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<br />Great River Greening is a 501(c)(3) non-profit; tax ID 41-1940024. <br />Great River Greening | 251 Starkey Street, Suite 2200 | Saint Paul, MN 55107 | Tel: 651.665.9500 | greatrivergreening.org <br />Attachment 2 – History of partnership, project proposal, timeline, and anticipated budgets. <br />• History of partnership – <br />o PTRC members Kerri Seemann and Mark Kelliher approached Great River Greening in <br />early 2023 to discuss a potential partnership between the City of Arden Hills, the <br />community stewards of the natural areas of the City’s parks, and Great River Greening <br />for funding to assist the restoration and enhancement of several parks. <br />▪ Conservation Director Todd Rexine joined a PTRC meeting in April 2023. <br />o Great River Greening staff met and walked sites to establish potential projects, <br />budgets, and timelines for this potential restoration work to include tentative budgets <br />in Outdoor Heritage Fund grants being written at that time. <br />▪ These grants are state funding designated for this type of habitat <br />enhancement work funded by state sales tax dollars through the Clean Water, <br />Land and Legacy amendment that are recommended by the Lessard-Sams <br />Outdoor Heritage Council and pass through Great River Greening to support <br />staff time, subcontracting, plant purchasing, and volunteer coordination. <br />o One grant is now online with funds available currently (April 2024) for use, and a <br />second grant is anticipated to be online and available for use in July 2024. <br />o Community members and Arden Hills City staff have met with Great River Greening to <br />discuss current priorities (call on Thursday, March 28, 2024), Great River Greening <br />staff have now walked the parks again and have received further background from <br />community members and are proposing a final set of projects for PTRC review. <br />• Project proposal – <br />o After discussing habitat restoration needs and potential timelines, seeing final funding <br />allocations from state grants, and current state of park natural resource management, <br />Great River Greening’s recommendations are as follows: <br />▪ Perry Park – The natural areas in this park need a large and intensively planned <br />project that would have to be coordinated with the habitat enhancement work <br />that is being done at the adjacent Ramsey County property Tony Schmidt <br />Regional Park. This may be a future goal, but we recommend managing the <br />other areas where there is community coordination now first before taking on <br />this large project. <br />• No action requested. <br />▪ Hazelnut Park – The woodland area is in good condition from a lot of effort put <br />in by the community on understory habitat enhancement through invasive <br />species control and native species planning. We propose to put 3 years of <br />contracted buckthorn follow-up control and 2 years of garlic mustard control <br />in to boost this effort and make the invasive plant population manageable with <br />minimal effort in the long term, as well as fund native grass and forb seeding <br />and shrub planting to add diversity for environmental health and park user <br />enjoyment and education. <br />• Action requested – Plan approval by the PTRC, and the development of <br />a cooperative agreement between Great River Greening and the City of <br />Arden Hills to make official the budget being brought by OHF funds, <br />City funds, and the project plan and goals.