Classics
The following article has been selected because it is deemed very popular or very important to the arboricultural profession and deserves special recognition. It has appeared in a previous Seminar and because of this it is not eligible for earning certification credits; there is no test at the end of this article.
Extending the Forestry Budget
By Len Phillips
Most people consider municipal funding for tree management and planting as a pure luxury in the budget and it should be the first place to cut when times are tough. This attitude is common because people see trees only as necessary for their beauty and have nothing to do with public health. People remember the disruption trees cause to the utilities and private property during storms. They also dislike the cleanup required after storms and the leaves that come down every autumn.
Because of these negative issues, arborists have tried to reverse this concern from many different approaches. Most recently we have been classifying trees as infrastructure and a solution to global warming. To some degree, this helps gain acceptance from public officials, but the municipal tree budgets are still the first-to-cut.
So what is the municipal arborist to do? Where should the priority be? Do you cut preventive maintenance, emergency response, tree planting, staff, equipment, contracted services??? Or should the focus be on increasing the efficiency of the tree management program, making the department too valuable to cut, and raising funds from other sources. This article will focus on extending the forestry budget.
Fortunately, the economy has begun to bounce back from the “Great Recession”. Now is a good time to seek more funding. Not only do people have a bit more money in their pockets, but with climate change on everyone's mind, people are looking for “green” solutions.
Listed below are some ideas for getting more tree management funds within the limited municipal budget. These ideas have proven to be successful enough to include in this discussion.
Tree Fund Donations
The first step the municipal arborist must do is talk to the city budget director or treasurer to see if monetary gifts can be accepted for use by the tree department to purchase and maintain trees within the city. The gifts should be tax deductible and specifically for planting or maintaining trees on municipal property. With that set up, you can become very creative in your search for additional tree care dollars.
Cost Sharing Programs
Start locally, in your own city and the various city budgets. Look at the line items and ask other city departments for funds to maintain trees on municipal properties such as the schools, the parks, the conservation properties. One of my favorites was to have the highway department pay for landscaping and maintaining their traffic islands. In a similar fashion, I liked to use parking meter receipts to cover the cost for tree and landscape enhancement and maintenance of the municipal parking lots. If you have private land owning organizations in the city, go to them with the same request.
You might have to ask for additional employees to do this additional work, but the transfer of funds should be more than enough to cover your costs. By making the tree department important to other departments in the good times, it becomes too important to cut in the bad times. Also be creative with your employee assignments. I recall having one employee who became too ill to climb, but by assigning him to line clearing from the bucket truck, he continued to use his skills working under the direction of the municipal electric company and was grateful he could keep working. The list goes on. Happy employees are productive employees.
Many state and philanthropic organizations have funds available that can be used for the care of trees. Sometimes these funds require a match with the funds in your budget or funds in your tree gift fund. Local citizens are sometimes willing to make donations for a specific planting project and will match city funds. Also, don’t be afraid to ask local garden clubs as well as corporate and civic organizations to contribute to your tree gift fund especially if you can tie a tree management effort into one of the organization’s projects.
Alternative Funding Sources
Sometimes there are other city, state, or federal programs as well as private corporations who have set aside funds that are not directly related to tree planting, but may require landscaping as part of a development project. Be aware of these projects and be prepared to request that funds be available for planting or maintaining street trees as a requirement for approval of the project.
Funds are often available from the US Forest Service that might be used for inventories, canopy mapping, planting, and sometimes even maintenance. Some cities are getting tree management funds from the EPA and their Urban Waters, Environmental Justice, and 319 grants. The DOT has funding available in the TIGER grant program. Also encourage your city to go after Complete Streets Program funds. While you are focused on federal grants, plan to spend a day at your computer studying grants.com for more ideas.
State and regional funds are also available for tree planting matching funds. Contact your state Urban Forestry Coordinator for more information. Also make contact with special districts such as water districts, sewer districts, regional zoos or arboretums, shopping centers, colleges, and other large commercial or industrial complexes for financial support of beautification programs near their facilities that exist or are proposed.
Local groups such as garden clubs and other civic organizations, as well as private foundations, often have funds for local beautification projects. Be involved with these groups to participate in their beautification efforts so municipal trees become part of their projects. Often simply mentioning the existence of the tree gift fund will encourage private or corporation donations. Take advantage of your status as a public, non-profit agency, having professional staff and administrative support systems, when applying for private grants. For more information about foundations, visit Foundation Center.
By working with the planning board and other municipal departments, you can have a local code approved that will require that every tree removed for a development project be replaced elsewhere in the city. Also ask that the public trees growing adjacent to the project be pruned once or maintained in perpetuity by the developer. In a similar way, the city should require all local utility companies to replace all trees removed for line maintenance, near where the trees were removed. Alternative to this would be a cash donation from the utility to the municipal tree gift fund. In this case, let the utility know that only low-growing trees that would be planted under the overhead lines would be purchased, and these would not require any trimming past the first structural pruning.
Many people also like to have a tree planted in memory of a loved one who was involved with the city or a civic organization. Sometimes the donor is willing to have an engraved stone or a bronze plaque placed at the base of the tree. Other times the donation should be noted in a gift remembrance book that is kept on public display. Publicizing this gift or dedicating the tree as part of the annual Arbor Day ceremony is a great way to encourage additional donations. Try to always obtain the Arbor Day tree as a gift.
Once you have completed your tree inventory and prepared a street tree master plan, develop a 10-year environmental improvement plan to plant “x” number of trees every year. By making this a justifiable capital project in the master plan, you should be able to convince the city leaders to approve and fund this long term capital improvement project.
Stormwater utility fees are now being assessed to all property owners to deal with stormwater management. The investment in planting and maintaining trees is an acceptable use of these funds.
Revenue sharing is still alive in many cities. This program usually helps the departments that have been underfunded.
Reimbursements
When an auto accident or large fire in the city has damaged public shade trees, you should seek insurance claims for reimbursement of the tree’s property value or to pay for the tree's repair and maintenance and have a contractor come in to do the job instead of using your own tree crews. If the tree is a total loss, add the funds to the tree gift fund for tree replacements during the next planting season and use the money to purchase more trees than are budgeted.
City employees should be reimbursed for the time they spend reviewing applications and inspecting city issued permits. This reimbursement should be included as a part of the permit fee.
Resident Options
By considering any of the following options, not only is there a chance of freeing up funds for additional tree purchases, but you can also build positive public relations with your city’s residents.
Tips for Getting a Lower Cost
By taking advantage of quantity discounts at the nursery when purchasing trees, you may have to reduce the number of varieties you want, but the lower price allows the purchase of more trees. If you are coming up short in the numbers, try to combine your order with other departments and other cities to earn the quantity discounts. If you have a good relationship with the nurseries you often do business with, you might be able to take advantage of nursery overstock and accept lower quality trees as gifts or at a very low cost. These extra trees are very suitable for parks and conservation properties.
Try new varieties to learn about better and sometimes less expensive trees. Every once in a while a tree comes along that does very well in your city and you are able to purchase them at better prices than what you usually spend. Sometimes you find a new tree that turned out to not be popular, but the nursery grew more that it could sell. You may get them at a lower than normal cost.
Nurseries are also willing to offer discounts if they know they can sell a particular tree when it reaches the right size. So, if your city and local laws allow, write a long-term growers contract with a nursery to provide your list of trees in 3 or 4 years. Even if a bid is necessary, have 3 nurseries bid on the contract and select the one that grows the best trees. If you are required to bid for all trees, consider this option, using the 'Quality Nursery Tree' specification found on our Specification Page.
One major cost saving tip is to plant bare root trees, which are half the cost of B&B trees. Bare root trees are easy for the trained volunteer to plant as well. Contractors will charge half to one-third the cost of planting B&B if they are planting bare root.
Planting smaller trees are less expensive than large trees, not only in the purchase price, but the planting price as well. Plus the smaller trees will recover from the transplant shock much faster than the larger tree. Many times I have seen a 1-1/2 inch (4 cm) diameter tree, out-grow a 4 inch (10 cm) tree in 4 years.
If watering is included in the tree planting cost, use water bags to reduce watering time and the cost after planting. The water bags not only provide water at the desirable slow drip, they fill up in a few minutes. Keep track of how many trees a person can water in a day and then see how much time is saved with the water bags in use. Reuse the water bags for several years. Depending on your budget system, if the watering is paid out of the tree planting fund, then the money saved is available to plant additional trees.
Most cities require all purchases to be made by bidding. However there is usually a quote system that applies to small purchases. If each tree is considered a separate item, you may be able to obtain quotes for each tree separately and each size of tree quoted by the planting contractor. Quoted prices are usually lower than bid prices. For more information on this program see “A Tree Planting Program That Works”.
Long Term Ideas
One long term idea requires the use of a city-owned vacant lot to plant a diverse forest of trees using low cost whips from a wholesale nursery. This idea will require a minimal level of municipal staff or volunteers until the trees reach a size that will survive transplanting onto the city streets. When transplanting the trees over a series of years, be sure to leave enough growing on the vacant lot to create a long-term forest filled with a diversity of species.
Here are a couple of ideas that will require a new policy. The first idea will require residents wanting a public tree removed to provide funds to replace the tree elsewhere in the city. The second idea is similar but pertains to trees on private property. This would be a law or regulation that requires a permit to remove trees on private property. A fee system for the permit would provide some funds for additional tree planting somewhere else or the law could require tree replacement one for one on another property.
Finally, many cities have chosen to sell their urban wood, wood chips, and composted leaves generated by the tree department. The revenue from the sales can be placed in the tree planting fund to be used for purchasing additional trees the following year.
Sources
The following article has been selected because it is deemed very popular or very important to the arboricultural profession and deserves special recognition. It has appeared in a previous Seminar and because of this it is not eligible for earning certification credits; there is no test at the end of this article.
Extending the Forestry Budget
By Len Phillips
Most people consider municipal funding for tree management and planting as a pure luxury in the budget and it should be the first place to cut when times are tough. This attitude is common because people see trees only as necessary for their beauty and have nothing to do with public health. People remember the disruption trees cause to the utilities and private property during storms. They also dislike the cleanup required after storms and the leaves that come down every autumn.
Because of these negative issues, arborists have tried to reverse this concern from many different approaches. Most recently we have been classifying trees as infrastructure and a solution to global warming. To some degree, this helps gain acceptance from public officials, but the municipal tree budgets are still the first-to-cut.
So what is the municipal arborist to do? Where should the priority be? Do you cut preventive maintenance, emergency response, tree planting, staff, equipment, contracted services??? Or should the focus be on increasing the efficiency of the tree management program, making the department too valuable to cut, and raising funds from other sources. This article will focus on extending the forestry budget.
Fortunately, the economy has begun to bounce back from the “Great Recession”. Now is a good time to seek more funding. Not only do people have a bit more money in their pockets, but with climate change on everyone's mind, people are looking for “green” solutions.
Listed below are some ideas for getting more tree management funds within the limited municipal budget. These ideas have proven to be successful enough to include in this discussion.
Tree Fund Donations
The first step the municipal arborist must do is talk to the city budget director or treasurer to see if monetary gifts can be accepted for use by the tree department to purchase and maintain trees within the city. The gifts should be tax deductible and specifically for planting or maintaining trees on municipal property. With that set up, you can become very creative in your search for additional tree care dollars.
Cost Sharing Programs
Start locally, in your own city and the various city budgets. Look at the line items and ask other city departments for funds to maintain trees on municipal properties such as the schools, the parks, the conservation properties. One of my favorites was to have the highway department pay for landscaping and maintaining their traffic islands. In a similar fashion, I liked to use parking meter receipts to cover the cost for tree and landscape enhancement and maintenance of the municipal parking lots. If you have private land owning organizations in the city, go to them with the same request.
You might have to ask for additional employees to do this additional work, but the transfer of funds should be more than enough to cover your costs. By making the tree department important to other departments in the good times, it becomes too important to cut in the bad times. Also be creative with your employee assignments. I recall having one employee who became too ill to climb, but by assigning him to line clearing from the bucket truck, he continued to use his skills working under the direction of the municipal electric company and was grateful he could keep working. The list goes on. Happy employees are productive employees.
Many state and philanthropic organizations have funds available that can be used for the care of trees. Sometimes these funds require a match with the funds in your budget or funds in your tree gift fund. Local citizens are sometimes willing to make donations for a specific planting project and will match city funds. Also, don’t be afraid to ask local garden clubs as well as corporate and civic organizations to contribute to your tree gift fund especially if you can tie a tree management effort into one of the organization’s projects.
Alternative Funding Sources
Sometimes there are other city, state, or federal programs as well as private corporations who have set aside funds that are not directly related to tree planting, but may require landscaping as part of a development project. Be aware of these projects and be prepared to request that funds be available for planting or maintaining street trees as a requirement for approval of the project.
Funds are often available from the US Forest Service that might be used for inventories, canopy mapping, planting, and sometimes even maintenance. Some cities are getting tree management funds from the EPA and their Urban Waters, Environmental Justice, and 319 grants. The DOT has funding available in the TIGER grant program. Also encourage your city to go after Complete Streets Program funds. While you are focused on federal grants, plan to spend a day at your computer studying grants.com for more ideas.
State and regional funds are also available for tree planting matching funds. Contact your state Urban Forestry Coordinator for more information. Also make contact with special districts such as water districts, sewer districts, regional zoos or arboretums, shopping centers, colleges, and other large commercial or industrial complexes for financial support of beautification programs near their facilities that exist or are proposed.
Local groups such as garden clubs and other civic organizations, as well as private foundations, often have funds for local beautification projects. Be involved with these groups to participate in their beautification efforts so municipal trees become part of their projects. Often simply mentioning the existence of the tree gift fund will encourage private or corporation donations. Take advantage of your status as a public, non-profit agency, having professional staff and administrative support systems, when applying for private grants. For more information about foundations, visit Foundation Center.
By working with the planning board and other municipal departments, you can have a local code approved that will require that every tree removed for a development project be replaced elsewhere in the city. Also ask that the public trees growing adjacent to the project be pruned once or maintained in perpetuity by the developer. In a similar way, the city should require all local utility companies to replace all trees removed for line maintenance, near where the trees were removed. Alternative to this would be a cash donation from the utility to the municipal tree gift fund. In this case, let the utility know that only low-growing trees that would be planted under the overhead lines would be purchased, and these would not require any trimming past the first structural pruning.
Many people also like to have a tree planted in memory of a loved one who was involved with the city or a civic organization. Sometimes the donor is willing to have an engraved stone or a bronze plaque placed at the base of the tree. Other times the donation should be noted in a gift remembrance book that is kept on public display. Publicizing this gift or dedicating the tree as part of the annual Arbor Day ceremony is a great way to encourage additional donations. Try to always obtain the Arbor Day tree as a gift.
Once you have completed your tree inventory and prepared a street tree master plan, develop a 10-year environmental improvement plan to plant “x” number of trees every year. By making this a justifiable capital project in the master plan, you should be able to convince the city leaders to approve and fund this long term capital improvement project.
Stormwater utility fees are now being assessed to all property owners to deal with stormwater management. The investment in planting and maintaining trees is an acceptable use of these funds.
Revenue sharing is still alive in many cities. This program usually helps the departments that have been underfunded.
Reimbursements
When an auto accident or large fire in the city has damaged public shade trees, you should seek insurance claims for reimbursement of the tree’s property value or to pay for the tree's repair and maintenance and have a contractor come in to do the job instead of using your own tree crews. If the tree is a total loss, add the funds to the tree gift fund for tree replacements during the next planting season and use the money to purchase more trees than are budgeted.
City employees should be reimbursed for the time they spend reviewing applications and inspecting city issued permits. This reimbursement should be included as a part of the permit fee.
Resident Options
By considering any of the following options, not only is there a chance of freeing up funds for additional tree purchases, but you can also build positive public relations with your city’s residents.
- Some cities will allow residents to volunteer to plant trees and perform maintenance duties, so municipal labor funds can be used to purchase additional trees. Some of these volunteer programs have become very popular. In every case, the volunteer must attend a Saturday morning training session, so they know how to properly plant a tree. This is especially important if the volunteers are planting “light weight and easy to plant” bare root trees.
- The cities that offer pruning programs for volunteers require a whole day training session, including hands-on pruning. These pruning programs do not allow any tree climbing. The focus is on structural pruning of young trees that were planted within the past 5 years. The intent is to be sure the trees have a proper structure for a long term of vigorous growth that requires very little future maintenance.
Tips for Getting a Lower Cost
By taking advantage of quantity discounts at the nursery when purchasing trees, you may have to reduce the number of varieties you want, but the lower price allows the purchase of more trees. If you are coming up short in the numbers, try to combine your order with other departments and other cities to earn the quantity discounts. If you have a good relationship with the nurseries you often do business with, you might be able to take advantage of nursery overstock and accept lower quality trees as gifts or at a very low cost. These extra trees are very suitable for parks and conservation properties.
Try new varieties to learn about better and sometimes less expensive trees. Every once in a while a tree comes along that does very well in your city and you are able to purchase them at better prices than what you usually spend. Sometimes you find a new tree that turned out to not be popular, but the nursery grew more that it could sell. You may get them at a lower than normal cost.
Nurseries are also willing to offer discounts if they know they can sell a particular tree when it reaches the right size. So, if your city and local laws allow, write a long-term growers contract with a nursery to provide your list of trees in 3 or 4 years. Even if a bid is necessary, have 3 nurseries bid on the contract and select the one that grows the best trees. If you are required to bid for all trees, consider this option, using the 'Quality Nursery Tree' specification found on our Specification Page.
One major cost saving tip is to plant bare root trees, which are half the cost of B&B trees. Bare root trees are easy for the trained volunteer to plant as well. Contractors will charge half to one-third the cost of planting B&B if they are planting bare root.
Planting smaller trees are less expensive than large trees, not only in the purchase price, but the planting price as well. Plus the smaller trees will recover from the transplant shock much faster than the larger tree. Many times I have seen a 1-1/2 inch (4 cm) diameter tree, out-grow a 4 inch (10 cm) tree in 4 years.
If watering is included in the tree planting cost, use water bags to reduce watering time and the cost after planting. The water bags not only provide water at the desirable slow drip, they fill up in a few minutes. Keep track of how many trees a person can water in a day and then see how much time is saved with the water bags in use. Reuse the water bags for several years. Depending on your budget system, if the watering is paid out of the tree planting fund, then the money saved is available to plant additional trees.
Most cities require all purchases to be made by bidding. However there is usually a quote system that applies to small purchases. If each tree is considered a separate item, you may be able to obtain quotes for each tree separately and each size of tree quoted by the planting contractor. Quoted prices are usually lower than bid prices. For more information on this program see “A Tree Planting Program That Works”.
Long Term Ideas
One long term idea requires the use of a city-owned vacant lot to plant a diverse forest of trees using low cost whips from a wholesale nursery. This idea will require a minimal level of municipal staff or volunteers until the trees reach a size that will survive transplanting onto the city streets. When transplanting the trees over a series of years, be sure to leave enough growing on the vacant lot to create a long-term forest filled with a diversity of species.
Here are a couple of ideas that will require a new policy. The first idea will require residents wanting a public tree removed to provide funds to replace the tree elsewhere in the city. The second idea is similar but pertains to trees on private property. This would be a law or regulation that requires a permit to remove trees on private property. A fee system for the permit would provide some funds for additional tree planting somewhere else or the law could require tree replacement one for one on another property.
Finally, many cities have chosen to sell their urban wood, wood chips, and composted leaves generated by the tree department. The revenue from the sales can be placed in the tree planting fund to be used for purchasing additional trees the following year.
Sources
- Special thanks to the members of LinkedIn’s Urban Forestry Discussion Group for providing many of these ideas.
- Gulick, Jennifer, "Budgeting and Funding 101", Public Works, March 2016.