Featured Program: Municipal Program Updates
Plymouth- Paul Buck: heavily into planting flowers, 2 done 3 or 4 more on the table. Don't have enough help to install and maintain them- potential for volunteer help? Many in high-speed corridors- dangerous for volunteers, and volunteer knowledge of flower vs. weed a problem. Another problem with contractors planting incorrectly and with poor stock- even when its written into the specs. Suggestion by Sandy McCartney to help the contractors feel they are responsible for their plantings: require them to erect a sign saying who installed the project with a contact phone number on it. So when people drive by and notice how bad it looks they can call them instead of the city. Jim Burks also suggested that a clause be put into the contract stating failure to produce/install correctly will result in non-payment.

Blaine- Marc Shippee: Diseases are down, but oak wilt starting to show up, especially in construction sites. Sumac shoot blight problem. Contracted out city tree care to Certified Arborist. Planted a nursery with Centennial Elm School 250. Working on a Tree Preservation Ordinance. Having a lot of problems with nurseries in the area requiring homeowners to keep the burlap and twine on the ball of newly planted trees to maintain 1-year guarentee.

Eden Prairie- Jeff Cordes: Problems: elm leaf miner, oak anthracnose, some oak wilt and two-lined chestnut borer, sawflies on spruce and mugo, verticillium wilt, and girdling roots. Having a construction damage issue with bur oak on a MnDOT project.

Hutchenson- Mark Schnobrich: Tree Inspector is actually a UF student! A lot of DED even with clean-up last year. Ash, and sliver maple anthracnose. Treescapes in downtown developed- interest is peaking. 8^th year of working with Energy Trees, where local utility helps to fund forestry programs. Compaction problem on newly developed sites, unable to dig holes to plant. Working with developers to ameliorate the problem. Having erosion problem at Crow River due to want to developed river bank.

Chanhassen- Jill Sinclair: Planted 65 boulevard trees, encouraging entire neighborhoods to sign up for plantings. Pillsbury Volunteers are going to help restore a riparian area, planting 100 bare roots. A garden club has started and is looking for sites for gardens. Club will maintain and install each garden and the city will fund the preparation and the plants. Arbor Day Poster Contest went great and was a lot of fun. Some problems with leaf miner damage and DED.

Crystal and Robbinsdale- Jim Burks: Poster Contest went great in Robbinsdale. Both Crystal and Robbinsdale have problems with DED, already over the total for last year with significant elms being lost, and the budget is down. Highway 100 project is going through and MnDOT took down a lot of trees in both cities. Many Standing dead were found. In Crystal there is a defacto ban on boulevard planting- working on reversing it. And, also doing some tree preservation with developers, and street scaping going in- unfortunately with tree coffins.

Committee Reports:
Planning: Meeting right after the MnSTAC general meeting.

Agency Updates:
DNR: Peggy Sand announced that the Wildland Urban Interface Project will be a two track project. The first is a guidebook developed for landowners and the second is cooperating with adjoining local governments to incorporate land development and management tools on a landscape level. Lino Lakes and Hugo are currently enlisted in this project.

The DNR budget has been announced, and of 24 million extra dollars that are distributed none are going to the Forestry Department, causing a several million-dollar shortfall. There will be no layoffs, but cutbacks on many projects. There is no LCMR funding for MnReLeaf for the next biennium- individual LCMR members can propose a hearing to bring them back in. This issuse should get STAC support.

DOA: Rich Hauer- The honey locust are starting to leaf out again and oak wilt samples are starting to come in- started in early May, which is very early. Also there was a tree wounded in Sept last year that was diagnosed with oak wilt, which is very late in the season. Gypsy moth traps being set out, and a bio control is being tried on Japanese beetles.

MnDOT received the Merit Award from the US DOT for their Living Snow Fence publication. They were up against stiff competition, congratulations.

University: Mike Zins announced that Chad Behrendt is leaving the U to be a log home builder in Wisconsin.

Dave DeVoto noted all the publicity that MSA and the Arboretum received from the Tree Climbers Championship.

Meeting Adjourned at 11:25 by Mike Zins, seconded by Dave DeVoto.

Respectfully submitted by J. Rebecca Hargrave.