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City hears 20-year Main Street tree preservation plan; staff flag risks from overhead utilities
Summary
Farmington staff presented a 20-year tree preservation and succession plan for Main and State Street corridors, noting fungal disease risks and recommending targeted removals, replacements, and possible utility burial to protect long-term canopy.
Farmington’s Parks and Recreation Director Colby Thackeray presented a Main Street Heritage Tree Corridor: Tree Preservation & Successional Management Plan on May 19 that outlines a 20-year approach for pruning, replacing, and removing street trees along Main and State streets.
Thackeray said the plan — produced with arborist Daniel Allen — prioritizes preserving high-value specimens, mapping where trees should be removed, replaced, or pruned, and accounting for threats such as fungal diseases. “Most of Farmington’s trees will be fine for the current generation,” Thackeray said, “but they could all be lost at the same time during the next generation,” stressing the importance of succession planning.
City Manager Brigham Mellor noted that many ash trees on Main are already sick and that overhead power lines constrain tree height. Mellor raised utility burial and relocation as a potential long-term option for preserving larger street trees and cited a ballpark cost of about $10 per linear foot; he referenced a recent $1 million project to bury lines in front of Western Sports Park as an example of scale and cost.
Councilmember Scott Isaacson suggested grant opportunities may exist to help bury utilities for safety, aesthetics, and historic-preservation reasons. The presentation did not include a council vote; it provided a planning framework and cost considerations for future capital projects and right-of-way improvements.
Staff said fungal disease impacts may be primarily aesthetic in some cases and costly to treat, and recommended targeted removals and replacements rather than wholesale treatments. The council discussed potential grant funding and the interaction between tree planning and upcoming road-widening projects on 1525 West and Glover Lane.
The tree management plan will inform future budget and capital-improvement discussions, and staff indicated they will return with implementation options and funding sources.
