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HomeMy WebLinkAboutJune 10, 2025 Tree Board Minutes from the Jeffersonville Tree Board June 10, 2025 In attendance: Jeff Cover, Carol Dunn, Kelli Jones, Amber Powell, Paul Reid, Chad Reischl Not in attendance: Eric Bitner, Bob Hill, Chloe Motley, Heaven Williams, Derrick Wiest The meeting of the Jeffersonville Tree Board was called to order by Jeff Cover at 4:02pm on June 10, 2025 in the Planning/Building/Parks conference room at the Jeffersonville City Hall The agenda and the minutes of the April 8 meeting were both approved by assent. The first item on the agenda was some unfinished business firming up potential committees and committee assignments. The primary takeaways from this discussion included: • Strategic Planning should be the responsibility of the Executive Committee rather than a standalone committee. We may want to add this to the bylaws • That leaves us with three committees: Finance/Funding, Education/Programing, and Marketing/Communications • We should expect that everyone serves on one of the committees also we limit committee membership to 4 or 5 per committee so we're avoiding overloading any one committee and short changing others. We may want to add this to the bylaws as well. Moving to new business, Chad gave a summary of the Jeffersonville Urban Forestry Report and Work Plan that was drafted by Eocene Environmental Group over the last year. This report can be found on the Planning and Zoning's webpage at cityofjeff.net/planning-zoning. There is a lot of great info in this plan that can inform what this group does. Discussion following the presentation led to the suggestion of some possible goals for the group: • Focusing on maintenance over planting 4 • Getting info re: trees to developers • Helping with enforcement of the City's required landscape standards Next on the agenda was a discussion regarding funding for projects. Jeff indicated that it would be hard to approach the City for designated funds given Indiana Senate Bill 1 will be putting a major squeeze on City finances. Chad concurred and provided some other options that may be out there at our disposal. These include: • Landscape in lieu funds (for tree planting on public properties). Chad has collected over $8,000 this year and could make some/all of that available. • The Jeffersonville UEZ also has about $5,000 allocated to the Jeffersonville Tree Walk and other tree projects in the district. This could be used for a project in the downtown and adjacent neighborhoods. • The City does have a budget line item that can receive and disburse donations. So if we could find a handful of corporate donors we could utilize this service. Jeff said that this could negate the need to form or piggyback onto another 501c3 for picking up donations. Chad indicated that this works better for a few larger donations, as opposed to a bunch of little ones (like if we were to ask for donations at a fair or festival). Amber said we might be able to tie into a service that the parks department uses to consolidate numerous small donations. There is certainly more to look into here. Jeff stated that he spoke with the Community Foundation of Southern Indiana and that was not a viable option for us at this time. They suggested forming a 501c3 for the sake of getting donations from them and other sources. Carol mentioned Duke energy grants as another possible avenue for funding at this time. Chad said that he got a donation from Duke for one of his Louisville Grows Plantings in the past — although that money was given directly to Louisville Grows rather than the City. Following this discussion, Jeff wanted to layout some committee assignments for next time. They included the following: • Exec. Committee: Developing some form of mission statement • Marketing/Communications: Brainstorming possibilities for outreach Examples might include, creating pamphlets/business cards to distribute at events, revising/updating/creating website, and choosing an event or two that the org might like to have a presence at (i.e. national night out, farmers market, etc.) • Education/Programing: Brainstorming possible projects such as planting projects, pruning projects — Chad has thoughts on this, a tree steward program, etc. • Finance/Funding: Further developing funding sources/ideas list. A question was raised about having some sort of logo for marketing purposes. Amber suggested we use the one that was developed for the parks dept, but not used. Folks liked this idea and wanted her to see if the designer would be willing to change the words and allow us to use the logo and/or if they wanted some sort of compensation. Before adjourning, Jeff spoke briefly about the intent of our next meeting (on July 12). It will be to review the Bylaws and talk about a mission statement. The meeting was adjourned at 5:10 Respectfully Submitted, Chad Reischl Secretary, Jeffersonville Tree Board.