July 19, 2024 Minutes

Noxious Weed Management Advisory Board Meeting Minutes

July 19, 2024

Tour

Advisory Board members arrived at Public Works at 9 am for a brief introduction session including logistics for the day before everyone divided into 1 of 3 trucks and headed to the field.

The first stop was about 10 am at Odenbaugh’s property (CR 36 between CR 25 and 23 – south side) Purple Loosestrife, Canada thistle and willow-herb; On June 26 two areas were treated with the spray drone. Advisory board members walked out toward the area to evaluate the willow-herb, Canada thistle and last years treated purple loosestrife while staff set up the spray drone. Two brown patches were evident from the June treatment. In the area treated during the tour the purple loosestrife was coming up but not yet flowering. The advisory board saw how difficult it was to wade through the dense plant canopy and how much safer and quicker the spray drone is for staff. 2 more treatments were conducted at this site. Follow-up will occur in early August.

The next stop was Jim McDowell (Hwy 66 between CR 7 and 5 – south side) for Russian knapweed. Here the advisory board could look at the treatment on the cattail area that was made last year at the tour. It was easy to see where the cattails were treated for the hairy willow-herb. The Clearcast addressed the hairy willow-herb and the cattails. A center ring of cattails was left untreated and is still green. A small patch of hairy willow-herb is still growing at the south end near a Russian olive tree. As in other sites, Canada thistle has moved in and needs to be addressed at some point. The advisory board got to see the Russian knapweed before the acre patch was treated.

Q&A was conducted at both stops and during the commuting. Everyone returned to office for lunch around noon.  At lunch Tina passed around some photos of Odenbaugh’s property last summer as well as a variety of multispectral photos of Scotch thistle so that the board could see the potential of the equipment, if a software solution can be figured out that would for positive identification of patches of noxious weeds to upload to the spray drone. 

Minutes

The meeting was called to order at 1:10 pm. Board members present included: Daryl Wiest, Jason Brent, Ron Broda and James Johnson. Members Chuck Birkmeyer, Cami Hillman and Gillian Smith along with Public Works Director Curtis Hall, Deputy Director Duane Naibauer, and County Commissioner Mike Freeman were absent.

Daryl again thanked the weed division staff for being forward thinking and evaluating the use of drones for the public works department and the weed division, including the spray drone.

No changes to the agenda were made.

Jason moved and James seconded the acceptance of the March minutes.

 

Old Business

2024 Program update

Events

January 23-25             Colorado Farm Show – 100 participants at the booth

January 24                   Weed presentations at the Farm Show – 60 participants

March 12                     City of Evans Weed ID presentation – 10 participants

April 18                        Arrowhead Lake HOA meeting (Kathy)

April 24                        Hylio demo for CSU applicator training course

May 1                          Children’s Water Festival – North (Kathy and Ron)

July 16                         Master Gardener’s meeting (Kathy) -

July 24                         Weld County Fair – Creative Weeds

August 5-16                 Purple Loosestrife 

August 9                      WGCD Annual BBQ (Kathy)

October 11                  Children’s Water Festival – South (Kathy and Ron)

Facebook Posts and Other Outreach

Facebook and Twitter: 35 posts from March 25 – Nov. 18, once a week. 15 on Public Works Operations; 20 on plants, currently.

Spraying

Bare-ground Acres: 54.9 acres this spring including along 85 lane miles

Handgun Acres: 26.01

Roadside Acres: 355.9            Lane Miles: 2822.5

Forest Service Accomplishments: Sprayed: 334.87 gallons; 4.19 treated acres while inspecting 554 acres.

Landowner Specialists

Field Contacts: 2762 (checking on properties, looking at complaints, meeting with landowners, etc.)

Office Contacts: 2686 (identifying properties, letters, phone calls, follow-up, records, etc.)

Legal Notices mailed:25         Compliance: 12                       Enforcements: 0          13 still in the process. 

Mower Staff

Lane Miles: 922 or approx.461 miles out of 748 miles of paved roads. Target goal is 2500 lane miles/year.

Special Projects

Past special projects that are still in the monitoring and evaluating stage for grass establishment and weed control: Geisert trail, Grader Testing area, North of Fuel Island, East Davis Stockpile Site, LNG area, CR 38 Comm Tower, Bridge 91/38A; Stoneham pond, and Fiscus Pit (Sorghum planted at 30 pounds/acre in May, grass in December/January), Koskie Gravel Pit (the ground was scraped and had all vegetation removed. Now we have an infestation of diffuse knapweed, Canada thistle and Dalmatian toadflax. It will be several years before the area is mined).

Cost Share Funds Available

Weld County: $ 10,000.00                                          Funds Left: $ 5229.83

50% up to $400

People signed up: 20                                      Funds spent: $ 4770.17

People cost-shared with: 17

 

West Greeley CD: $19,837.30                                     Funds Left: $ 14,250.54

50% up to $600

People signed up: 19                                      Funds spent: $ 5586.76

People cost-shared with: 14

 

ReStORE: $92,500.24                                                  Funds Left: $ 77,507.80

80% up to $850 or $2800

People signed up: 27                                      Funds spent: $ 14,992.44

People cost-shared with: 14             

2.         Grant Projects Update

Tina is having Kathy try to finish spending the ReStORE grant funds this year. This will make it clean and neat for reporting and auditing purposes. The project area was also included in a Make America Beautiful grant that the Department of Agriculture received. This new grant will provide funds for the next 2 years (2025 and 2026) for the same area.

Tina had to return most of the funds that was secured in a Colorado Department of Agriculture grant for the Hairy Willow-herb cost-share program in 2023. The funds carried over till the end of May in 2024. Between the two years only 4 participants; $2304.48 spent in cost-share reimbursement, which means $11,695.52 was returned. The original grant was for $14,000.

            With as little participation as we are receiving from landowners, it makes it difficult to put the effort in to grant fund applications and all of the reporting work that goes with them.

3.         2024 Legislative Session Update

With all the lobbying and effort that went into the legislative season, we avoided having the local control bill pass. It kept getting laid over. However, we know they will try again next year to introduce another bill, unless something drastically changes with who is elected. 

 

New Business

  1. Weld County Fair Judge – Wednesday, July 24 at 1 pm

                Every year we have a Creative Weeds Contest at the County Fair. When Jason asked what it is, Tina explained that the Creating Weeds contest is a passive way to provide education to the public about some of the noxious weed species without having a manned booth at the fair all week long. Participants can either do an educational poster, dried flower arrangement or a fresh flower arrangement so that they include noxious weeds that are properly identified. James volunteered to be a judge for this year’s contest.

  2.           2025 Budget Requests

    Tina indicated that the County is working on their 2025 budgets. Tina has asked for 1 more drone for the Public Works program. It is a Skydio that has weather rating, a thermal camera and mapping capabilities. Then as time warrants would start replacing the fleet in a couple of years. Specific to the Weed Division, Tina is asking to turn two seasonal landowner specialist positions into one full time Landowner Specialist. This is going to make a lot of work for these two positions, but in the long-term the consistency and knowledge will make the job easier. Tina has also asked to convert one seasonal mower operator to fulltime. Tina would like a dedicated staff that can be familiar with the tractors and the boom mower operations for the winter months. Budget approval will be heard in December.

  3. Advisory Board Questions – Daryl asked about the CBS article. Tina indicated that it started with an article that Baker (from the County Information team) developed on the spray drone. After the article was distributed via the County channels, Tina did a brief interview for KFKA radio show and CBS wanted to do a piece on it. As a result, there was a three-minute episode on the news June 27 at 6 pm and the written article that Tina provided the board members with. All of the publicity has been very positive.

  4. Announcements: Next meeting: Wednesday November 20 at 7 pm. 

  5. Meeting Adjourned at 1:45 pm with a motion from Ron and a second by Jason. Motion passed.

     

     

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