City Council Meeting

Ms. Shinneberryclerkroll call vote council member McQuillan I council member Bates I council member Peterson all right council member Hardy Chandler I council member Hall I council member Amos I motion passed unanimously we will go to public hearing we only have one public hearing tonight which is a public hearing and council action on the adoption of the urban forest master plan and prints UFMP I'm going to recognize Anna Safford, Urban Forester to provide the staff presentation.

Anna SaffordstaffOkay, good evening Mayor and City Council. I'm excited to be here tonight to be presenting the City's Urban Forest Master Plan. Tonight I'm joined by our consultant Matt Urb from Davie Resource Group and Dr. Garrett Wolfe from Marcel Day. In tonight's presentation, I'll begin with some acknowledgments for those that have participated in the effort of this planning process. Then I'll provide an overview of the project background, goals and timeline, engagement activities, followed by an overview of the Urban Forest Master Plan itself, during which we'll touch on minor changes that have been made since our last presentation in December. And then we'll wrap up with the Urban Forest Master Plan implementation, as I know that was of interest and there were questions around that during those December presentations.

Garrett WolfeAs you all are likely aware, this project has produced the first ever Urban Forest Master Plan for the City of Fairfax. It will serve as a 20-year roadmap for the protection, regulation, growth, and management of the urban forest as well as engagement with the community for urban forest stewardship. The project involved five pieces outlined on the screen, which include assessing existing conditions, engaging the community, identifying the vision and goals, developing objectives, strategies, and actions, and providing implementation guidance. The plan is grounded in qualitative and quantitative data about the existing conditions of the City of Fairfax's public trees and tree canopy and the non-native invasive species that are present

captures the community's views and priorities and provides actionable recommendations to the city slide This project was completed in two phases the first phase shown on the slide here focused on data gathering and analysis phase one activities included the existing conditions assessment non-native species assessment on operations review public meetings one and two stakeholder interviews tabling at public events a public survey and Development of the urban forest master plan outline updates were provided to city council boards and commissions throughout last fall phase one lasted from June 2024 through early 2025 next slide phase two which began in spring of 2025 immediately following the conclusion of

phase one and is now nearing its end as we're here to present these final presentations to you phase two involved synthesizing the findings of the assessments and public input gathered during phase one. These takeaways were used to develop key plan content such as vision, goals, objectives, strategies, and action items. Phase two also included two additional public meetings, tabling, and additional public events, and the preparation of several draft versions of the urban forest master plan. While the plan drafts are being developed and refined, we've been providing updates via emails and presentations to boards, Commission's City Council and the public to keep you all aware of the project and its progress

as illustrated in previous slides public engagement was an important part of the plan throughout both project phases Engagement activities included the four public meetings stakeholder interviews by monthly steering committee meetings and a public survey together these events engaged over 150 individual stakeholders additional stakeholders were involved through updates to boards and commissions tabling at various city events an urban forest photo contest and as visitors to the engage fairfax web page of which we had over 2 700 unique visitors throughout the project period the draft urban forest master plan was available for public review from october 6th to october 29th 2025 Notably, at public meeting number three in late June 2025, attendees reviewed the draft

All engagement activities were tracked in an engagement database for staff to have as a resource in the future I will turn it over now to Matt herb to provide an overview of the urban forest master plan

Matt HerbSo now that we've provided the background on the project will highlight some of the key pieces of the urban forest master plan The urban forest master plan is organized around the four phases of the adaptive management process These phases are illustrated on the graphic on the screen. Each of the main chapters of the plan addresses one of these questions. The first step, what do we have? Creates a baseline for the planning process by gathering information about current conditions. The second step, what do we want? Seek stakeholder input to develop the plan's vision and guiding principles. The third step, how do we get there? outlines the objective strategies and actions to implement the urban forest master plan.

This is also known as the implementation plan. The fourth step, how are we doing, evaluates the plan's success using progress metrics assessed at regular intervals. Then the process restarts, allowing for an updated baseline and subsequent course correction to ensure the plan adapts to changing conditions as implemented. As we move through the next slide, it is important to keep in mind that this plan addresses a 20-year planning horizon. The city and its urban forest will undergo many changes over the next 20 years. Because the urban forest master plan is structured around the adaptive management process and incorporates regular review intervals, the plan itself can be adjusted to align with the changing conditions in the city.

We will now give you some more detail on each of the chapters. The first step in the adaptive management process asks what do we have, which establishes a baseline of the current conditions. There are six components to this in the Urban Forest Master Plan, including an analysis of the city land cover data or tree canopy data, review of the 2023 public tree inventory data, assessment of the non-native invasive species within Fairfax, a review of city operations, benchmarking to similar cities, and estimations of the urban forest benefits provided. Notably, the tree canopy cover makes up 40% of the city's land area, and there are over 11,000 trees in right-of-ways, parks, and trails. This figure excludes forested areas within parks

the third step in the adaptive management process asks how do we get there the chapter in the urban forest this is the chapter in the urban forest master plans implementation focus it ties the information from the first two chapters the existing condition the existing conditions baseline and vision and goals for the future into objectives strategies and actions that can be used to implement the plan. The objectives shown on the screen are key outcomes to achieve. Strategies are approaches used to enact the objectives, and actions are specific tasks used to complete the strategies and ultimately the objectives. The Urban Forest Master Plan has five objectives, which include to protect, strengthen tree and forest conservation, to regulate, enhance city

Actions for each of the strategies are sorted by short, mid, and long-term timeframes for completion spanning one to five years, five to ten years, and ten to twenty years respectively. Each strategy also identifies existing capacity and partners, resource demands, and metrics for internally tracking progress towards each strategy. The final step in the adaptive management process asks how are we doing? In this chapter the urban forest master plan recommends a progress assessment timeline and provides key performance indicators or KPIs aligned plan's three goals the KPIs will be used to assess whether the city is achieving the goals of the urban forest master plan there are 13 KPIs within the plan

examples of these KPIs include a 5% increase in canopy cover and low canopy areas an increase to 90% or greater the survival rate of newly planted trees and And increasing the number of volunteer hours served annually to 1,000 hours by 2030. The progress assessment timeline consists of annual reviews summarized in the state of the urban forest annual report. Every five years a more comprehensive review of the urban forest master plan is recommended. This includes a formal review of goals, objectives, and strategies as well as progress assessment similar to the annual reviews. Following the five-year reviews, the city should publish a progress report and plan an update addendum to realign the plan with current needs and opportunities.

This would start back at the first question, what do we have to understand the changing conditions that could influence how plan updates proceed? Together, the annual and five-year progress reports will provide the public with information about the city's efforts and successes in implementing the urban forest master plan. The annual and five-year check-ins over the urban forest master plan's 20-year planning horizon will allow the plan to be adapted to address the dynamic nature of the urban forest and city operations. After 20 years, it's recommended the city develop a new urban forest master plan to comprehensively assess the city's condition and provide new recommendations to address changing conditions.

So now that we've covered the main points of the urban forest master plan, we want to briefly highlight how the plan has been revised based on feedback that we received during the presentation to city council in December. We received some great questions about how to predict changes to the urban forest, climate impacts, invasive species, and other factors that affect urban forest health. In response to these questions, we've added an action item to strategy 1.2. strategy 1.2 involves conserving connecting and expanding tree canopy through strategic conservation and land use policies the new action item recommends partnerships with regional jurisdictions to support urban forest forecasting and modeling of canopy change and climate impacts the urban

forest master plan alone cannot be used to forecast these changes and such data is usually addressed at a county state or regional level for these reasons the Urban Forest Master Plan also recommends alignment with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government's Regional Tree Action Plan, the city's comprehensive plan, and other long-term planning documents to integrate urban forestry into these long-range planning considerations at multiple scales. We also heard strong interest in the first steps for implementation, and I'll turn this back over to Anna, who can talk through those first steps.

Anna SaffordstaffAnd then second, I want to reiterate the Sprout Initiative and how that was designed to implement. It was not just designed to develop the plan, but again, to implement it as well. It is not a coincidence that it touches on all five objectives of the plan. Its foundation is in community stewardship as well as engagement. It's taken an all-hands approach on invasive species management. It prioritizes tree planting to maximize community benefit. And, of course, it is rooted in that strategic planning as well as communication to the public at very frequent intervals. And so the Sprout Initiative is how you can see how implementation will continue forward after adoption. And then lastly, I want to share the Urban Forest Master Plan project does have deliverables beyond the plan itself.

It does include some activation of implementation. We've already begun working on an annual work plan. as well as drafting guidance for a natural forested areas assessment from strategy 1.1, as well as drafting workflows and materials for priority policies and identifying how to integrate this plan into other city plans like the comprehensive plan. And so that's kind of a quick snapshot of implementation, but happy, of course, to answer further questions once we've opened that up. and so with that I just want to say having an urban forest master plan is a great achievement and milestone for the city in terms of managing its urban forest and I always like to conclude with big tree celebrations with a tree cheers and so

Judy Fraserpublic commenthi good evening mayor city council my name is Judy Fraser 3514 Spring Lake Terrace I totally applaud this work it's a great achievement I agree it is wonderful for the city to for the first time to be considering a master plan and implementation plan for our urban forest many people over many years have supported this effort and worked to make it happen so i hope no matter what tonight you celebrate that and acknowledge that this is a one a very important milestone for the city but with that i have to say it's not ready for your approval in my opinion it jumps from one and two were great on this assessing existing Amazing, engaging the community, stellar. The third one, though, identifying the vision, goals, and priorities.

It falls short of being something very actionable for us. Then it jumps into the implementation part with the objective strategies and the implementation guidance, which you can tell staff is ready to dive into and already is. But those goals are weak. They are like increase, strengthen, champion. How do we get to those? How do we accomplish those? Those are not actionable in a way that we need. They should be more concrete. If we don't have concrete goals, why do we do a master plan? The master plan needs to put those goals very, very visible at the end of that 20-year plan, and we know when we've achieved them. We're already accomplishing the goals that are there. We are strengthening this program.

increasing capacity, if we want to just keep improving, that's great. Go for it. But if we want a master plan that really describes where we want to be and what our vision is and we're accomplishing that, we need to strengthen those goals. And I would say that is over to you all as the decision makers because you are the ones who need to set the goals and make the priorities for this program. You are going to be the decision makers about what gets done. What will we pay for? So you need those goals to be clear in your mind. And so I challenge you to see this as a handing of the baton from staff and their great work to you in the last lap to make sure that we get good goals. You are defining them.

Ms. Shinneberryclerkis there anybody else in the room that would like to speak on the urban forest master plan

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerI move that city council adopt the urban forest master plan approving and adopting the urban forest master plan in the draft dated December 2025.

Jennifer Passypublic commentpulling up Table 8 within the master plan, the

Jim FeatherThe comprehensive plan itself describes many of these specific items and the comprehensive plan also describes general descriptions of characteristics of things that we want. When we put together the implementation plan, it's interesting to hear your discussion about the urban forest master plan. Our implementation plan comes after the comprehensive plan. And more specificity comes in there in terms of what kind of things specifically need to be done. But things change, right? We can't predict everything in one comprehensive plan as to what the next facility is that may or may not be needed. But so that's why in some cases there are general descriptions of quality facilities, maintaining facilities, upgrading facilities