Arborist Advisory Council Meeting Minutes September 18, 2009

These minutes have not yet been approved by the Council

Members Present

Wes Davis, tish carr, Dave Newell, Ted Armstrong, Lois Stack

Members Not Present

John Lamanna, Art Batson

Reading/Approval of Minutes

tish called the meeting to order at 11:00 a.m. The minutes from the September 22, 2008 meeting were approved.

Update From Members

Ted – There is not much backlog of jobs we are staying ahead of the work, not travelling as far. There seems to be more independent operators and customers are are getting lots of bids for jobs.

Dave – The season is slower than normal and will need to pound the pavement to look for work. He will be advertising on line. They are looking at cost cutting measures to use less gasoline and generally be more efficient.

Lois – Trees are looking really healthy this year.

Wes – CMP is using four vendors for line clearing. They are Lewis, ABC, Lucas, and Asplundh with a total of 163 crews up from the usual 70 crews. Lots of work is being done, in hopes to have less outages, which is a component of the recent MPUC rate case . Transmission maintenance is done by Lucas, A new Maine power reliability project is proposed for 400 + miles of new transmission line needed to be cleared using mostly existing right of ways. If this project is approved it will transmit some of the new power being produced from windfarming and other modes from Maine and Canada south and will import power during peak load periods. The project will upgrade most of the 345KV system which was constructed in the 1960’ and early 1970’s,

tish –CMP has been doing a large project in Belgrade for the last 6 months. It has been challenging having so many trucks and crews during this busy time of year on many narrow roads. Belgrade has a tree ordinance and this information didn’t get to the crews so there were lots of discussions with town officials. There needed to be improved communication initially, but a number of meetings with the community sorted it out. It was beneficial to have a tree warden and tree ordinance in place. One interesting observation was that informational door hangers should not be placed on front doors as they aren’t used. Norway is having issues because of storm damage. tish attended USFS strike team training in Worcester MA with the goal of getting arborists involved with FEMA during ice storm emergencies. Three folks attended from Maine and hopefully this information will be helpful in the future.

John via Ann – He mentioned that mills aren’t taking any wood, so logging work is down and there is concern about logging work in the future.

Program Update

Debbie - 103 applicants were tested between December 2008 and September 9, 2009. The makeup of the applicants was as follows:

35 from line-clearing companies
8 from municipalities
2 from CMP
24 self-employed
34 listed a company name

On January 28, 2009 a big snow storm was predicted. She made calls to move people to morning session. Tested 14 people in the morning and did not hold an afternoon session as the State was closed early. This led to a BIG crowd on March 18 and we tested 25 and Dave made it through the day. We had a milestone on the morning of September 9 with all scheduled participants showing up. This was the first time we had no cancellations or “no shows”.

An extra testing date has been added this fall on September 30, 2009 with 11 from one company and 14 others. We already have 11 people scheduled for December 9 exam.

Ann – We received a grant from USDA to do an outreach and survey project focused on forest pests particularly Asian longhorned beetle. Because the beetle found last year in MA is so close to the northern forest the project was focused on New England states as well as NY, PA and NJ. The goal is to hopefully detect this pest early if found in the surrounding areas. Outreach material was available for members to take and distribute.

Bob - Indicated that the budget deficit was worse than predicted and there didn’t appear to be prospects for improvement. No more movement towards consolidating Natural Resource Agencies, but this could be brought back as an option in the future.

Insurance Options for Arborists

tish has been in communications with MEMIC representatives to determine if certified arborists could get a break on the cost of their workers compensation insurance. This program is very successful with certified logging professionals and they would like to mirror a similar opportunity for arborists. tish will continue discussions with Andy Wood from MEMIC and will bring her findings to the new council.

Suggestions for New Council Members

This was the last meeting for all council members, but one member, as they have served the maximum term of 6 years. Ann provided a list of member categories and asked for names of licensed arborists appropriate for each category. Ann will contact individuals to determine interest by November when terms expire.

Licensing Spanish Speakers

The Department has had a request regarding the possibility of offering the exam in Spanish. With the increase in line clearing for CMP contracts, many companies are bringing in Spanish speaking workers. Ann has checked with the Attorney General’s office and they indicated that the Department does need to try to offer and alternative. The simplest option is to offer the ISA exam to the workers, but it is more costly. Some suggestions from the council included:

Check with other states with a licensing program to determine if they offer a Spanish exam and if we could use it. States suggested included NJ and MD.

Check with ISA to determine if the tree workers exam is available in Spanish.

Translate the written true or false and matching questions and use Spanish flash cards for the oral portion of the exam for tying knots and parts of the chainsaw and translate the situational questions. Check with some of the larger companies to determine if they would help with the translation. Wes offered to help facilitate.

Feedback From the Council for the Future

Continue having meetings as issues come up. Maybe deal with more issues through email instead of having a face to face meeting. Continue with issues surrounding insurance, licensing and public outreach.

Ann thanked the Council members for their service and recounted all the work they had accomplished, especially rewriting the arborist exam. This took a lot of time and effort, but has proven to be a positive step given the increase in the number of licensed arborists in the state.

Meeting adjourned at 1:45 pm

Respectfully submitted by,
Ann Gibbs

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