kinds of things is that right now we haven't talked about one of the most protected trees and that's a state protected tree which is the mangrove stevie do you want to talk a little bit about what the function of a mangrove is mangroves are so important to really root in our  they have some one species a man grows has what are called pneumatic fords which are the roots that come up and one of the things that they do is that they stop wave action when there is a storm right there are natural correct i believe so yes i'm not quite sure what all that process is but that's my understanding now what do you see coming next for us so this trees dude well i'm really hoping that we take a look at these pocket parks downtown that's  imon plaza links pineapple and there are a couple others and kind of restore them i we need a new way to look at this and people need these parks and more than ever it's not that we have a lot of people living downtown it's not just that we have a lot of tourists coming but every day that the city is flooded with people who work here and they need the canopy trees of all our major streets to walk and shop but they also need these always this is a passe park one thing i've heard is a detriment to having downtown parks is that homeless people live there but it it's true that there is a best practice about homeless people living in parks and that is activating parks makes the homeless people less prominent even less likely to use a park is that right well if i were homeless i'd be in a park you know it's restful it's safe and so forth but we'll need the parks and we can't use that as our reason to shut down our parks or to sell them or give them away and in fact in new york they have actually managed that issue by having activities scheduled in every park stevie  shaking your head yes definitely this is i could be in the park i think is an important component because and i think working really strongly with our new home with the director and and getting to the deeper issues of what's causing our homeless challenges and working all together on this address it to i want to thank both of you for being here today i think it was a very interesting topic and we're going to have a lot of pictures of trees in and i really enjoyed talking with you are there any last words that you want to say about trees and preservation of trees just that i look forward to working with resident group and if people want to get involved definitely feel free to reach out to me and my phone numbers nine four one three six five two two zero zero extension four two zero two well thank you so much for having us on today because this week and a lot of attention on this for so happy about all this citizen involvement and i hope they keep it up to all the research and i'm so glad that we're all working together i thank you all for tonight man i'm susan