Tacoma staff outline steps to boost tree canopy, cite funding and regulatory gaps

Tacoma urban forestry staff told the Infrastructure Planning and Sustainability Committee on Feb. 12 that the city must scale planting, maintenance and regulatory tools to reach a 30% tree-canopy goal and that work will continue at a policy-focused committee meeting in two weeks.

The briefing set current program baselines and next steps. Urban Forest Program Manager Mike Carey said the presentation was intended "to kick off a series of presentations focused on improving the urban forestry level of service for our community." He told the committee staff are starting from a shared premise that trees provide public benefits including air-quality improvement, stormwater management and urban heat reduction and that the discussion should align with the Home in Tacoma amendment the council previously adopted.

Why the briefing matters: staff said Tacoma's right-of-way (public streets and sidewalks) accounts for about 26% of the city's land area but has only about 9.2% canopy cover, well below the citywide target. Carey noted that meeting canopy goals in each land-use category would collectively achieve the city's 30% target; the question is how to close the gaps through incentives, city responsibility, regulations or partnerships.

Program details and recent work Lisa Kenny, community tree program coordinator, reviewed Tacoma's planting programs and a new prioritization map that combines canopy deficiency, heat exposure and equity to target limited resources. She said the city and partners planted nearly 2,000 trees in 2024 across programs including Grit City Trees, Tree Coupon, Green Blocks and Branch Out. Kenny also summarized program barriers: many residents must commit to three years of watering and care for new trees, some are renters who need landlord permission, and private-property trees are largely outside existing incentive structures.

Ryan Hebert, an urban forestry analyst, described hazardous-tree assistance and pilot maintenance work. Hebert said the Hazardous Tree Assistance Program (established with council funding in 2023) "includes a tree risk assessment" by a third-party contractor, and—if needed—contracted pruning or removal, stump grinding, wood disposal, replanting and three seasons of establishment watering. Qualification is automatic for residents who live in very low, low or moderate opportunity areas in the city's equity index; others can qualify by income using existing utility-assistance eligibility.

Maintenance pilots have been limited but informative. A 2022 US Forest Service-funded pilot pruned about 318 trees in the Tacoma Mall neighborhood. Using hazardous-tree funds, staff later pruned another priority corridor (McKinley Ave) and, after a contracting gap in 2024, completed a Lincoln District corridor pruning project tied to Green Blocks outreach.

Staff said preventive maintenance is constrained by authority and staffing: the city generally needs adjacent property-owner permission to work on right-of-way trees and currently lacks a proactive, citywide right-of-way maintenance crew. The two-person arborist crew funded in the most recent budget, staff said, will focus on city-owned property and will not by itself fill the preventive-maintenance gap affecting private-adjacent right-of-way trees.

Data and next steps Carey said the city expects an updated lidar (light detection and ranging) dataset from consultants in roughly a month that will provide a new canopy analysis, updated impervious-surface and building layers, and a near-complete inventory of trees with height and health indicators. He noted the city's most recent canopy analysis was from 2018 and that the new lidar will let staff compare land-cover change across zones and better target interventions.

Staff asked the committee to prepare for a policy discussion at the committee's next meeting (Feb. 26) that will focus on which "dials" to turn: stronger incentives, greater direct city responsibility for planting/maintenance, regulatory changes, or strategic partnerships. Carey said the anticipated outcome of that meeting is policy direction for staff research on costs, benchmarks and options to return with concrete proposals.

Committee reaction and follow-up Council members thanked staff for the update and requested additional detail for the next meeting, including legal guidance from the city attorney on property-owner authority, more examples of how other cities incentivize private-property tree retention, and a full accounting of program costs and responsibilities. Council Member Prince asked about the cost of the Tacoma Mall grant that financed the 318-tree pilot; staff said the multi-year grant totaled about $240,000 over five years and included outreach and maintenance support.

Staff emphasized equity and "tree trauma" (residents' reluctance to plant or accept trees because of past liability or maintenance experiences) as a policy consideration: many successful programs, they said, explicitly address homeowner concerns about future removal, root damage and cost to increase participation.

The committee scheduled a deeper, policy-level session on Feb. 26; staff asked council members to submit any policy ideas in writing in advance so staff can prepare comparative research and cost estimates.