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Mountlake Terrace to inventory street trees, use $120,000 DNR grant to build urban forest plan
Summary
City staff and consultants described a plan to complete a first-ever street-tree inventory, quantify canopy benefits and target outreach to neighborhoods with lower tree equity. A $120,000 Department of Natural Resources grant will fund the work and public engagement is already under way.
Mountlake Terrace city staff and outside consultants told the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Commission at a recent meeting that work is beginning on an urban forest management plan funded by a $120,000 grant from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.
The plan will include a street-tree inventory scheduled for early September, public surveys already posted in Spanish and Vietnamese, and a broader public engagement strategy aimed at distributing canopy benefits more equitably across the city.
Andrea Starbird, principal consultant for Starbird Environmental, said the project’s “overarching goal … is that everyone should have access to the benefits of trees.” Starbird is subcontracting to Planet Geo, which will perform the street-tree inventory and analysis.
Planet Geo urban-forestry planner Matt Irmsen said the inventory and accompanying analysis will quantify common urban-forest benefits such as stormwater interception, carbon storage and replacement-cost value. “For a lot of the projects I’ve worked on and other municipalities, the urban forest has an asset value of around $20,000,000,” Irmsen said, adding that the team will run a full valuation after the September inventory.
Consultants said the inventory will focus on public trees in the right-of-way — trees in planters, medians, and the area between sidewalks and streets — and that park trees are not part of the street inventory although park canopy may be integrated later for a citywide baseline.
The team is also using tree-equity mapping from American Forests and LIDAR/aerial data to identify neighborhoods with lower canopy. Consultants said they pulled current tree-equity scores about two weeks before the meeting but noted those scores depend on when aerial imagery is updated.
City staff and consultants stressed outreach to tenants, multi-family properties and property owners; the team plans targeted door-hangering and meetings in higher-priority blocks, plus a second, more detailed survey tied to inventory findings. Laura (city staff) described the outreach goal with a simple metric used in Europe and elsewhere: “You should be able to see three good-sized trees from where you live, live in an area that has 30 percent tree canopy and be 300 meters from a park.”
Consultants said the public survey is live and that crews will complete the street inventory at the beginning of September, after which they will run the canopy-benefit analysis and refine outreach and planting recommendations.
The presentation also flagged recent canopy changes tied to construction projects such as the light-rail expansion; consultants recommended factoring recent removals into localized outreach and replacement strategies.
The consultants asked commissioners to help spread the survey and to advise on community touch points for outreach, especially among groups and neighborhoods that the tree-equity mapping shows are receiving fewer canopy benefits.
