City Council Work Session

Kacey ClarkclerkOur next and last item is a presentation and discussion of the draft urban forest master plan. I'll recognize Anna Safford, urban forest manager, for the presentation.

Anna SaffordstaffGood evening, Mayor and Council. Tonight we are here to present an update on the Urban Forest Master Plan project. With me is Dr. Garrett Wolfe from Marcel Day. Not with us tonight is Davie Resource Group, the lead consultant on the project, as well as WSSI, who has provided technical assistance and local expertise along the way. Tonight we'll provide a project status update and spend most of the time providing an overview OF THE DRAFT URBAN FOREST MASTER PLAN, FOLLOWED BY NEXT STEPS AND THEN OPENING IT FOR QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION. SO AS FOR PROJECT STATUS UPDATE, WE ARE NEARING THE END OF PHASE TWO. PHASE ONE FOCUSED ON INFORMATION GATHERING, WHILE PHASE TWO FOCUSED ON DEVELOPING THE ACTUAL DRAFT ITSELF.

Garrett WolfeTHANK YOU, ANNA. AS ANNA MENTIONED, I'M GOING TO SHARE SOME HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE DRAFT URBAN FOREST MASTER PLAN. The main chapters of the master plan are organized around the four phases of the adaptive management process. Each chapter is color-coded to one of these four questions shown on the graphic. The first question, what do we have, focuses on gathering current information about Fairfax's urban forest, creating a baseline for that planning process that we underwent. The second question, what do we want, looks at the visioning and guiding principles for the plan. informed by input from stakeholders, the steering committee, and the public. Third question, how do we get there? This is also known as the implementation plan.

to cities with similar urban forest composition as opposed to just based on population. And while the study doesn't provide information on the respondent cities urban forest composition and condition, it does include key statistics on miles of roadway, land area, acreage of green space, number of public trees, street and park to provide a baseline context of infrastructure and land managed by peer city groupings. And so we looked at cities where Fairfax is comparable to these pure cities for these infrastructure and green space findings. Not just population. The last line in that table on the screen regarding pure cities budgets comes from that 2016 municipal tree care census. Notably, Fairfax employs three certified arborists and is proactive in developing its first urban forest master plan.

However, Fairfax operates with 58% of the staff capacity compared to peer cities and its budget is 76% lower than the national average for similarly sized cities. And although the plan used this report as its basis, we can also share anecdotally from surrounding jurisdictions that the town of Vienna has five full-time employees and the city of Falls Church has four dedicated exclusively to an urban forestry division. Given these findings, staff capacity and budget were major considerations when developing the implementation plan, which we'll share in a few slides. The master plan has much more benchmarking information on page 24 and the full operations review and references can be found within appendix

but we did really spend a lot of time on how it could be usable, both for community members, usable and readable for community members as well as staff. So we spent a lot of time on readability of the plan. The vision and guiding principles represent the overall themes for the Urban Forest Master Plan and were informed by many conversations with stakeholders and the public throughout the process. The vision reads, through thoughtful planning and shared care, Fairfax will grow a resilient urban forest now and into the future. The guiding principle highlights three broad ways that Fairfax's urban forest contributes to the city's livability, and they underscore the importance of proactively caring for the urban forest.

In the body of the report each objective strategies and action items are presented in detail with key findings metrics for success partners and necessary resources. Call out boxes are used throughout the plan to provide educational content and establish a baseline context. Since this is the city's first urban master plan we wanted to prioritize those elements that can be further built on in subsequent updates to the plan. Recognizing that the implementation plan in the report body contains a tremendous amount of information, a summary table for quick reference is provided in Appendix F. Within the plan, there's a timeline for forming a dedicated urban forestry division. This timeline was kept in mind when recommending implementation timeframes for each action.

Finally, ENGAGE. Fairfax's community already cares deeply about the urban forest, as I'm sure you are all very well aware. ENGAGE seeks to strengthen the community's involvement in the urban forest through stewardship, private tree care, involvement of boards and commissions, and improved transparency. Together, these five objectives capture the needs and desires for Fairfax's urban forest based upon input from staff, stakeholders, and the community. While capacity and budget can be limiting factors, the master plan creates an opportunity to maximize efficiencies by looking at the urban forest operations and needs as a whole, even before any additional staff are brought on board. The table on the screen indicates the existing positions that will have a role in the urban forest management plan implementation

and with updating their roles and responsibilities can play a larger role in implementation. By identifying key implementation partners in these roles, the master plan can be implemented step-by-step through incremental changes. This means that work can be done more efficiently and plan components can begin being implemented in the near term to staffing or budget. This plan addresses a broad range of urban forestry needs identified by staff, stakeholders, and community. While not all actions may launch on schedule due to staffing or budget constraints, the adaptive management approach allows for flexibility with updates every five years to realign priorities and respond to changing needs. We'll discuss the five-year updates in more

detail in a few slides. So challenges for implementing implementation largely arise from timeline and communication considerations. The master plan does recommend hiring several new positions as you can see here on the screen. However, it's important to note that these positions do not need to be hired all at once in order for implementation of the plan. They can be brought on as funding becomes available which will improve efficiency and support the urban forest master plans implementation. The fourth and final step in the adaptive management process is to ask how are we doing? This step focuses on assessing progress and measuring success using key performance indicators or KPIs which are included on the next slide. The 12 KPIs are tied to the plan's three

With this in mind, public communication is a major component of the plan's implementation and evaluation process. This chapter recommends routine assessments to evaluate plan progress on one-year and five-year schedules. After each annual assessment, the city should prepare a state of the urban forest annual report to provide residents with an update about accomplishments and next steps. Every five years, the city should perform a formal review of the urban forest master plan's goals, strategies and assess progress. Following the five-year review, the city should produce a five-year progress report and plan update addendum documenting the findings and importantly realigning the plan to address changing conditions of the city. These reports will enable the

Melanie Zippstaffby voiceI think it starts out with the public hearing and council adoption on the 27th, excuse me, of January. From that point, then Ms. Safford will work through the master plan. when it comes to the request for staff that will be bundled in with all of the requests that we have for staff and that will be part of the budget presentation that goes to you what has been included in the managers proposed budget possibly what hasn't been included in the managers proposed budget I can tell you right now we have 30 plus requests for staff and that is not unusual for the city to have those requests we have in the past maybe been able to fund one or two conversations about this forestry plan the implementation of it will take longer without the additional staff but it doesn't mean

Anna SaffordstaffRECOGNIZING I AM ONLY ONE PERSON, BUT AT THE SAME TIME, MY ROLE IS PARTLY TO DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT THE URBAN FOREST MASTER PLAN. THERE IS CAPACITY BUILT IN THERE THAT I WOULD BE WORKING TOWARDS WITH OTHER STAFF ON THIS.

Garrett WolfeCan I jump in real quick? Yeah. Yeah, so as Anna mentioned, some of that baseline data that was unfortunately outside the scope of the master planning effort is certainly necessary, not just for forecasting, but even just on a basic like annual or five year, how do we measure, you know, what we have been trying to do. but some of the things you mentioned particularly like scenarios I think that could easily be done with like some of the some of the action items particularly related to planning zoning and land use and say if we do this if we don't do this you know what would the trajectory be you know if development occurred at x pace those kinds of things and

Billy Batesthank you for the presentation I certainly look forward to supporting the adoption of the urban forest plan master plan and and I certainly also agree that making sure that these plans that efforts are made to implement these plans is important and that goes for this as well as the affordable housing strategic plan, the comprehensive plan, city bike plan, what have you. Each of those also have certain aspects that are relevant to sustainability and even to the urban forest and I think it's important to make sure that we're coordinating efforts in terms of those multiple plans and how they kind of overlap. And I also think it's important to point out that certainly forecasts and projections would also be worth exploring if possible.

Catherine Readconstant review process is things happen in our region regionally it will not just happen to our city it will happen to our region when things impact the tree canopy that are beyond our control but having a good basic plan having the resources having the staff having a process and constantly reviewing and what we can do about the things we can control for, I think this is an enormous investment the city needs to make. And so I am fully supportive of your urban forest master plan and look forward to hearing what comments the planning commission has to make and then to moving forward with adoption with this. So I thank you all for the presentation. I will, I think we are done here, so I am going to adjourn this work session at 1024 p.m.