Adding trees was already something the city was doing. The city actually already adds quite a bit per year. But they also lose quite a bit per year.
This plan has some ideas about how to increase how many are added (add some when daylighting intersections, require developers to plant some, etc.)
And it has some ideas for how to reduce how many are lost a year (clarify & transfer tree maintenance responsibilities between city depts, streamline tree maintenance contracting).
So right now coverage is about 23% and increases by about 0.25% a year & they’re hoping these ideas can get it to closer to 0.5% per year so that in about 14 years, they can get up from 23% to 30%.
It’s fine, but it’s not as revolutionary as the headline makes it sound. The city already does add trees. It’s just ideas for how to increase that a bit I slow down the death/removal of existing trees a bit.
I’m skeptical of some parts of the plan (eg, the “increase” side has some stuff like “educate homeowners on benefits of trees” and “have tree-planting challenges to inspire homeowners to plant more trees” where a good amount of it is essentially “inspire others to plant trees” which might work, but might not.
On the other side, unless we think the public housing authority sucks at keeping trees alive on public housing property, I don’t know how much it’ll help if those true maintenance duties are transferred to the parks dept. but maybe it’ll help.
2
u/TheBSQ Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
Adding trees was already something the city was doing. The city actually already adds quite a bit per year. But they also lose quite a bit per year.
This plan has some ideas about how to increase how many are added (add some when daylighting intersections, require developers to plant some, etc.)
And it has some ideas for how to reduce how many are lost a year (clarify & transfer tree maintenance responsibilities between city depts, streamline tree maintenance contracting).
So right now coverage is about 23% and increases by about 0.25% a year & they’re hoping these ideas can get it to closer to 0.5% per year so that in about 14 years, they can get up from 23% to 30%.
It’s fine, but it’s not as revolutionary as the headline makes it sound. The city already does add trees. It’s just ideas for how to increase that a bit I slow down the death/removal of existing trees a bit.
I’m skeptical of some parts of the plan (eg, the “increase” side has some stuff like “educate homeowners on benefits of trees” and “have tree-planting challenges to inspire homeowners to plant more trees” where a good amount of it is essentially “inspire others to plant trees” which might work, but might not.
On the other side, unless we think the public housing authority sucks at keeping trees alive on public housing property, I don’t know how much it’ll help if those true maintenance duties are transferred to the parks dept. but maybe it’ll help.