Urban Forestry Council and consultant present Rensselaer tree inventory; plan recommends removals, priority pruning and 50 new plantings

The Rensselaer City Council on Monday received a detailed inventory of the city’s public trees and a five-year maintenance plan from the volunteer-led Richler Urban Forestry Council and consultant Davy Resource Group.

Rick Williams, president of the Richler Urban Forestry Council, opened the presentation and introduced the volunteer team and consultant staff. Brenda Green, the council’s project coordinator, said the project was funded by a grant from the Inflation Reduction Act and that the group will host a community meeting at 6 p.m. on Oct. 16 to explain the plan and recruit residents who want trees planted in their neighborhoods.

Erin Flint, senior associate consultant with Davy Resource Group, said the inventory covered trees in streets and parks and identified species, condition and maintenance needs. "Through the data, we inventoryed 2,180 trees in streets and parks," Flint said. "We identified 78 species representing 45 genera, and a maintenance plan to help move the condition of the population upward."

The consultant recommended removing 175 trees — none classified as extreme risk and 15 identified as high risk for removal — and carrying out priority pruning on 367 trees, 27 of which were flagged as high risk for pruning. The plan sets an initial planting goal of 50 public trees in spring next year and suggests evaluating a replacement ratio (for example, one removed tree replaced with two plantings) and a routine pruning/inspection cycle.

Flint described two tools used in the analysis: i-Tree Eco, a U.S. Forest Service model that estimates the monetary benefits trees provide, and TreeKeeper, a geographic inventory and public-facing platform. Using the i-Tree model, the consultant reported an average benefit per inventoried tree of about $7.60 per year and cited an annual total of roughly $16,500 for the trees included in the inventory; the consultant noted that residential and off-inventory trees were not included in that figure.

Council members pressed presenters on implementation details. When asked how inspections would be scheduled, Flint recommended making inventory updates part of routine maintenance by inspecting roughly one-fifth of the inventory each year to keep the baseline current and to budget for regular updates rather than relying on expensive full re-inventories every five to 10 years. On invasive species, the consultant said the inventory flags invasive hosts and locations but does not itself constitute a full invasive-removal plan.

Mayor Jeff Phillips and parks staff were identified as partners in the outreach. Green said the grant requires a public meeting and emphasized citizen engagement: "People will sign up to possibly have a tree in their neighborhood planted," she said, urging attendance at the Oct. 16 meeting.

Next steps identified by the presenters include prioritizing high-risk trees for inspection and removal, maintaining TreeKeeper records, finalizing a five-year budget and beginning the planting phase next spring. The council took no formal vote on implementation funding during the meeting; presenters asked staff and council to coordinate on budget and scheduling decisions.