Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherAye. That's right. And I vote aye as well. Passes unanimously. Thank you very much. I believe they have something coming up soon, so we'll put you right to work. Thank you very much for doing that. We'll move on through the agenda. We have no public hearings this evening, so we'll recess our regular meeting and go into our work session. There are two items this evening, first of which is presentation and discussion on the draft urban forest master plan. We welcome our urban forester Anna Safford.

Anna SaffordstaffOkay, good evening, Planning Commission. Tonight I'm here to provide you an update on the draft Urban Forest Master Plan. Our consultant unfortunately had a last minute conflict that came up so it's just me. But our project team is Davie Resource Group as the lead consultant, Marcel Day leading stakeholder outreach and engagement, and WSSI providing technical assistance and local expertise. So tonight I will provide a brief project status update and then provide highlights of the draft urban forest master plan then summarize next steps and open up for questions and discussion so starting with project status we are currently at the end of phase two or wrapping up towards the end of phase two while phase one focused on information gathering phase two has involved the

development of the actual urban forest master plan community engagement and outreach activities have been ongoing through both phases. During phase two we tabled at History Day and Fall Fest. We had two public meetings and a spring photo contest. The winners of the photo contest have been incorporated throughout the plan as well as you'll see them highlighted in the presentation today. Over the last few months we've been reviewing several drafts of the Urban Forest Master Plan from the internal project team, a wide array of city staff, review phase which I know some of you participated in. In November we went through public and staff comments to update the draft to present to you all tonight as well as we presented to City Council last week and then we are hoping

Again, that focused on planned development. We came to you all last in July to provide an update reviewing phase one findings, as well as we presented the draft goals, objectives, and strategies of the implementation plan that you'll see tonight. And we focused on actions relating to city planning and regulations. And again, in the upcoming slides, I'll start to cover more of the details of the draft. But as you can... Oh, dear. As you can see though on the timeline again we're aiming for adoption or present proposed adoption to Council in January. All right so jumping into the highlights of the draft Urban Forest Master Plan there is a lot of content so again we'll open up for questions and discussion later on.

And I will note, Fairfax did fall within this peer group of the 25,000 to approximately 50,000 people. And so it did seem like a fair comparison in that regards. So jumping onto the table here, notably Fairfax employs three certified arborists and is proactively developing its first urban forest master plan. those are definitely accomplishments to celebrate. However, Fairfax operates with 58% lower staff capacity compared to these peer cities, as well as 76% lower budget compared to these cities. Given these findings, staff capacity and budget, as you can imagine, were a large factor going into the development of the plan throughout the way that I'll touch on in the upcoming slides and more information on

So moving to the actual vision and guiding principles, these represent the overall themes of the Urban Forest Master Plan. And we're informed again by those conversations we had with the public. The vision reads, through thoughtful planning and shared care, Fairfax will grow a resilient urban forest now and into the future. The guiding principles highlight three broad ways the urban forest contributes to the city's livability and underscores the importance of proactive care. The guiding principles include that urban forests are healthy communities, climate solutions, and cost savings. And we worked to reinforce these benefits throughout the plan. The third step and third question of the adaptive management process is how do we get there?

Again, otherwise known as the implementation plan. This includes the objectives, strategies, and actions. The objectives represent key outcomes to achieve while the strategies are the approaches. We'll share more on these in the upcoming slides. Action items are then the specific steps to implement the strategies and they're broken into short, medium, and long-term planning timeframes. each of the objectives and actions are presented with key findings from phase one metrics for success identifying existing partners as well as then necessary resources for effective implementation and again those call-out boxes were integrated throughout especially with the context that this is the city's first urban forest master plan and so we wanted to keep in mind kind

Again like I said the community is highly already engaged and cares deeply about the urban forest. This seeks to strengthen the community's involvement and how to get involved through stewardship, private tree care, involvement of boards and commissions and improved transparency. The five objectives try to capture the needs and desires of the urban forest that we heard from the public along the way. So touching on that capacity and budget, that being quite a limiting factor, the goal is that the urban forest master plan creates an opportunity to maximize efficiencies by looking at urban forest operations and needs as a whole across all the departments even before any additional staff or budget are brought on board. This

Anecdotally, yes. So I've certainly been in discussion with a lot of their urban forest managers through this project. And so probably the most applicable is the town of Vienna. There are four square miles or thereabouts or six square miles. they they recently provided or updated their ordinance to have a standalone tree conservation ordinance they have not yet embarked on a urban forest master plan in comparison though their staff they have five full-time staff compared to us having approximately three one of which is kind of a composition between a lot of different staff so they're they're more well staffed and the city of Falls Church I know they they lack a lot of tree regulations that we have for in our

Paul Nabtistaffin the future city council also received a presentation on the urban forest master plan as you did tonight tomorrow december 9th there is a lot of things on the agenda but one thing that we talked about before is the board and commissioner's handbook this is being considered It is still intended for new members. Chair Feather made recommendations that it be applied more broadly, but certainly we can use it that way even after it's adopted. It's good information for everybody, so we will certainly share it with you. One other upcoming item of note, the Comprehensive Plan Implementation Group will be meeting next Thursday, February 18th at 9 a.m. This meeting will focus on the Camp Washington Small Area Plan.