Charles Town tree board eyes grants, urges urban-forester as city funding remains limited

The chair of the Charles Town Tree Board said the group is waiting to hear in early June about an application to a Mid‑Atlantic/Chesapeake forestry grant and urged the city to fund or hire professional urban‑forestry expertise to plan long‑term tree work across parks.

"We need some person with the kind of planning expertise who can come in and say, 'This is what we should be doing,'" the chair said, arguing that a volunteer board lacks the technical capacity to manage larger park projects and design replacements at locations such as Jefferson Memorial Park.

The chair described a recent meeting with Sam Adams, head of the West Virginia Department of Forestry, who encouraged the board to apply for grants. If the larger grant is not awarded, the chair said the board would seek smaller community forestry funds or pivot program elements into other available grants.

Board members raised a related funding concern: the chair said the city currently does not provide a dedicated line item for tree‑board projects and that some state community‑agreement funds require covered expenditures before local reimbursement. "Twelve thousand is going to get expended by maintenance every year as it was the last two years," the chair said when describing recent maintenance spending and the difficulty of advancing projects without upfront city budget authority.

A board member described the typical administrative fix for grant awards: a budget revision after notification of an award to create the necessary accounting lines for reimbursement. "Typically, we would do a budget revision upon the grant being awarded," the member said, explaining the city's process for housing grant expenditures inside the budget once an award is confirmed.

The chair and board plan to coordinate with city staff and council liaisons to clarify how the tree board can request and access funds for projects. The mayor suggested staff outreach to facilitate that conversation.

Next steps: the board expects a grant decision in early June; if awarded, the board said it would use funds to advance a canopy inventory, hire or contract urban‑forestry planning work, and coordinate with Parks and Recreation on park planting designs.