City Council Meeting

Shinneberryclerkour first items of discussion overview on the urban forest master plan Anna Safford urban forester will provide a staff presentation

Anna SaffordstaffGood evening, Mayor and Council. So tonight we're here to provide an overview and then receive feedback on the Urban Forest Master Plan project. Tonight I'm joined by Dr. Garrett Wolf, who has been leading the stakeholder engagement

Garrett WolfeGreat. Thank you, Anna. Ladies and gentlemen of City Council, thank you for having me to speak about the Urban Forest Master Plan. You can go ahead to the next slide. As Anna mentioned, I'm Dr. Garrett Wolfe. I'm the Director of Environmental Resilience and Ecosystem Restoration at Marstelde, the firm in the middle up there. Marstelde, as Anna said, is leading the outreach and engagement portions of this effort. I'm going to briefly introduce the other team members with the other firms on there. So the prime on this contract is Davia Resource Group, or DRG. They're led by Matt Erb. He's a senior associate consultant and a certified arborist. He's also joined by Ashley McElhaney, who's an urban forestry planner and a certified arborist.

planning or guiding document that allows strategic planning and resource allocation for urban tree management in the long term generally urban forest master plans explore tree maintenance planting needs staff capacity budget invasive species tree related policy volunteer opportunities and additional relevant topics for a community for Fairfax's urban forest master plan we'll be covering a 20-year planning horizon this this master plan will identify the community's shared vision goals priorities and address specific challenges and opportunities for the city which are revealed in part through our outreach efforts including this discussion tonight So a brief overview of the purpose purpose and goals of the urban forest master plan

This will be the first urban forest master plan for the city of Fairfax It will create a cohesive management strategy that maximizes the city's time and taxpayers dollars and respond to current and future conditions using a variety of recommendations The master plan will address three overarching goals. Sustainability to ensure that the actions support long term goals and use resources wisely. Resiliency to address challenges such as climate change and plant disease. And equity, ensuring all members of the community have access to and benefit from the urban forest. Fairfax's urban forest provides significant benefits to the community, such as improved air quality, carbon sequestration, and The bottom line is that an urban forest is an important asset for the city of Fairfax and will benefit from a cohesive management plan

You see the topics up here on the slide the urban forest master plan will cover the following topics existing conditions of the urban forest results from public outreach and engagement activities which take place throughout plan development a shared vision for the urban forest recommendations to attain that shared vision implementation guidance on five year cycles and metrics for implementation success to monitor progress and efficacy community engagement is a major part of this process from start to finish and it's important that the plan works for both the city and its residents provide a little bit more detail about how this planning process will unfold the master plan will be developed in two phases which we will discuss more in the

canopy change over time it uses a set of universal indicators of a sustainable urban forest to evaluate Fairfax's trees stakeholders and management strategies it's also reviewing city operations to understand how urban forest how the urban forest your program functions and what additional needs exist the report will summarize key findings and will inform the master plans goals and recommendations the master plan outline will be developed near the end of phase one and into phase two with report drafts and find the final report being in phase two now for discussion of the engagement plan as part of this planning effort we've developed an engagement plan which is essentially a work plan specifically for the outreach strategies of the urban forest master plan it is a