2020-08-07 Arborist Advisory Minutes

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Arborist Committee Minutes August 7, 2020 Page 2 of 5 REPORT FROM NATASHA SORIANO RE: PROPOSED IN-PROGRESS PLANT LIST COMPONENT FOR THE COUNTY COMPLETE STREETS PROGRAM Natasha Soriano, Melissa May, Joel Kurokawa, and Zach Mermel all joined the Arborist Advisory Committee by video conferencing. Natasha has been working on a Complete Street Program and provided a draft list of plants as handouts to the members. Natasha informed the Committee that this was a list of native species along with plants that would do well in the environment. Melissa May explained that Complete Streets is a toolbox for Public Works and private developers to design streets, travel ways and paths in a manner consistent with complete streets principles. Their focus is to encourage walkability, livable communities, and comfort for pedestrians and bicyclists. Melissa also mentioned that there is a streetscapes part of the manual about planting street trees and infrastructure and that the plant list will be included in the appendix. Their goal is to create a welcoming environment as well as a easily maintainable environment for DPW. Joel Kurokawa explained that Ki Concepts operates from various remote locations. He explained that they look at the Dept of Transportation ecozones and native plant lists along State Highways. To develop the plant list, they looked at non-native and non-invasive plants species that are appropriate to the various ecozones for the County roadway systems. The Committee had some input:  Bisel checked the list for any invasive and did notice a few plants on the list that has a record for high risk by the Pacific Weed Risk Assessment. Bisel also recognized a few species of bamboo that are highly invasive and suggested that they not put anything on the list that will be problematic.  Bisel added that it would be good to say that some of the plants on the list has been vetted as far as invasiveness.  JB suggested that they create a column for the Hawaii Pacific Weed Risk Assessment Risk. He also explained that the reason for developing the HPWRA was for plant imports. Zach Mermel who helped produce the list, explained to the Committee that they took a combination of readily available plants and filtered it through the HPWRA, however some of them may have been missed and will be looked at again. Other considerations were plants that were easily propagatable and those that were resilient to long term water immersion.