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Mayor Patterson, Shade Tree Commission push for formal urban-forest inventory and management plan
Summary
The Athens Shade Tree Commission and Mayor Patterson discussed pursuing a formal urban forestry management plan and city street-tree inventory, estimating about $50,000 to contract the work and revisiting a roughly $100,000 grant application; funding limits prompted discussion of a May ballot measure and use of the city’s tree bank to plant more than 200 trees.
At a January meeting of the Athens Shade Tree Commission, Mayor Patterson and commissioners agreed to pursue a formal urban forestry management plan and a comprehensive street-tree inventory, and discussed how to pay for the work.
Chair (name not provided) told the commission the Arbor Day Foundation Tree City reporting showed local tree-related spending of about $55,082, which the chair said equates to roughly $2.31 per capita. The chair gave a line-item breakdown: about $13,494 in planting and aftercare, roughly $13,000 in maintenance, and removals listed around $25,000 (the transcript contains an imprecise fractional figure). The chair said better record-keeping between the streets and parks departments would make future reporting clearer.
Mayor Patterson said the commission had applied for a state IRA grant of about $100,000 intended to help establish urban-forestry capacity; he said roughly half of that money would have funded a management plan and a tree inventory. The chair estimated contracting an arborist or urban-forest professional to produce a 10-year management plan and street-tree inventory would cost on the order of $50,000.
"So something that we can talk more about if the administration’s interested in that," the chair said, urging collaboration between a contracted specialist and city staff to match work to local capacity.
Commission members with industry experience urged contracting the inventory because city crews are already stretched. One committee member who runs a tree-care business said the annual work plan and budget are being aligned to secure contracts and plantings, and asked whether a previously discussed $100,000 commitment for planting remains possible.
Patterson replied that city finances are tight and that the administration is pursuing a May ballot initiative to increase the city income tax by 2 percentage points to generate general revenue that could support priorities including tree work. He said the city also plans to use 'tree bank' funds — including recent Menards donations — combined with other sources to plant more than 200 trees this year and to hire maintenance support for new plantings along bike paths and parks.
The mayor described past invasive-species removal and riparian reclamation along the Hocking River in coordination with ODNR and the Nature Conservancy and suggested the commission could act as a 'force multiplier' to maintain reintroduced native understory.
Commissioners also discussed contractor qualifications: the commission recently adopted a requirement that contractors working on city removals and tree work either be ISA-certified or have ISA-certified staff on-site. Commissioners volunteered to form subcommittees to produce an improved annual work plan, a year-end report for Tree City submissions, and an updated recommended tree list.
The meeting closed with commissioners thanking Michael Lincoln as his term ended and with administrative follow-ups on possible applicants and subcommittee membership.
