ORDER-2022-76 : Acceptance of Fifty Thousand Dollars ($50,000) from a FY2022 State Budget Earmark to Address Ell Pond Water Chestnut Infestation

Transcript (~14 min @ 20:28)

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▶ 20:21 Jen Grigoraitis: Nine yes. So the motion carries and this will be recommended to the full council. Thank you for being here tonight. Lovely to see you. All right, the next item on our agenda is order 2022-76 acceptance of $50,000 for my FY 2022. State budget earmark to address El Pond water chestnut infestation. I believe we have conservation agent Eric Devlin joining us for this order.

▶ 20:50 Speaker 1: We have 2 more that I'm just adding right now.

▶ 21:09 Jen Grigoraitis: I guess that's it. Hi, I believe Paul Moore is also here on behalf of the Conservation Commission and is Michael also a member of the CONCOM? Yes, he's the Commission Chair.

▶ 21:20 Jen Grigoraitis: Okay, all right. Thank you. Welcome, gentlemen. The floor is yours.

▶ 21:26 Speaker 5: Okay, so I know that we were, well, the Tate Leopard Garabedian, I believe, We've made the request from the state to get this grant for us after I mentioned the problem that we were having with the water chestnut out there at Elkhorn, and we were desperately seeking funding to be able to deal with this problem and a couple of different methods that we were looking into, mechanical harvester being the best choice that we came up with In order to effectively tackle this over the course of. At least 3 years, so. I believe we've finally got everything in place to be able to actually get this transferred over to the city so that we can be in using it for the contract that we have from.

▶ 22:25 Jen Grigoraitis: Salt Lake management. Okay, thank you for that update. So this is a earmark that replica was able to get inserted into the 2022 state budget. And this is just transferring the funds. Into the city accounts, are there any questions from. Or comments from counselors counselor, followed by council Williams.

▶ 22:48 Mark Garipay: That's okay. The floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you. Eric for being here. I appreciate it. Quick question. Last year, and we had, I think, allocated some free cash for this project. Also was that about 25,000. So, do you remember that? I don't remember the dollar amount.

▶ 23:06 Mark Garipay: 27,500, 27,500. So, um. That plus this 50,000 will all be for the chestnut project chestnut removal.

▶ 23:15 Speaker 5: That's correct. Uh, the 27, 5 was an original quote that we got for 1 year's treatments. uh we need to do this for at least three years so that was only funding for one year and the price goes up every year you know due to inflation and other costs that are beyond my control so um

▶ 23:36 Mark Garipay: yeah my next question was this is a three-year process it's not something that we can with all the money get done uh get done in one year it definitely has to be a three-year process That's the treatment? Yeah. And how much does it cost annually to treat our ponds in Melrose?

▶ 23:58 Speaker 5: We've been spending around $10,000 per year just doing maintenance treatments, herbicides, alum treatment over in our pond in order to keep the phosphorus level down, and algaecide.

▶ 24:15 Mark Garipay: What is the, um, is that enough money? I guess it's more or less the question. Is that enough money to. To keep these ponds, so we don't run into the same issue.

▶ 24:26 Speaker 5: I don't know if the chair or Paul wants to speak on that as well. My opinion is it's not enough to cover it. We're kind of always. Part of the problem is that since this treatment always happens during the summer months. We're always splitting 2 fiscal years to begin with. So, the bills come in for 1 treatment. At the tail end of 1 fiscal year, and then others are coming in at the beginning of the next. So we're always playing this game to try to make sure. Do we have enough money to cover this particular bill for this year versus the next year? Because the fiscal year ends right in the middle of when we're doing the treatments.

▶ 25:06 Speaker 1: If I could add, this is Michael Piwanski, I'm the chairman of the Conservation Commission, and annually we get a report from Solitude Lake Management, who we've worked with many years, sort of presenting their recommendations for the various ponds that we are in charge of. And every year, frankly, we don't have enough money, so we work with Eric and the other members to pick what we think is the most effective, but we're never able to really meet the recommendations of solitude. So it could end up costing us more in the future if we end up with a problem like we have at El Pond where like the water chestnut just very quickly overtook the pond. not exactly i mean lpond happened very quickly over just a few years but like i say we're we're never we never quite have the funds to meet the recommendations of this company i think it's

▶ 26:11 Speaker 6: another important part to mention is this when we consider it is that we've been very lucky that we have a number of members of the community that have you know come together to help us you know do some hand pulling over you know several weekends to help us maintain this somewhat and as you can see we're still falling far behind so um you know not not only is it just a matter of funding um but you know we're having to kind of backfill some of that with volunteer work which is wonderful and it's great to see people get out and you know take some ownership of this but still it just underscores that you know we we don't have the funding that we need to tackle this problem

▶ 26:57 Mark Garipay: I guess I don't want to put you on the spot, but what do you think is a realistic dollar amount? I mean, we're in the middle of starting budget season. We don't have a ton of a ton of funds, but what do you think is a realistic. Dollar amount annually that would help you. Keep keep up with this project and treat the pawns.

▶ 27:24 Speaker 1: I'm sorry, go ahead. Eric, do you recall that, you know, say just outside of this mechanical harvesting that we're embarking on for the next three years, do you recall, as far as just the chemical treatment, what their full recommendation would go annually? Was it closer to 20 or is it less than that?

▶ 27:48 Speaker 5: Without doing, taking the water chestnut treatment out entirely. it was somewhere around i want to say maybe 15 000 somewhere around there just based off the

▶ 28:08 Mark Garipay: recommendations for what they had on the last sheet so okay um just one last question so the 15 000 that would be um is there an annual um maintenance after we do the three-year water chestnut project that we have to uh uh have to do in order to uh keep them from growing uh and is that included in the 15 or would that be in addition to the 15 000 that would probably be

▶ 28:30 Speaker 5: in addition to it i think they were saying they want 1200 per year for one day of manual hand pulling by them and that's just with one or two people so they don't do a ton uh in that one day but that's pretty much an anticipated annual maintenance item for years going on after that we're trying to supplement it with volunteers

▶ 28:59 Speaker 1: excuse me like like paul said um we'd be seeking volunteers to help us keep up with this maintenance this hand pulling maintenance pretty much forever like you'll never fully get rid of these water chestnuts so we're going to have to try to look for volunteers and use continue to

▶ 29:25 Mark Garipay: use solitude um for the foreseeable future okay um thank you uh you know the pond is in the middle middle of the community but it's also a big portion of uh my world war four so um i appreciate all your your help and everything you do i know it takes a lot of time so thanks a lot thank you

▶ 29:47 Ryan Williams: Councillor and now Councillor Williams. Thank you all for being here with us and thank you to Councillor Garipay for raising these questions because he answered some of the things that I was going to ask. So what I have that's different was a question regarding whether there are any chestnut problems in any of the Ward 7 ponds, Towners Pond, you know, Ward 7 and Ward 6, Tundra's pond and Swain's pond, and whether anything that this grant funding is going towards would serve as treatments for those, or are those mostly focused on algaecide and herbicide?

▶ 30:23 Speaker 5: We don't have any water chestnut problems in those two ponds, thankfully. I mean, I don't, I hope it doesn't, I'm not really sure, I'm not really sure exactly how the water chestnut ended up in El Pond to begin with. I'm assuming it was from um uh ducks or you know geese or something like that going back and forth and just we were unlucky enough to have it go in there but it there isn't anything like that over in those other two ponds at the moment I know water lilies although native they tend to grow in nuisance levels over a towner so I believe that's the biggest problem that we tend to have over there ideally I'd like to have second herbicide treatment or something in order to keep them under control because typically I'll get a lot of complaints around August that the water lilies have pretty much taken over towners.

▶ 31:19 Speaker 5: But I can't think of anything else at the moment just offhand about what we would need grant

▶ 31:27 Ryan Williams: funding for. The last time that we tried to do mechanical harvesting of the water chestnuts there was an issue right with the scheduling of the machine and we couldn't get it out is that

▶ 31:40 Speaker 5: correct yeah we need basically we needed to get the contract signed and have everything all set up well before june which i believe that's we got the uh free cash appropriation at that point it was too late to be able to try to get a contract with them and and so do you feel

▶ 31:57 Ryan Williams: that with the timeline of this funding that uh you'll be more likely to to make that contract in time for the before the seeds drop yes that's great that's great and i want to say speaking as a guy who got out on a kayak and pulled a bunch of water chestnuts it is frustrating to see them reappear but it's also kind of fun to go out on the lake and uh and do the work so if you guys have any more volunteer opportunities please let us know because we'll be happy to share them with

▶ 32:28 Speaker 5: their constituents it is a lot of fun thank you there'll be plenty of them thank you councillor

▶ 32:32 Jen Grigoraitis: williams are there any other counselors wishing to ask questions councillor Garipay i would just

▶ 32:42 Mark Garipay: like to make a motion uh to recommend for a passage second second so we have a motion to

▶ 32:47 Jen Grigoraitis: recommend made by councillor Garipay seconded by president sanella is there any discussion Seeing none, Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll?

▶ 32:57 Speaker 1: Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine?

▶ 33:07 Speaker 3: Yes.

▶ 33:08 Speaker 1: Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Karamshadi?

▶ 33:14 Speaker 4: Yes.

▶ 33:16 Speaker 1: Councilor Williams? Yes. President Cinella? Yes. Chair Grigoraitis?

▶ 33:25 Jen Grigoraitis: Yes, yes, yes. So, oh, Councilor McMaster.

▶ 33:35 Speaker 1: We can't hear you. It wasn't called. On the roll call vote. Yes, my apologies. Councilor McMaster.

▶ 33:41 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you for catching that Councilor McMaster. So 9, yes, so the motion to recommend carries. So this will come before the full Council next week. Thank you all for being here tonight. And I just want to 1 more time, recommend recognize rep for her advocacy at the state level to ensure that these funds are available. So, thank you all have a good evening.