Carbondale Reporter

City of Genoa Tree Board met Oct. 8.

Here is the agenda provided by the board:

I. Welcome. No guests this evening.

II. Call to order at 7:10 pm /Roll call

a. Members Dina Fowler, Brent Holcomb, Steve Francissen, Brett Wilhelmi, Joe Flury and Facilitator Katie Lang were present.

III. Accept agenda.

a. Motion passed; 5 Aye

IV. Old Business

a. Discussion regarding forestry advocacy, messaging, and education goals took place and included the following suggestions:

i. President Fowler suggested continuing to post watering reminders and mulching techniques, preventing bark from touching the trees as disease, dieback, and rotted bark results from this moist oxygen restricted environment allowing pests to attack the tree.

ii. Lang suggested providing link to NOAA Drought Monitor Conditions website

iii. Members collectively suggested more visibility may be achieved by generating posts on official and unofficial Genoa pages as information only and disabling comments

iv. Note that posting material has been prepared by Lang and sent to the PW Director. Genoa does not have a marketing intern at this time, posts have not gone live.

b. Double Brood Cicada Year resulted in little to no visible damage to the city trees.

V. New Business

a. Callery Pear, from ‘friend to foe’ discussion supplemented with visual aids to include photos of naturalized areas before and after Callery pear escape. City Forester shared the City’s Parkway inventory Callery Pear statistics with the Tree Board. .

i. Approx. 40 Callery to be removed in city parkways. They have started to spread to the Prairie.

ii. Riverbend will be prioritized due to proximity to Genoa Prairie and Woodland.

iii. Goal: 100% of Parkway Callery Pears removed by the close of 2025.

iv. Private property will be addressed in the next phase through messaging.

b. The Tree board will continue to observe forestry opportunities for grants and accreditation.

c. Report on Forestry Operations, Maintenance –

i. 64 trees were planted in 2024. Twenty-four of those are part of the Downtown Revitalization Project (counting the new municipal parking lot Serviceberry )

ii. 50 trees will be removed by the end of 2024. 35 Trees have been removed to date, 15 more invasive Pears are scheduled to be taken down by the end of the year. Weak Callery Pears were disproportionately damaged by the storms in July 15, 2024 and make up 60% of all removals.

iii. Our planting selection was fairly diverse with Maples taking first place and Oaks and Lindens tied for second.

iv. Special City Brush Pick Up - October 21st, 2024

8:15 PM Meeting Adjourns

https://www.genoa-il.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Minutes-08OCT24-Tree-Board.pdf