Phoenix will pay more than half a million dollars to determine how many trees the city owns, where they are and what kind of shape they’re in.
When the City Council approved the “Shade Phoenix Plan” in November, it included adding 27,000 trees over the next five years.
During a recent council meeting, Mayor Kate Gallego said trees are among residents’ top requests.
“It's a way they feel they can make their communities more comfortable, enhance property values, and we've been pretty ambitious," Gallego said.
But some leaders said the city fails when it comes to maintaining trees. Councilman Jim Waring said it’s frustrating to him and residents when dead trees are reported and then remain untouched for months, sometimes years.
“I would appreciate some sort of rapid response if we're going to spend this kind of money on this that we're doing. Otherwise, don't do it. If you came to my yard and planted a tree and then let it die. I'd look at that as blight, not some sort of favor,” he said.
Other council members echoed Waring’s concern about tree maintenance and replacement.
“I can commit to you that I'll go back to our team and look at how we're- especially with new plantings- how we're going back and inspecting them and making sure that our inspectors have them on a more frequent inspection route when they're first planted, to make sure that's happening and that they stay healthy,.” said Scott Coughlin, deputy director, special operations division, parks and recreation department.
Phoenix’s last inventory, from 2019, showed about 106,000 city-owned trees. The new inventory, Coughlin said, will include conditions of each tree and a way for city employees and contractors who plant and maintain them to better track conditions.
“There will be an app where they'll actually be able to update the inventory at that time, when a tree is removed because of a car accident or or it has died and it has to be removed, they're able to actively update the inventory,” he said.
West Coast Arborists will handle the inventory, which is expected to take 6 to 9 months. According to a city council report, the assessment, “will include the location, species, health and size of trees maintained by the City, covering areas such as rights-of-way, street medians, and all City-maintained parks and facilities.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to correctly identify Coughlin on first reference.
