City Council passed a (non-binding) resolution on April 17, 2023 to establish a goal of achieving and maintaining 50% tree canopy cover and to request a study every five years to evaluate the effectiveness of the Tree Protection Ordinance in meeting that goal. The 50% goal should help guide the development of tree-related initiatives and to monitor the success of those policies and programs.

For this resolution to serve any real purpose, City Council must now commit to the changes needed not only to the Tree Ordinance, but to the changes being presently discussed in our Zoning Ordinances, to facilitate greater tree preservation as well as the replanting of trees that are removed. Those changes include setting better standards for tree preservation, limiting the amount of land that can be disturbed in site development, and raising recompense fees to the current rate it costs to replace removed trees inch-for-inch.

Presently, the mandated recompense fees do not begin to cover the actual costs of tree replanting nor are most of the recompense fees collected being spent on tree replanting. Only a quarter of the total recompense collected each year is spent on tree replanting; the remainder is spent on salaries, administrative costs, forested land purchases, and tree maintenance. That’s got to stop. We need to start collecting the money required to replant the trees that are removed and use that money to replant trees; otherwise, we are only ensuring a gradual erosion of our tree canopy.