We're going to talk about ornamental grasses. I think ornamental grasses might be the perfect perennial. They are low maintenance, drought tolerant, resist deer, and they look great all year round. What else can you ask for? So here to talk to us, give us some tips on how to grow ornamental grasses is a turf grass specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences, Alan Zook. Alan, welcome to the forums. Thanks, Tom. OK, as Tom said, I am Alan Zook. I work in the NDSU Department of Plant Sciences and feel free to email me or call me if you have any questions. Now here's a presentation I've given several times throughout the state, master gardeners, junior master gardeners, horticulture groups across the state. I think I've given this presentation to the spring fever group. If you've seen it before, I apologize if you're bored with it. But we had some requests to hear it again, to see it again. So I can do it one more time. And I made a few changes, too. But then again, if you have questions, feel free to email me or call me. My information's on the web, Department of Website, feel free. OK, so off we go. As Tom said, ornamental grasses have a lot to offer. And the neat thing about them is they're extremely low maintenance. Once you get them past that first year of establishment, they're extremely low maintenance. And they add so much to landscape. Just like woody plants, trees and shrubs, they add color, texture, form, and shape. Again, once you get them past that first year of establishment, they require very little water, if any at all. And as far as nitrogen goes, they'll get by just fine. They have extensive root systems. They can mine enough nutrients out of the ground on their own. We'll talk about fertilizing here in a bit. But really, it's just not required. They're insect and disease resistant. As far as insects go, the worst you'll deal with are grasshoppers. They'll eat a little bit of the foliage. Off they go. Diseases, maybe rust. That's about it. There again, they add to the landscape throughout the entire year, not just the growing season, but the entire year. Even winter, as long as our snows aren't deep enough and you look back, four out of the last five winters have been kind of mild up here, depending on where you're at. Very little snow. So the old ornamental grasses will stand out just fine. They establish quickly, like I said, within a year, they should be established. OK, I mentioned you don't have to water too much. But again, during that first year of establishment, sure you got the baby him alone. Mike Tyson was a baby at one time. He needed a lot of care. But after that, he was on his own and same with ornamental grasses. How often would you water? Well, that depends on environmental conditions and soil type. If it's hot, dry, get hot, dry, windy conditions on sandy soil, you might water every day. Cool conditions, clay soil. You might get by two or three times a week, watering two or three times a week. And there again, just again, after the establishment phase up, they're on their own. They reproduce easily, vegetative cuttings, about all it takes. We don't hear too much about seeding ornamental grasses because they do establish so easy by taking a cutting. And what I mean cutting with the shovel, you want to get some of that root system and then transplant after that. We'll talk about that here. There's various forms. Low, ground-hugging types. Tall, 12-footers. We have spreaders and we have clump types. OK, next one. OK, and a whole wide range of colors to choose from, foliage and flower colors. Greens, reds, purple, blues, black, white, varicated. And I'll give you some examples here. OK, next slide. This is Japanese blood grass. Very interesting one. Red foliage. It doesn't flower, but the foliage is very attractive. Now, you might have a hard time finding this in our nurseries up here in North Dakota because it's banned from the trade here in North Dakota. You're not going to get any trouble if you have it on your property, but we just can't sell it in the trade. All right, it has its problems. Well, you know, further down south, it has a tendency to get away, to escape cultivation. More of a problem in the south than up here. I mean, when it comes down to it, it's not cold-hearty. So up here, we'll treat it as an annual, but yet we can't sell it in the trade up here. We'll take Florida, for example.  Okay, it's shade tolerant. Therefore, it can grow below a forest canopy. And what kind of soils do they have in Florida? Well, they're often sandy.  So for that reason, it's kind of a banned plant in various places throughout the United States. You can have it up here, but you just won't find it in the trade. But very attractive red foliage. I'm not sure what bordering states can have it in the trade. I don't know, but it can get ahold of some. You can still plant it. Treat it as an annual because it will not survive our winters up here in North Dakota. Okay, blue oat grass. Here's an example of a plant with metallic blue foliage. Very attractive. Another ornamental grass with blue foliage is ornamental blue fashqe. In my opinion, this one's even prettier because of its metallic blue foliage. If it happens to go a dull color, I'd say we have a hot summer and maybe subjected to drought, here's one that's a little bit more delicate. All you have to do is cut it down. It'll re-sprout its foliage. Again, metallic blue. Okay, it's one of my favorites. Okay. Okay, purple, purple foliage. Purple panacea, this is a zone nine plant. It's actually perennial, but in zone nine. So if you're down by Miami in Miami, Florida, it'll make it throughout the season. Up here, we treat it as an annual. You'll see it in a lot of potted plants. There's a lot, quite a bit of it here on the NDSU campus. Very fine texture, graceful flowers, and so on. On the other side, we have ornamental millet. If you're a fan of coarser texture. Okay, again, a true annual. Now this one's available at Bluebird Nursery Inn. I'm not pushing Bluebird Nursery, but there again, it's available at Bluebird Nursery Inn at Clarkson, Nebraska. I think they hold the patent rights on this one.  And look at this one. This one has black flowers, black flowering penicillin. This is a zone six plant, so we really can't grow it up here. I had a recent ornamental grass trial. I included this one in there and actually survived two winners. The winner of 2010 and 11, but it didn't look too good. So there's some promise as a foundation plant. And I'd like to do that further testing. Grow it up against the foundation of a residence on the west side or south side. I'll bet it does much better. But then again, you have to do that, but this is actually a zone six plant that can survive up here. Okay, yeah, there you go. Here's a variegated foliage. This is Japanese silvergrass, a zone five plant. I tried it in our trial and it actually survived a couple of winners, but then again, didn't look too good. And again, promise as a foundation plant. Okay, let's go to the next one. And how can we use ornamental grasses? Well, as an accent plant, for example, here it highlights a mailbox. Okay, next slide. A specimen plant. Here's a Carl Forster feather regress. What do I mean by specimen plant? Well, it's so pretty that it can stand out by itself. Arboretum quality, you could say. But what about next to a switchgrass? Is that a specimen type plant? Well, not really, but does that mean it's useless? I wouldn't say so. It's a natural grass and these look so much better planted in mass, okay, next slide. And here's an example.  Well, here's a good example of where planting in mass would come in handy. Now, I'd beware I wouldn't do this on a high school campus or a park because in the fall time, all this forage goes dry and on re-kids and I wanna pitch a match in there or something. They do burn and throw up a lot of heat. Yeah, not long, a short period of time, but they can do a lot of damage when they, if they're ignited. Okay, but ornamental grasses really stand out if they're planted in mass. And here's an example of how nice switchgrass looks if we're in a big mass planting. Again, they're not really suited as a specimen plant, but they're gonna make quite a statement planted in mass. Okay, next slide. Okay, grouping ornamental grasses can be used in grouping. Let's say we have an informal landscape with this water features here on the NDSU campus. And of course, we wanna match it up with an informal planting. Okay, when we think of an informal planting, we wanna work in odd numbers, three, five, sevens, and you can see that they did it here and quite effectively. Carl Forster, by the regress, and yeah, look at those clumps in odd numbers. Okay, if it was a formal planting, like a Victorian garden or a museum or a library or something like that, you wanna work in even numbers, twos, fours, sixes, and so on. But being the naturalistic feature right here, we wanna focus on odd numbers. Okay, and we can use ornamental grasses for screening, a live screen, not as costly as a wooden fence, but does the same job, okay? If privacy is what you're after, consider ornamental grasses. Here's, again, Carl Forster, by the regress, again. What are we looking at? Three to four feet, still very effective. And we have grasses that are even taller if that's your desire. Okay, and like Tom said earlier, ornamental grasses provide something in the landscape during all four seasons. Here's a winter feature right here. Typically, we get more snow than that, but there again, four out of the last five winters, not much snow, so imagine walking through this scene on a February day where it's maybe something bearable, 20, 30 degrees, low wind. It might bring back memories of a summer picnic with the family. In the rustling, just the rustling of the canes, these old skeleton features that remain, are quite, it's quite pleasing. Okay, so there again, ornamental grasses have something to offer during all four seasons. Now, here's a landscape, a low maintenance landscape out of McDonald's down in Kansas, where I grew up. Planned out properly and quite effectively. Because ornamental, look at the Japanese bloodgrass up against the red brick. These are analogous colors. These are colors that are found next to each other on the color wheel. Okay, if that's your desire, yeah, red on red or perhaps a red on orange, something like that. And in the same feature, we have complementary colors. Look at the, it's a mescanthus right in the corner. Greens and reds are opposite on the color wheel. These are complementary colors. So here's a landscape that was done quite effectively. Usually somebody will pick the same theme, complementary colors or analogous colors. Well, here we have both, but still quite effective with proper planning. Okay, a good example of different colors available, different textures, different heights and so on. Very attractive, low maintenance landscape. Okay, next slide now. What do you think about this one? Poor planning and what are we left with? It's a big mess. What's the main feature of a front yard landscape? Well, it's the front door, isn't it? Is the front door in this case, the focal piece of that front yard landscape? Well, no, it's not. What is, what stands out more than anything? It's that hardy bamboo, right? Again, we can't grow that up here in North Dakota. That's a zone five, six plant. Here we're zone four, eight. All right, at least in Southern North Dakota we are. But again, I would say, looking at maybe the homeowner thinks that's a pretty landscape. You know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but when I see this, I say, first thing I think of is improper planning. Remember, the focal point of a front yard landscape should be the front door. The landscape should be designed in such a way that your eyes are pulled toward that front door. And it says welcome, okay? All right, well, some proper, let's talk about cultural practices. As far as light, most ornamental grasses prefer a full sun. There are some, though, that thrive in shade, or tolerate shade at least. So they need the proper light exposure, okay? Watering. After that first year, it's usually not required unless you can work more in a severe drought and the leaves start to wilt. Well, how does a grass leaf wilt? Does it bend over like a candy cane? No, it twists. It twists like a newspaper. Okay, if you ever see signs of that, well, it's time to apply a little water, but as far as ornamental grasses go, it's not very often. Okay, fertilization, just not required. The extensive root systems are able to, like I said, mine the necessary nutrients out of the soil. If you insist on fertilizing, no more than one pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet per year. Okay, if you overdo it, over water and over fertilize, the taller plants tend to fall down. Okay, we've given them too much care and they fall down. Well, in that case, drive a pole down the middle and tie them back up, but we've lost that natural form, if that's the case. Next year, learn from your mistakes, back off on the love, and they'll do just fine. Okay, if, again, if your ornamental grasses fall over, you've given them too much care. Let's take a look at the cool-season grasses. They grow best in air temperatures of 60 to 75 degrees. That's the optimum range. Will they grow out of that range? Well, sure they will, but then this is just the optimum range. Does it get hotter and warmer than 75 degrees here in North Dakota? Yes, it does, and our cool-season ornamental grasses do just fine. Cool-season grasses typically flower in the spring, and then if it's hot enough, they'll go dormant in the summer. Well, it's usually not that hot that appeared, I mean, this far north, so they usually stay green throughout the growing season. And as far as dividing, cool-season grasses, our choices are spring and fall. I'll come back to that in a minute. Let's go into warm-season grasses. Warm-season grasses grow best in air temperatures of 80 to 95 degrees, and they usually flower in the summer, okay? They're tough enough to make it through the growing season in a green color. They're not gonna go dormant, but the neat thing about them is that they'll turn a crimson color in the fall, to some extent. Maybe not full-on crimson, but a light crimson color. Others, like Little Bluestam, will turn completely crimson. It's one of the nice, attractive things about Little Bluestam. As far as dividing warm-season grasses, this has to be done in the spring. You can't really do it in the fall because they should be established as they go into winter, okay? So warm-season grasses divide them in the spring, okay? Now, how do we go about dividing? Well, the first thing you wanna look for is that dead center. If you see a dead center in your clump-type grasses, you might think, well, I've done something wrong. Well, that's not the case. This is just natural. When that dead center becomes obvious, it stands out as the canes are blowing in the wind. Well, it's time to divide that grass. And I've seen this dead center develop in ornamental grass that's just one year old. It's just natural. But when it becomes very obvious, well, it's time to divide. Okay, well, how do we go about dividing? Well, you have two options. You can dig that clump out of the ground and then section off that ring. Give it to your neighbors, give it to your friends, relatives, so on. Save one for yourself. Backfill the hole with clean soil and replant the little section in the middle, okay? Another option is just to take bites out of that ring. It's the easier way to go, but it's problems arise. Let's go on to the next slide. I'll give you an example. If you have a clump-type grass and you just take the easy way out, you're gonna let someone take a bite out of it with a shovel. Well, that's just fine, but that gap's never gonna close in. Okay, so if you wanna go that route, take a bite from the backside of the plant instead of the front side. Because, like I said, on a clump-type grass, that gap's just not gonna fill in. It's like a pretty smile with a missing tooth. Okay, next slide. Still another example. This is little blue stem, and look how it's turned crimson. This is the fall. It's a picture taken in the fall. Someone took a bite out of that plant in the front, and it's never gonna fill in. This is from my collection when I worked out at Kansas State as a technician. We had a huge ornamental grass collection down there. We'd get people coming in off the road asking if they can take a piece. I'm sure you can't. Take it from the back of the plant. Well, they snuck a piece from the front side. And there again, that's pretty smile with a tooth missing, all right? Next slide. Cleanup, how do you go about cleanup? Well, you have two options. Cut them down in the fall, or cut them down in the spring. Well, like we said earlier, they do add ornamental value in the winter months if the snow's not that deep. So you might wanna save cleanup till spring. Well, I like to use a heavy horsepower line trimmer with a blade attachment. And it makes cleanup so quick. Okay, and I usually use a bungee cord to tie it off in the middle. Look at that picture on the right where I'm cutting away at the base. Can you see that bungee cord? Twine works just fine. Tie it off, cut it at the bottom. Two to three inches off the ground is fine. I've seen people cut it at 12 inches. But if you go down two or three inches, you're in good shape. You don't wanna cut the entire crown off at ground level. Two to three inches is just fine. Okay, next slide. And you can see how easy cleanup is. There's no raking. If you tie it off first, throw it in your truck, drive it off or stack it up at the bottom of the driveway.  It's an easy way to go. Another option's fire. Okay, this is probably the easiest way to go. Just make sure you're not by a permanent structure. House or garage or something like that. Again, this is the turf management center. I mean, the turf grass research center that I managed at Kansas State. And that's our maintenance shop. That's about 20 feet away from the fire. But still I had one of our students out there with a garden hose. Every time I burned in the spring, he or she was out there with a garden hose just wetting down the backside of that shed. I didn't want the paint blistering. Winds could shift and then you have a problem. So they were out there with a hose in case the wind got away and shifted on us and the fire got away. Okay, next slide. Look at the lower right. See those cedar trees back there? Well, the wind shifted on us one year and actually burned those cedar trees severely. But they actually repaired, healed themselves within five years. Okay, so that's why you always want a hose on hand. There it is, you're gonna throw a lot of heat for a short amount of time. Okay, but this is the easiest way to clean up your old ornamental grass residue or foliage from last year. Another problem is, go ahead and back up one more time. Can you go back one? Okay, there. The big problem with this method is that you're gonna lose a lot of mulch in the process and you have to pull up those plastic labels because you're gonna lose them. Okay, so plan ahead, think ahead.  Just wet it down. You can see how it's smoldering in the lower picture. If it's a windy day, you know, those embers can fly off. Just be aware of that. Okay, now we're ready for the next slide. Again, I burned it off in the spring and about eight weeks later, look at that. Everything returned, we're back in business. It's just burning. Will not hurt the ornamental grasses. I haven't burned one year where we had about 12 inches of growth at the bottom. I didn't wanna do that. I just couldn't get to it. You know, that's just basically lost energy. But still, the plants recovered. They're resilient. This is how nature does it. Again, you can burn them off if they're far enough away from any permanent structures. Okay, I always had, again, be concerned. Look at that house in the background. Wooden shingles and all that. They always kind of gave me nightmares at night time. I hope I got all those embers out. Anyway, never any problems except I torched those juniper trees one year. They wound up healing themselves in five years. But that's about eight weeks after burn, back in shape, we're ready for another season. I think that's it. That's it. Okay, any questions? How are we gonna handle questions?  Yeah, I got a question right here for ya. Okay. First question, driving around the Bismarck area, you see a five foot tall grass with a head on it that's about six inches long. It grows in low areas sometimes by cat tails and they grow in large masses. Do you have any idea what type of grass that might be? That's probably cord grass. Is this a grass that grows in ditches? Right. Yeah, that's cord grass. Five feet tall? Yeah, okay.  It can be used as an ornamental but it's kind of invasive, so you wanna watch out. And on this garden there, so that was cord grass. How about on this person has Japanese Amur grass? Have you ever heard that? Japanese Amur, I would sure help if I had a Latin name but I'm thinking it's one of the miscanthus. How would you kill it? You've tried Roundup. Roundup doesn't work, is it a clump type or a spreader? Maybe they'll get back to us there but if it's clump type, dig it out. Okay, but I assume it's a spreader and it's just almost impossible. Well, Roundup won't work. If the foliage is green, it should work but it's gonna take several applications. A lot of times I work with turf grass primarily and dealing with the Bermuda grasses down in Kansas, even the Zoysia grasses. Might take two or three applications to get a good kill. I think you can do it with Roundup. There again, one application's probably not gonna do it. You wanna make sure the foliage is green when you spray and I would use a full rate two ounces per gallon. On this particular grass but you might have to hit it three times. Okay, spray it and then wait two weeks. I'd actually water it to bring back the green foliage, hit it again and perhaps maybe even a third time. I think Roundup will do the trick at full rate. Is there a time of the year that would be best? Just when the foliage is actively growing, when the plant's actively growing. But again, if it's a clump type, you can dig it out but I assume it's a spreader if it's that tough to take care of. But I think Roundup at full rate is gonna do the job. And you mentioned some of these perennial grasses but they're only hardy to zone six to nine and we grow them as an animal. How large of these grasses get? How tall can they get in one year? Well, the first year, oh, what, Barry? It's their only year. Somebody said, oh, okay, I see, I see. Well, the purple penicidums, there are several cultivars out there. I've seen them get four feet tall in one year. Even in a pot. Okay, even in a pot. I would expect the same thing, three feet, four feet tall for a miscanthus. Now we are now officially in zone 4A since 2012 when the USDA revised their hardiness on that. I still think a lot of these plants can make it, even some of the zone fives can make it as a foundation plant. Okay, I know I'm getting a little off subject right here but I think there's some promise for it. I've tried a few of them, they actually survived but they didn't look too good. Again, my study was a low maintenance study. I bet if I got out there and watered them, they'd do much better. I did water them the first year of establishment but after that, they only, again, care I provided was weed management, okay? Oh, Bob, can you recommend an ornamental grass for the shade? The shade, there are several of them out there. Japanese blood grass, if you can get ahold of it, survives in shade. Northern, I got a few notes here. Northern sea oats will make it, okay? And here's a perennial. Again, zone five or six for Northern sea oats, it's probably not gonna survive out in the open but as a foundation plant, it will. Autumn more grass, Tullarista shade. Reed grass, autumn blooming, reed grass will survive light shade. As soon as I say that's it, there's gonna be another one. Tufted hair grass will survive light shade. So we have a few of them out there. That'll make it, if you want a longer list, email me, I'll provide you with a better list. This is a few notes here in the restaurant at the top of my head. Right. How about, are there any ornamental grasses that are especially invasive? Yes, yes, that's a good question. When Japanese or Chinese silvergrass, silver banner grass is one that's quite invasive. In fact, it is the most cold-hearty miscanthus. We can grow it up here in North Dakota does quite well but it is invasive. It can be a problem, okay? It's normally a clump grass but then again, it has a tendency to creep out too. We often see that with our clump type grasses. They are slightly rhizomaceous but here's one that's very rhizomaceous. It'll look good for a couple of years but then it will escape if you let it, okay? Again, just one example. Oh, there were several out there. I grew sweet grass one year. Again, it's an interesting one. Very fragrant, especially the roots. If you ever try to trim sweet grass back, it's like somebody broke a perfume bottle next year but there's one that will take over. Ribbon grass can be very invasive if you let it go. Oh gosh, now. Maybe blue line grass. That's what I was saying, blue line grass. Yes, that will get away from getting blue line grass and there's a closely related one that's close to blue line grass. The name escapes me right now but there are several invasive ones. You can try some metal edging. If you can get a hold of some four to six inch metal edging, it does a lot to contain these plants but some of the really aggressive ones like Tom said, blue line grass, I think would go under the edging and then wind up on the other side. I'd be hesitant to plant that unless you had concrete edging like a curb or something like that to contain it. Can you give an example of some of the most hardy ornamental grasses, ones that would survive zone three? Well, again, I mentioned the silver banner grass, the scant of Sacropholius. This is a silver banner grass, does well. Zone three ribbon grass does well up here. I'll get the natives, big blue stem, little blue stem. They do find Indian grass, switch grass. They'll make it up here. I think you look at some books, they'll rate those as zone fours and maybe even a zone five in some literature but I've tried them, they do well up here. Okay, and as far as the switch grasses go, we've all seen them before but there are some attractive ones with blue foliage. Heavy metals, an example. It does well up here in zone three. Well, we're officially zone four now. I suppose this person might be from Northern North Dakota, okay? Okay, so anyway, those grasses that I mentioned will do well. Again, if you wanna email me, I'll give you a longer list. Okay. So you like, among varieties of switch grass, you like heavy metals. Heavy metals, a nice one. Blue foliage, a little bit shorter, more compact about bell tie, okay? It's a cleaner looking switch grass and blue foliage, it does just fine up here. How about is Pampas grass hardy here? Pampas grass, no it's not hardy, it's hardy to zone eight. Pampas grass is native to the Pampas region of Argentina. Okay, we had one called hardy Pampas grass but that's not a true Cordedaria. That one's an Arianthus and it's not even hardy up here. It's hardy in zone five. You get problems growing that north of Omaha. Okay, how about Zebra grass? Zebra grass hardy. Yeah, grew it up here. It survived a couple of winters but it looked like it just looked bad. It came out of a bar fight. Now there's one I think that'll do well as a foundation plant. What does it look like? Like a step out of a bar fight. It just looked beat up after that first winter. I think it has promised as a foundation plant on the south to the west side of your house. Porcupine grass, same way. Okay, how about... Do you have any experience with North Wind Panicum virginum? Panicum virginum, yes. Switchgrass, North Wind, we did grow it, did well. That's a switchgrass. It is a switchgrass, yes it is. How about, is there an issue with the seeds causing problems spreading? So, that's a good question. Some of them. Panacetam is probably the worst but we can't grow panacetam up here. That's a stone six plant. I had one survive, one winter.  A lot of the ornamental grasses produce a sterile seed like the miscanthus. Don't worry about miscanthus at all. Some do, the best I can answer some do and most do not cause problems. But the one that's really problematic would be the panacetam. But for the most part we just can't grow them up here. How about when you divide normal grass, do you have to bring in clean soil? Well, the backfill, it's just a good idea. I'd come in with a good soil that's clean just so you're not bringing any risommation weeds or problematic weeds or so on. That's why I used to face clean soil. No, I mean it's not necessary. In fact, most of the grasses will do well in hard clay. But try to come in with the nicest soil you can find. It's just not necessary if I had the choice, I'd come in with a clean new soil of some sort. How about as far as the value of ornamental grasses for pollinators? Do the non-native ornamental grasses have any value? Oh, there's an extra question. Some do, but honestly I cannot tell you which ones right off the bat. There are some that suit well as pollinators. I'm sorry, there's one I can't answer for yet. Oh, no worries. This person planted two different types of grasses. You don't know if they're a clump or not. If I find out they, I don't know if they are a clump or not, if I find out they are not a clump, right? And I want to get rid of it this spring. What do I do? Well, I wouldn't get rid of it just because they're not a clump grass. What you can do is just cut the runners as you see them. And they're not going to move overnight. One or two months into the summer, they might be four feet long.  That's how you manage the spread. Again, just dig out the mother plant. Try to catch the spreaders and it's problem solved. Okay, I dug out some silver banner grass that was in the ground next to Lafescourt Hall probably for 10 years. I stayed at it for a couple hours and got it all out. Got the main plant out, got the runners out and I found a few the following spring. Dug them out. That's probably the best way to go. Again, if you want to go the roundup route. That's right, spray the foliage and be careful not to spray the desirable plant. Right, watch out. Don't do it on a windy day. Keep in mind you might have to do three applications to get a good kill. Okay, do you consider Carl Forrester regress invasive? No, it is a true clump grass. It's a beautiful grass, but my opinion is a little over planted, but it's probably one of the best selections we have here in North Dakota. It is not an invasive grass at all. And again, you like heavy metal switch grass. That's one of my favorite blue foliage. A couple of them out there. Couple blue foliage switch grasses, but that's my favorite. It's my favorite. That standard switch grass can get six feet tall in flower, but then this one's more compact, maybe belt high, three or four feet closer to a three and a half feet tall, tighter, cleaner form blue foliage. It's just one of my favorite switch grasses. Do you have besides that Carl Forrester the regress, do you have some other examples of non-spreading grasses that you recommend? Sure, there's a close relative fall blooming regress. Okay, it's a cool season grass. Oh no, no, no. It's a warm season grass that flowers in summer. Okay, it's non-invasive. Yeah, as soon as you ask this, I'm freezing up here. I'm trying to think back on what we grew in that I mentioned, what was that blue foliage plant I showed you earlier? That's a nice one that does blue out grass. There's one that's not gonna spread on you at all. Oh, let me go back. I mentioned a viable seed. If you do plant Northern Sea Oats, there's one that can sprout by seed. There's another one. But going back to the tight fit, tight, true clump grasses, again, the regresses won't spread. Again, the blue grass won't spread at all. It's a nice one. Okay, there's a, I can't think of any more right off the top of my head. Can that famous Japanese Amore grass, the person says it is a spreader that she wants to, it's a spreading grass she wants to kill. Okay, is it well established or did it? Oh, I'm trying to figure it out. Can't kill it. Maybe, let me know how old it is. If it's been in the ground for 10 years, I think your best bet is to use Roundup, okay? If it's recently planted, just dig it out. Dig out the few runners and you're back in shape, okay? Another one, let me talk about Sky Racer, autumn more grass. There's one that will not spread. Okay, very interesting flowers. The flower stalks can get up to six feet tall, very cold hardy. This is a pretty graceful plant. True clump will not spread. I really like the flowering structures. Very interesting plant. The foliage is about two feet tall, but the flower stalks are about six feet tall. Very graceful. Sky Racer, autumn more grass and it will tolerate filter genie, okay?  Yes. Now, with Carl Forster feathery grass, if you've got a dead center, can you just dig that area out and stick another Carl Forster? Yeah, Carl Forster's not gonna get that white at the base, maybe two feet wide at the base. If the dead center's gotten that big, I would just, again, dig out the plant, put a new one in. You can take part of the living ring if you wanna go that way, but re-establishment is quicker the bigger the clump, okay? Does that make sense to you? If it's that big that the Carl Forster, if you could see the dead center in the Carl Forster, I would just dig it out and replace it, okay? Or, again, try to take part of the living ring out, group them in there together, and go that route. How about for these Zone 5, Zone 6 grasses, would it help to mulch them to help survive? Yes, mulching does help, okay? It does help conserve water, and mulching for the most part will provide an extra, well, you read the literature maybe four or five degrees. I don't know if that amounts to much, but the deeper the mulch, the warmer it's gonna be. You can try that, just bury the warm, if you wanna try a Zone 5 or 6 up here out in the open, yeah, I would certainly mulch it. Once fall sets in, late fall arrives, and see what happens. I've never tried it this far north, but I think it would work, but I still think a lot of these plants have a lot of promise. Even the fives and the sixes have a lot of promise as a foundation plant. I'd like to try that in the research, but I haven't yet, but from what I've seen, some of them were able to make it out in the open. They survived one or two winners, but just didn't look that good the following spring. That's right, Eln. Have you ever heard of working with Mother Nature instead of challenging Mother Nature? Well, she usually wins the game. Well, we wanna push the limits.  This back is more grass, you know? She wants to kill it without using chemicals. Well, okay, now you have to dig it. That's your only option right there. Dig it out. You've heard of, you know, I've heard of vinegar, but no, that plant's too much.  Okay, how about? You'll have to dig it out. There you go. How about, somebody, I said, use boiling water. Well, yeah, in fact, there's a machine out there. The company's pushing. For turf leaves, boiling water, I know these plants are too tough.  You'll be disappointed. That's right. See, I mean, it's flame throwers.  You know, we have these. Those aren't done. Sure, we have them. The energy is used for flame throwers. They don't get the entire root system of an aggressive plant. Right, right.  That's right. How about, do you have any writing names of native badlands tall grasses? Oh, I don't even know. That's an email question for me. Send that to me, tall grasses. No, I'm sorry, right off the top of my head, no, I know some short grasses, but not tall grasses. Wow, you sure got a lot of questions down. There's a lot of interest in this. Well, I got time, so keep it coming. Okay, I think, are there any other questions out there, or if I skipped any, people can type them in again. Do you have a comment about purple flame or purple flame grass? You ever heard that one? Purple flame, I'm not familiar with that common name. Again, a scientific name would really help if you had it. And a good resource on ornamental grasses if they wanted to learn more about that. There are many good resources. I like the Encyclopedia of ornamental grasses by, last name is Greeley. I know it's an older book, but it's color pictures, glossy color pictures, but it's one of my favorites. I think you can still find it out there on eBay. Maybe there's an updated edition, but I've had that on my shelf for 20 years. It's just my favorite. Okay, there are a lot of, again, a lot of publications out there, but there's one that I can recommend. It's a really nice one. I think University of Minnesota, do they have a lot of extensions? Yes, yes they do. Yeah, I'll try University of Minnesota Extension Service. That's Mary Meijer. That's right, Mary Meijer has a lot of nice extension-type publications with glossy pictures. Okay, just suited for our area. Okay, there's a question about, it's a miscanthus. Maybe it's the spurting grasses on the scampus. The scampus tendus. Purple flame is on the scampus. Okay, I'll have to look at that cultivar. A lot of the miscanthus do, or they're primarily a clump-type grass, but some of them produce aggressive rhizomes. Okay, I'm not familiar with that cultivar, but it doesn't surprise me if it's starting to spread. And is it hardy? It's no, well, good question. Most miscanthus are zone five, six. Okay, I'm aware of one that's in zone four, but I can't say for sure about that one. Okay, I see no other questions. And while we just had, I don't know what you call it, got a long bunch of questions. That's the real question of four. Feel free to email me. You might give me, I have seven, I'm teaching seven classes this semester online. Just seven? So it might take me two or three days to get your answer back to you, but I will answer your question. So feel free to email me. Okay. I'm sorry for the ones I couldn't answer tonight, but I have. Thank you. I'll get you an answer. Your great resource. Your great resource. Thank you for your, thank you for your talk. Go ahead to be here. We had great talks tonight. It was really interesting material, just fascinating stuff we had in all three presentations tonight. And we wanna thank all our speakers and thank the audience. And thank you for your question. We're gonna go at it again next Monday. Next Monday we're gonna be talking about trees. So we look forward to that. So we'll see you next Monday at the Spring Theater Garden forums. Thank you everybody. Thank you.


eferencing back so you have the whole circle okay right thank you all right so that seconded did matt did matt you seconded in yes that slight correction hey our is everyone ready for the vote i'll call the roll uh matt coda yes tell us shouldn't it hi tim barrett nay megan emery yay and chair vote yay so this um amendment passes four to one okay moving on to 12 um received the december 2021 financials including prior months martin mcchar will lead us with this martin do you want me to make you a presenter oh there's more andrew or you can just pull it out okay hi matt mcchar finance officer uh attached to the to the agenda of what the december financials we only coded december and uh because they are cumulative of december october and november that we haven't sent you is a lot of data so we decided that maybe just sending you where we are at the end of the second quarter uh december 31st 2021 would make sense because that's include all the expenditures that expenditures and revenues that we receive and spent in the prior fiscal years so in the agenda given how uh it's a lot of data so we've only included uh the roll up by department and the digital reports were included in the council box if you if you needed uh me to send them to you if you haven't had time or access to the digital report i'm happy to share them with you also included in the agenda were narratives from the department at detailing where each of the department is currently uh in the expenses and also in the revenues that were budgeted for f y 22 but overall in aggregate we are consistent with uh prior years spending and revenues received as well right now we are at 37.3 uh in expenditures which is consistent with our prior years and the revenues are also uh consistent with where we have been uh this time in the years which is at 60 percent uh i'm sure you probably had time to review the narratives and also look at the expenses but uh if you looked at what is currently included i think i will just share the excel so i just wanted to point out that in the revenues in aggregate we are good but some of the department might show that we are a really small small percentage one of the department is the city manager and if you looked at the city manager digital reports a lot of the revenues that are showing as not received are internal transfers within uh within the city a lot of them are for uh through enterprise funds uh storm water water and wastewater internal transfers that we haven't been met yet but we will make them as we go through the year but that is the only department right now that is showing eight percent uh receive revenues i just wanted to point that out but overall we are pretty consistent it's a lot of data to go through that's why we've given you only the roll-up numbers but if you have questions happy to answer are there any questions i thought the report was really complete it was good reading the the narrative and then going to line items and it's like oh that one's i i know why though any questions okay any other comments you want to make or i mean the report okay thank you all right thank you very much mark thank you mark it was really complete quick question are there any questions tim do you have one just just just a quick one i mean i can't remember the local sales option tax usually appears in august right and what's the other time six months later or uh the other time would be i don't know i'll just stop sharing Andrew should be the this is all new is there any new news on the local sales option tax so the look we get the local options tax receipts in august november march and okay so we are tracking those at quarter to quarter our last receipts were actually if i'm remembering off the top of my head higher than right yeah higher than budgeted so okay so no new news okay thank you and the august one has some of the year before though does it look sort of funny yeah we have to separate it out yeah so in terms of our receipts we are well ahead of where uh we budgeted forecasted for this year okay okay thank you very much we'll move on to consider a draft of a charter or one of our very few guests today has been hanging up for a while thank you so quite an exemplary public starter you are so this is a um no action is requested on this tonight it is the priority on our FY 23 policy priorities and strategies so we wanted to move it forward um at that uh as part of that priority list the council identified convening the charter commission to look at government structures and some language modernization so that is what how i have drafted that this you'll also see in that that we are recommending expanding the charter commission by two members to include two members appointed by the school board they wouldn't necessarily have to be sitting school board members but appointed by the school board and the chair and i did discuss this with the superintendent and the board chair on friday we're also charging the chart or you would be charging the charter commission with looking as i said at governance models and language updates and coming back to the council um in about 15 months so july 2023 with the intention of giving yourselves a long runway to set something up for the 2024 town meeting day balance um and also have charged the committee with um running a comprehensive public process so i wanted to bring this to you tonight just for your feedback since you haven't seen this before um um the what bridget and david suggested is that the school board would talk about this generally in february we would then bring it back to you for your action if you so chose but the actual expansion of the charter commission wouldn't happen until a new school board is seated in march um so the earliest this work would really kick off as likely april um so again not for any action tonight but just to start the conversation as it is a priority that you indicated so peter would you like to make some comments um no i was just looking for a sense of direction i might want to go but that helps one question are we a charter commission or a charter committee yeah i was struck by the commission word too sorry that would be a charter committee but maybe there's something oh i didn't even touch that i was just reading it charter committee because it's clmm i'm gonna keep moving on i think that's a hangover for my winooski days i'm happy to update it was a charter commission and when you see yeah i don't think it's not different you know you say tomato we say commission we say committee okay any other comments um all right yes i'll just say this is great i'm looking forward to seeing this again i think it's a long overdue and i'm really glad peter taylor's here to uh to express interest being a key member of the charter committee commission whatever it is committee committee yeah yeah i i just agree with that and i'm glad to know that peter's retirement from dc i did last very long he's back in it and he's all over on this yes are the language changes the same language changes we did back in 2007 the gender neutral and yeah that's just the state and then didn't put them through back then i i have to go back and work but um we need to miss the couple or the state missed them when they did it i think the state missed them when i think so too yeah i think we're all right no it's been done yeah okay that's right we have a term committee uh pardon me i'm meeting jesse and talk to her about scheduling and timing and how we go forward with the committee sure yeah and if you need some other members we can kind of dig some up okay great thank you uh item 14 receive the f y 22 policy priorities and strategies report number one so again no action is needed on this tonight but this is part of the adopted as we discussed with the adopted policies and strategies i think part of the successes of this kind of process is regularly reporting to you all so you have a sense of progress being made or not in the various areas staff i thought didn't really it were it the intent is to make it very um succinct and to the point and not overly burdensome to read and hopefully over time uh folks will get used to kind of skimming through those bullet points so there's nothing specific i wanted to highlight tonight a lot of this work you have heard a lot about in the last couple of meetings but wanted to give you an opportunity to ask questions to recommend changes for future reports you'll get these every two months um just respond to anything you needed otherwise it's just for your information and we'll revisit it every two months and then with the update in the spring i thought it was really helpful and it also lets me know who on staff is kind of responsible for everything i mean you can sort of guess but here it's all written out and i think um i it you know just a response i think this the sooner we get um a new director of public works the better because there's a lot of work here that um is they're part of in terms of working getting things done and some hasn't been done just because of the change yeah something i would just like to highlight um the rezoning of the land around the airport and then for the fourth category here um which sections that is that's the first page of it so affordable and community strong yeah and uh examine how to increase participation city discussions increased ways to foster invitations to diverse populations to help our city the chamber of the neighborhood is the diverse population so i i just i know you're researching ways to to engage with with a more diverse population but i see this as something that should be moved up in the priorities if we're looking at an april may end date for making recommendations to the planning commission um we have a very diverse neighborhood we're still in a pandemic um children are are um trying to stay in school and yet daily we have notices of someone coming down with covet i mean it's it's a stressful time for folks so i think having your neighborhood rezoned might fall in terms of what meetings they would attend regularly right so i think it's going to be really important that there's be a very carefully thought out process for when in february and march we're looking to engage um through public hearings um i think just putting it on uh you know making our warning known is not going to be sufficient so i just wanted that to be stated okay thank you okay thank you um the city manager evaluation process received this amended and approved the process so i i gave you in your packet a memo for me recommending a process in this section of my contract that talks about my annual evaluation um and laid out a recommended process that includes um an evaluation form the council would use a questionnaire evaluation form for the leadership team um and then a timeline that would have and of course i would do a self-evaluation too which i actually did not put in here but i would um and then a timeline that has us uh approving a process tonight um by next week we would send around these tools to everybody by february 4th the feedback would be due back to an identified counselor to collect and aggregate that information um that would be shared on february 14th to be discussed in executive session with me on february 22nd and then reported publicly on march 7th um this is a process i have used before many times with tools i've used the tools are um national league of city the council tool is a specific national league of cities manager evaluation tools adapted with some adaptations um it's been useful for me in the past um and really sets i think a good tone and shared learning between myself and the council so happy to amend it as you all see fit but wanted to propose something in this first year we use something like this in the past and what some of the feedback that i'm recalling is in the portion that the council does when the questions regarding staffing and supervision i read through those and some of them are really hard for me to assess because i do not see you with you know the leadership team very often and certainly i don't believe i would be comfortable whether you develop and maintain a friendly and informal relationship with staff and workforce in general in general i mean i'm assuming you do because you're a friendly person and uh and that you would maintain your professional dignity i'm sure you do that but for me to assess that one to five i just so i think and we ran into this the last time with kevin when we did that um and and some of the staffing questions so i guess i would suggest not rewriting it necessarily but um when you get to where you have to do the score if you feel that you really can't answer four of them then you don't divide it by five it would you know and if that's an acceptable i don't know how if how anyone else feels about this but um we wouldn't have to amend it if we had the opportunity to put a not applicable or you know i can't answer that and then change the device or whatever you call that the one you did you divide it by what is that called so we're for denominator denominator yeah does that sound more workable to everyone yeah sure is that okay with you that's fine with me in my experience those questions you know how to answer when things are going really badly but otherwise to your point you may not so so i think that's a that's a pretty elegant solution to just change the denominator or put any okay otherwise yeah no i use we've used this tool and i think it provides a lot of good information and is this something that is january to february in terms of preparing our responses is that kind of the annual calendar that you so so that's that's what i've seen work before because it allows you know this year is a little different because you've only had me for seven months but in a normal year it allows the council that i've worked with for the last year to evaluate before the council could potentially change um so to me that timing feels right um again up to a shared agreement and i'm willing to collate this stuff if you want to send it to me unless there's someone else on the council that really wants to do that but i sort of feel like it's a chair's responsibility so i'm willing to do that and i know all of them okay well i thought i'd offer before i get nominated okay so helen yes so the last time we went through this with with kevin right it was in the summertime right and so um i like this format my only concern is that i don't see a reason to do it before march 1st i would want to do it in the summertime to get a full year's worth of employment before the evaluation is done it's just does it really matter whether it's done in the summer or by march 1st is it because i want to make sure if you and i aren't here right there will be two new counselors who will not really have a basis to respond yeah three months of but there will be three other counselors there will be three others so i just um it wasn't an issue with kevin's was i mean was that really a problem or we didn't do a lot we didn't do as um evaluations as often as we probably should have we no we didn't we didn't but we did we did do them in june july ish i dragged on a little bit too long i probably my fault but um so i was 2017 sorry come on so tom i'm a similar comment to tim summertime is much better time if i was to be heavily involved in this type of process uh but uh if this was work well for you jesse and this is a vlct best practice with the timing as well then i'm open to this but i think tim's original point is it really useful to do that now when we seven months in i leave that to the chair and maybe it's this is more of a moderate or a modified smaller shorter process that next year would be more thorough and involved around this time i guess two responses to both your comments one you know i i'm all for feedback so seven month in feedback it's good by me i feel like you all have worked would be enough to be able to give me some constructive criticism or um uh information um two i just for this year it doesn't matter at all but i would i guess my concern with doing it in the summer in july or august is that my contract runs um july one to june 30th so in years where we are doing contract negotiation i will want to have that done far before the summer um so this timing to me is a is a little better for that in future years but this year that doesn't matter my contracts my contract for the next two and a half years well i feel pretty strongly that it's better to have the um council that was largely in place for the longest period of time to evaluate and so i think it really needs to be done before there's a change in in um council or potentially a change in council i mean i would think personally if i came on the council in march and then two months later i'm asking to fill out a an evaluation it would be um pretty superficial and that isn't particularly helpful so and i also think it is important for um the negotiations and the salary so i think if you get into a system where you just do it in february and march or whatever it is or february it gets done and you just know that that's that work piece i know it doesn't work well with the legislature but yeah so would city counselors who are running for election be just be barred from participating in this process oh no not at all the point is to the current council because those are the five people who've been working with our city manager um the longest so i would i mean i don't think this is going to take any one hours to fill out i'm doing the heavy lifting is collating and even that isn't very hard except maybe with your narrative so are you going to send us an electronic version so we can type in our narrative i'm probably not going to send you anything but i think the city manager is going to send you this and will it be the kind you can type in PDF that we can fill in yeah i will do my best i don't know how to do that but maybe yeah i don't know how to do it either but i'm sure someone on your staff does and that would be helpful then i could read everybody's writing and it's each faster to type for most people unless you're a hunting pecker so okay so helen the last time we did this with kevin right we sat down with the leadership team and listened to them one by one right and interviewed them well that was we were doing uh i mean there's a lot of different ways to do evaluations i mean that's more of a 360 perhaps where you have different community players that who weigh in as well right so they're gonna um it looks like um share their input or evaluation separately and so there would be no one-on-one contact with the leadership team no no not as as this is laid out we didn't we did it two different ways with kevin and went one time we did meet with leadership and the another time we did not it was okay just this kind of form okay i i didn't know about the second one sorry who who is collating the leadership i'll do that too okay all right so you'll see all of it new you know with names i won't see it with names okay you'll put it all together and then there'll be two reports council and leadership okay well again because otherwise the numbers don't work i mean potentially okay how many decimal points do we get to evaluate the uh averages to whatever i do easy math kiddo okay four point nine nine seven four three point one four one five nine all right so are we pretty much approved with that methodology at least for this year if we want to really dig in in a different way or in the future i mean i think sometimes bigger evaluations are needed but not the first year so okay um moving on to 16 you're very welcome thank you for pulling that together that's something i probably should have done um reports from counselors on committee assignments and i think matt you have some info on green mountain france yeah yeah i know it's late there are three really important things to know um fresh off the meeting this morning at 7am or 7 30 whenever we hold these meetings but uh the first is change in service which is going to affect all of our constituents and constituents across chitin county uh and in beyond wherever gmt service areas are um we all know you're married to a public school teacher like i am everyone's being asked to do a lot more with less because people get sick and they're out for five days or they're they're just have to quarantine and that's the same thing with all of our drivers and there's not enough drivers with cdls to hire in fact president biden just made a emergency order to allow more bus drivers to get on the the lesson the the the skills that they need in order to pass kind of the matter is we're going to cut services we haven't made the final decision yet but we made a preliminary decision to go ahead with the process of reducing services not because of money but because lack of drivers to cover all the routes so a driver is sick there's not a backup to cover it there's already too much overtime the result is we have service cancellations and people can't make their appointments can't get to their jobs and those that want to park their car and take the public transit and and and help the environment then they get discouraged and they stop doing it reducing ridership so we made the very difficult decision to go ahead with the process hasn't happened yet but go ahead with the process you have to negotiate with the union in order to reduce proactively reduce um so we're talking um um well the one that i've used uh the Montpelier link with four trips to Montpelier canceled um starting march uh hopefully to return in june but not yet um uh the shelburn road service the trip to St. Albans which i know people use the medical center or people that work at the medical center um use a lot so this is going to have an impact on our community but there's just no way around it um so it's probably going to start happening in march people might say why why isn't the bus arriving there's going to be some outreach already to those affected businesses and communities but it's it's it's going to be a it's not going to be great um the other is is how to fund we're we're beginning the process with ccrpc and how to fund public transit for the next 50 years and amongst those which is great because rather than it's going to be a professional study done by stedman hill consulting with ccrpc trying to figure out how much we should pay in assessments each individual towns um in cities how much uh how much should we rely on fares should we rely on fairs should they be free and the fact of the matter is is as people drive electric cars we have less money in the transportation fund that comes from the gasoline tax some of that gasoline tax that goes to transportation fund goes to subsidize our public transit so there's less of that money which senator chitin and knows all too well being on the transportation committee so those aren't great but at least we're looking at in a comprehensive way and I feel good about that one thing we do have is money from the feds for low emission and zero emission buses and so some of those interesting decisions will be coming up whether to buy electric buses whether they should be the cutaways or the or the longer services the plus and the pros and cons of that and whether or not to investigate other low emission zero emission vehicles diesel hybrids biodiesel buses propane buses hydrogen buses all part of the conversation so that's an exciting project and it's a lot more uplifting than the the first two that's it but from gmt thank you man i just have a question in terms of the conversations about cutting back on some of the routes is that what you were saying um burlington uses the buses as a school bus so are those routes kind of held sacrosanct and then it's all the ones into south burlington or wanowski or other places are is there some of that in the conversations yeah so south burlington won't be affected uh essics will be and we've already begun the outreach to essics but there are contracts that happen with the different school districts beyond the regular getting the student spec for instance taking the kids to basketball or other sporting events sometimes those are contracted out and and i've personally witnessed it in my house when my daughter comes home disappointed that she can't go to a game because there's no bus driver to drive them to the game not canceled because of covid canceled because there's just not enough people with a cdl in their wallet a commercial driver's operator's license that qualifies them to drive a bus and that is it because of illness or is it because of vaccine mandate that's a great question tim so yes illness just like in our schools we have less teachers to cover to other teachers who are certified teachers um the vaccine mandate interesting enough because the supreme court decision is not enforced now we were preparing to enforce it on all of the bus drivers but the supreme court said okay because we were part of that 100 large employers 100 employees or less large employers would have to ensure it there was concerned that we didn't lose bus drivers who refused to vaccinate but the supreme court decision lifted that it's it's drivers legitimately being sick or having having a quarantine a lack of drivers i mean it's so close uh truck drivers everywhere it's not it's not just the bus drivers if you have a cdl in your wallet contact me i can get you a job driving the bus at gmt well mark gable loves it but good benefits okay any other committee reports all righty um we have now have to go back to item each hand the budget eight oh eight we have to pass the budget and then we have to approve the town meeting day warning and valid so i can show you the okay all right so as discussed here's the kind of final number you can you can all see it well not yet i will you need to extra zoom in gonna bring my opera glasses yeah not that i have any but i could go get some so numbers to pay attention to the total amount to be raised by taxation has been adjusted based on the numbers that were removed that includes the the cctv planning commission fire ems app support 50 000 50 000 of which was added into the revenue side climate action plan reserve was removed indoor rec was removed city center catholic reserve was reduced 60 000 so it now sits at 800 000 the total reduction being the 225 000 900 of which we've also added the offer revenue the total amount to be raised by taxation is now 17 960 2812 57 cents that equates to a total tax rate of 0.4 or estimated tax rate of 0.4623 uh which is 6.27 increase uh overall increase including the pennies to the taxpayer in terms of what that means to the average residential and average condo if i get there we brought it down from the 140 number to 118 13 and 79 13 for the average condo thank you that's a lot better and can you scroll back up and over what's the increase for just the operations cost 1.6 yeah all right so so there are two two resolutions uh huh one's the cip and the second is approving this budget okay all move approving this budget as amended or changed second do we need discussion oh sorry if you can't see them any discussion no all ready i just want i just want to say thank you i thought it was a very good discussion and thank you for running the numbers again and i know that these decisions are hard but i feel more comfortable going to the voters with this number so none of it was decided lightly on my behalf okay so all in favor please signify by saying aye aye that's and any opposed seeing none so we approve that five oh great and then or the second amendment or the second um if you devoted on the cpi cip or cip because that you had to change something to correct it right and you adopt it annually right will you send us that spreadsheet so yes yeah thank you yeah what we did is we moved up the spear street um bike path to 25 25 to 27 okay any uh discussion on that i mean that's what we have some so yeah so a motion to approve so move and second second all in favor signify by saying aye aye so that's approved um five zero so now we can go down to um item what would be skip 10 10 i'm sorry page or item 10 and we need need to approve the town meeting day warning and ballot so we go back to we have a few less than that was on this thankfully so we're down to down to two items and the annual city budget the blanks have been filled in the proposed budget totals 52,525,176 and 75 cents that's including our special funds as well as our enterprise funds as well as the pennies are included in there as well of which excluding previously voter approved levies it is estimated estimated 17,962,812 and 57 cents will be raised by local property taxes you'll send that to us as well Andrew yes thank you so do you need a motion to approve that yes so moved the second second okay any discussion all right all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed so we've passed that five zero great is there any other business Kim you always have some other business but not tonight just a reminder about the chamberland neighborhood the airport rezoning task force is meeting this thursday at seven so i know there might be some people online yet who might be interested in that okay well yes i don't really have a business but i'm still catching up here so for the resolutions for those of you who are on um go to meeting um it would be ideal if you all could stop by city hall sometime this week to sign the hard copy of those rather than doing the signature thing because they will be what is printed up and advertised places but what's the deadline there jesse didn't get to get there to do that for you what do you wouldn't you need me by there there by end of the week end of the week yeah i can do that okay we'll follow yeah we can't sign them tonight you can sign them to the week okay okay um if there's no other business then motion to adjourn so moved will the sheets to be signed be at the town clerk's office at eight o'clock in the morning tomorrow uh sure yes we can do that or eight fifteen yes don't be late or i could just run up the stairs real quick too i could i don't think either andrew or i are going to be here on eight fifteen tomorrow morning yes what why not by nine we're set evaluation form okay well the meeting is adjourned thank you thank you thank you good night everybody


To the class of 2020 welcome to my backyard and on behalf of all of us at Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology Congratulations on this day of celebration. I'm thrilled to share my warmest wishes with you our newest IST alumni and a joint in celebrating all the you have accomplished I Want to start by saying thank you. Thank you for your patience your flexibility and resiliency during the remote learning period The novel coronavirus pandemic has forever changed our world and you're facing this challenging moment in history at a critical time in your life I Know this is not how you expected to conclude your time at Penn State, and this is not how I planned on sharing my thoughts with you But I am proud of the continued dedication you showed to remain engaged in the classroom and committed to your external obligations through your final semester I Understand and share your disappointment that today's ceremony must be held virtually and the University continues to explore options for an in-person celebration And public health guidelines permit And while we recognize that today's celebration cannot replicate that experience I hope you also recognize that today's celebration makes it official. You are a Penn State graduate The degree you've earned from the College of IST demonstrates your position to be a versatile leader for the information age One equipped with the technical knowledge and interpersonal skills the employers need It also demonstrates your commitment to affecting positive change You've worked hard to earn this distinction and as every sector requires skills of an IST graduate You'll soon find your well-positioned for success in any number of careers No matter where you are this is an accomplishment you've earned and it deserves to be recognized your hard work dedication and commitment have led to today and Though we are apart and we share this excitement with you your families and your loved ones virtually from locations near and far You now join a proud network of nearly 700,000 Penn State alumni around the world and you'll soon notice that that blue and white spirit you found as a student Continues to grow after graduation, but with that pride comes responsibility Alumni are the foundation of our university in our college. They represent our education the workplace and our values in the society They share a commitment to improving their communities and world and they're fiercely committed to ensuring the future of Penn State As you take the next steps in your personal and professional journey I hope you'll honor this responsibility and remain engaged with the College of IST Take advantage of opportunities to mentor our students Share opportunities for internships and careers within your organization Speak loud and proud about your IST experience and help us recruit new students and give your time talent and treasure To support the college and areas of the university that mean the most to you I Encourage you to visit our alumni webpage and reach out to our alumni relations team to learn how you can stay connected I also hope you'll keep up to date with what's happening through our social media channels at IST at Penn State Today we celebrate but we also look forward. We look forward to seeing where your degree will take you We look forward to seeing the innovative collaborative spirit You'll bring to your career and we look forward to seeing the difference that you will make at the intersection of tech information technology and society On behalf of the faculty and staff of the College of IST Congratulations again, and we wish you the best as you embark on the next stage of your journey Until next time stay safe stay healthy and please stay engaged


Hello my fellow KDEers or something. Today we're trying to fix this bug which I'm going to show you. If I have a virtual desktop with a maximized window, as you know, I think I keep repeating that the panel is going to become transparent. Well, sorry, opaque. Whereas if you don't have that window open it's going to be transparent. This is adaptive transparency. However, if we do open another window, still you can see that it's opaque, if we switch from this workspace to this workspace, well it's very subtle, but you can see that the panel just flashes becoming from opaque to transparent to opaque again, whereas it should just stay opaque. Actually it's way, way more visible if I try to use the dark color scheme. So if we pop up system settings, which of course won't pop up because here we are. And we change to breeze dark. We can see that we have got a transparent panel. And then see it becomes from opaque to transparent and then opaque again, which is weird. It shouldn't happen. So we should try to fix it. Let's do it like this just so it's even more visible. Look at the panel. You can see that it flashes. It shouldn't. So why is this? Well, let's first of all give a look to the code. Just look at the panel right now in changing the workspace and you can see it's flashing. So the reason for this, let me show you the code that manages the transparency first of all, which is and I have to start guessing things again in containment panel contents UI main command. I think it was probably, yeah, it was the other one. I keep on confusing the panel files. See last video I've done if you don't know why I confuse panels. So views panel. Here we are. And we've got this thing. And we've got actually two SVGs that are used for the panel, the translucent one, which is the transparent one and the opaque one. And we switch between the two. So what happens is that while we're switching virtual desktops, something happens for which the panel goes from being opaque to transparent and then opaque again. And of course, these things are set in a function which let me find is somewhere around here. What is it? This one. So this is the issue. So what we have here is we check whether the opacity mode is zero. And what that means is we check whether we actually have adaptive transparency enabled because as you know, we can just turn it off. And if we do, then we check how many windows full screen windows are there. If there are more than zero, then we and we are not showing the desktop, which is what allows me to change the transparency when I do this, then we go from for an opaque panel, otherwise transparent. Now I've done some debugging around here and the issue seems to be in the fact that this count instead of going from one to one, as it's supposed to, because we're going from a desktop with one maximized window to another desktop with one maximized window, it goes from one to zero to one for no reason whatsoever. So where is this from? There's this thingy, which is, well, first of all, we have this, which is the task model, which just tells us how many windows are there in our current virtual desktop.  So apparently something happens in all of this and we actually get virtual desktops with more than like one, more than one server that I'm just thinking with we just the task model just goes from one window to something that's zero, maybe it's minimized, maybe it's no windows at all, things that we don't have windows, and then back again to the actual window we're seeing. So if we try to do a bit of debugging, we can actually try to check for changes on this thingy here. We can actually try to see when the virtual desktop is changing. And what seems weird is that it seems like it's changing virtual desktop two times because we're only supposed to receive one update when we change the virtual desktop. Instead, we already we receive two with zero and then the correct number. So we can actually check when it's changing the number and it's here using, I don't know, I don't remember what was it again, on current desktop changed, I think it's changed. So this will actually work that again. This will run when we change the virtual desktop, which is supposed to happen one time. And if we do that like this, and we copy paste this line like 10 times, we go into these, we compile everything that should be compiled. Where was I? Yes, here. Plasma desktop, sorry, Plasma desktop make install. I need to throw a pseudo at it for some reason. Okay, it's working. What we are going to see, because I've already tried this, I'm just adding the lines back because I'll need them in the future today, is just one of that console log turning on every time we know we switch from one place to another. So we source the prefix and then start Plasma shell like this. Now we can change the virtual desktop and then back to here. And we'll see two of those things that we've added. Yeah, let's give it a second to actually boot up everything. Okay, let's try again. As you can see, two of them, because we've changed it to this and then back again. Makes sense. Sounds good. Then what happens? Well, when this desktop changes, let's get this one. Well, this info is used here. So basically, we're saying, hey task manager, we have task model. And this task model was it contains all of the window which are on this virtual desktop, which contains the current desktop. When this changes, it also makes these changes change, which actually calls a C++. Today, as well, I cannot pronounce a word correctly. When this changes, it calls it also makes this one change, which calls a C++ function, which I've asked a developer to point out to me because I was not going to find it by myself, but it did.  Task filter proxy model. Come on I don't want to use Q creaters. Stop trying to show it. Come on. Just use skateboard. Okay. And there's a particular line that interest is us which is of course a virtual desktop set filter by no not this one it was something along these lines virtual desktop yes set virtual desktop okay so when we change the virtual desktop this function gets called and it does what you would expect which is let's zoom into it check if we actually we are actually trying to set a different desktop than before if so we actually change the desktop and then if we are actually filtering by virtual desktop which we do we invalidate the filter which should you know make the filter filter again which should give us the correct results and then we emit that the virtual desktop has changed so now we need to check that this function is actually happening just one time and not two because that's really the issue all of this should happen just one time and something happens two instead of one so we go for I don't know this and we throw a bunch of it okay so now we need to compile this which is in kedy build kedy workspace plasma workspace lib task manager make install like this magic magic magic and then we can slowly okay source the prefix and then restart blood mesh so we can check that it's indeed it's the it's indeed only happening one time and right after the console log that we inserted before which was telling us when the virtual desktop was changing so we go for it we give it a couple of seconds and it's already run one time which makes sense because the first time it actually has to set the initial value for the virtual desktop even if even if it didn't change and then we switch to another one and what happened okay so we had this which tells us that the virtual desktop changed and then with this and this two times so something went wrong along these lines apparently which is weird it's actually really weird and I have no clue what could be the issue but we also have to ask ourselves is actually this the problem because maybe it's just running two times but it's not actually the cause of we getting two different results so what we have to do is also check what what this double call causes so the important part here is this invalidate filter and I've again asked the developer to tell me what does invalidate invalidate filter do and where is my message where is my message I asked what does invalid filter call it sends all of the source model indices through filter filter accepts row so let's look for that function and see what it does so we're going where is it here to the source code of this we're opening up kfine which is like the coolest kde app and we search for filter accept row which is both in this file and in task model so let's open up both of them and first of all see how it's called here so we've got filter accepts row it's a very small function it just tells us that it's not actually using source parent at all and then it just returns accept row source row what is accept row what okay so it's this thing what is this and this is where I stopped last time so from this point on is my real like trying to understand what the hell is going on so we have a q model index which I don't know what is our CD source model blah blah blah index source row blah blah if it's not valid we return so accepts row source row I guess we're checking the windows row by row which is element by element makes sense I guess and filter tasks that are not being shown on the taskbar filter task okay so the most important question here is how many times is this function called and when so same as before and we go for uh we go for uh this was was called with source row and then without it source source row I'm probably using KB wrong I keep on doing that if so sorry I'll discover pretty soon so again Lib task manager make install and whoops I never mind it's just one file it won't change and hopefully we'll be able to see we also need to restart plasmash if it's like going through oh look at this pretty good isn't it okay so well we now that I think about it we also need to like um that's not we're not only going to call these things from our panel file these filter stuff is probably going to be called also from other uploads and stuff which makes sense so we can probably we can't probably filter out everything that we want to can I actually open up system settings I cannot that's very good let's try to change and this and see what happens so now we've got a lot of debugging to do okay so so in the qml file here the virtual desktop was changed and then in the c++ file we get we get we get what do we get we get a function called to the c++ function to change the virtual desktop and then we trigger this thingy that actually checks all of the source row rows and then lots of other stuff that I don't know we're probably not the case because of if we think about it the task manager here down left probably also needs to know about the new windows in the new virtual desktop can we actually ask it not to filter by virtual desktop that might help remove the background noise so like this does this help whatever that I have changed that was not what I want to do okay okay so now there's still the same amount of noise as before so how many windows do we have one two three four five six seven eight nine so we're missing something this list okay oh come on today I'm a bit sleepy okay so let's try to see what actually happens with these source rows filter tasks that are not being shown on the taskbar fine filter tasks that are not to be shown on the pager fine filter by virtual desktop this is what interests us if we are filtering by virtual desktop and we actually have a virtual desktop if source cdx data abstract that is on the ball and not demanding attention skip filters honestly this thing that demanding attention skips filters annoys me because now that I read this line of code I realize that's the cause of another bug of the opacity of the panel we'll see if we can fix that later or not what the hell this is a super big if or not source edx data blah blah blah blah blah virtual desktop is whatever okay so we basically check if it's okay we basically check let me actually finish the sentence let me if the checks whether the list of desktops a window is in because a window could be in multiple virtual desktops well for now it just it just it just fetches the list and then it actually checks whether the list of virtual desktop contains the virtual desktop we are in and if not it returns false which means it filters the row out so what do we do we console dot sorry we cue the bug this sorry this window was on another virtual desktop very very sad indeed this way we can check whether these source rows are true or false and if they're false why are they false maybe it's some reason why the new window is being filtered out even though it shouldn't so now we compile with the same wrong command as before and we check the new output i'm hoping that i'm i'm trying to keep this interesting as much as it's it's possible to keep this interesting anyway we do have our desired output which is this one so as you can see they are all feared filtered out except the window number three which could be either telegram or dolphin so let's like check let me do this okay and if you go back yes we can see that this window three is indeed surviving and in this case the window one is survive surviving the filtering which means that these two windows should in theory get to the final count but looks like they aren't because we actually receive a zero eventually so let's see if there's something weird that filters them out so first of all we filter by screen they shouldn't get filtered by screen so let's add it just for sure this window was filtered by screen what then we filter by activity again it doesn't make any sense whatsoever right now to filter by activity but let's check anyway we filter not maximize not minimize not maximize not minimize whether they are hidden and if not and let's add a feedback here as well this is the true window to roll them or and now we actually compile everything and check well what's the life of all these windows that we're trying to understand where is my maximite window let's maximize this one so we can actually know test things out with that one we're start plasmashal I should not hit accidentally the tripod okay so let's switch up okay changed in virtual desktop changed in the panel virtual desktop changed in the filter and as you can see this was called resource seven and this is the true window to the mall which means that window seven which I can only guess is system settings survived the counting but then why do we get zero let's go so one also seems to survive but there are other filters that like are fine with getting all of the windows and are not actually filtering by anything this one is filtering by screen again this shouldn't interest us there are probably other things what does interest us is this one okay but then what's going on in this case we can see that all of them gets filtered out because you know they're not maximized and I don't know why but this dolphin window that we're moving around doesn't count so there's no other window okay now that we know that this function is working what the hell is wrong with you honestly I have no clue task filter proxy model task model do we have the same what is it do we have the same filter accepts row stuff in here accepts row we do have some filter accepts row in here nothing interesting though at least doesn't seem to be interesting okay honestly I have no clue what's what was going on let me do another change to the panel code which is here which is to actually check when the numbers are going wrong and to do that we get to the function I was talking about before this which is here and when it gets called we console.log the amount I don't know like let's go with we like this the amount of good windows is and then this so we can actually check what is the amount of windows that our panel code is receiving and when it is receiving them so we can you know check that out with the code this was in plasma desktop so we need to compile that one okay my password okay if we do not understand anything from that we are going to get to add that and because I don't know what else could we check honestly so let's hope that something pops up here again it's setting up stuff we don't really interest we don't really have any interest in this we go up and see what happened okay so okay so okay we have the qml file change we have the virtual desktop change in the qml we have all of this stuff and at the end the amount of good windows is one which is correct because you know what I forgot that these bugs only happens when going from a virtual desktop that's full to another virtual desktop that's full and I'm going from an empty one to a full one so of course I won't get the back so let's get back and open up a window here something that's not like super laggy please I have hundreds of windows open at this point okay so let's see if we managed to get the back like this let's read the log there's more stuff happening this time okay look at here panel changes c++ changes we filter windows 7 is the true window true the more we get the value from the panel and it's zero and then nothing nothing happens nothing and and it immediately becomes one I don't know honestly this is upsetting honestly upsetting how much how long is this devlog 30 minutes I think that's a good length for a devlog I'll stop it here and maybe do a second one on this because I don't want to get make them too long so see you in the next one and you know donate stuff like that bye