Food truck ordinance and landscaping grant

2:15:59um So I wish I had my notes in better order. I had written some things down here. Um We talked about the food ordin ordinance last time, the truck ordinance, food truck ordinance, about taking a tweak at that. Um I we talked about the landscaping grant to tweak that maybe to include affordable housing projects. Did we talk about that last night? Did I? I

2:16:24don't remember talking about that.

2:16:25So I we have three million dollars in our uh our trust fund and it grows steadily. Um we need to get that money back into the communities with trees planted in my opinion. Um I small

2:16:40businesses too.

2:16:41Huh?

2:16:42And there's money there for small businesses to do like

2:16:45Yes, we have we have a a grant program for people who Um you know, get caught in that fifty percent rule so now you have to comply with the the county rules. So we have the ability to uh help them pay for their landscaping. But I think that we should be I don't think we have a Uh well I think we do have a an arborist on staff actually. I think you have a tree arbor view? Okay, yeah. So there are many places where we can be going in and planting trees.

2:17:15And I personally it it it kills me to see a grand oak get knocked down. And and there's so much ha there's so much wildlife that lives in a in an oak tree. I read somewhere it was it supports like 500 species where a palm tree I say just supports cockroaches and rats. So we need to be putting our tree canopy back in. And if you look at what a lot of cities are doing, especially you're doing a lot of the resilience stuff,

2:17:46one of the best ways to cool things down is putting your tree canopy back in. Shading your parking lots and shading your houses and shading your, you know, walkways and Um when we walked the other day when we we had uh lunch in the um the utilities building. And we walk back. It was, you know, a very uninspiring walk when it could have been nice. And we have the money. Let's put it to work. I know there were other things that I

2:18:16wanted to

2:18:17Well while you're on that subject though?

2:18:18Yeah.

2:18:18So and I was working at an affordable housing project. Up in Hudson that wanted to get the trees and it was a struggle to do it. So

2:18:25we

2:18:25should

2:18:25be

2:18:26able to

2:18:26if we if we could, Mike, let's get with staff to go bring back some less strict language to go change this because any affordable housing project we got, especially it's already built that doesn't have any trees around it, we should be putting those trees in. Any any county park we have, we should go in. Anybody with a business, let's say on nineteen

2:18:48Needs the help, let's go get those trees because

2:18:51those funds are there for like help on landscape and all but a lot of people don't know about it. Forms of I don't know how we bring it up for their attention but somehow we need to explain I guess in our advertisement when we have on our website or something but And

2:19:05and the purpose

2:19:06show that.

2:19:06Yeah. And and the purpose of the ordinance was to put a tax on trees being taken down so you could replant them. So by making it too tough to get the money out, it's tough. Now we can't have every resident's going to do it but any business that's coming in we should help them with incentive that's an easy way to do it that doesn't cost any money from the general fund. Right. Alright, so Mike if you can work on that? Perfect.

2:19:26I don't know why s um my staff said someone told them that the only place it can go is for redevelopment. I said that no that it can go in any county owned property. Plus redo redevelopment, that's just a small portion of what we're using it for. But I think we should expand it to work for house. Okay. And work for and and w and I think like for habitat, I mean, let's give 'em a tree. Let's pay for them to put a tree in the yard. Yeah. So um okay, so I I just got a call and a text from Secretary Gwynne and it's um this is