City planning $1.45M for more trees
Boosting tree canopy to 40% by 2050
Columbus plans to spend $1.45 million to begin implementing its urban forestry master plan that would increase the number of trees in city neighborhoods and boost the tree canopy cover to 40% of the city by 2050.
Columbus City Council is expected to vote on the measure Monday — its first meeting after its summer break.
In April, the city Recreation and Parks Commission and City Council voted to support the plan to remake the city’s urban forest. In Columbus, just 22% of the city is covered by trees, but that’s based on the most recent data from 2013.
That compares to 39% in Cincinnati; 40% in Pittsburgh; 37% in Louisville, Kentucky; and 30% in Minneapolis, according to the city. Columbus is, however, better than Cleveland’s, which is 19%.
Trees help provide shade that cools homes while removing carbon dioxide from the air and helping to improve air quality and intercept storm water. The plan estimates that the city’s tree canopy captures 2.5 million pounds of air pollutants a year while intercepting 331 million gallons of storm water.
Beyond boosting the tree canopy cover to 40%, other goals of the plan include reducing net canopy losses by 2030 while investing in an equitable canopy cover across all neighborhoods by 2030. The city says that currently, tree canopy by neighborhood ranges
from 9% to as high as 41%, so some neighborhoods benefit from a denser tree canopy more than others.
For example, the city’s tree canopy map shows that the trees are dense in the Clintonville neighborhood, but less so in areas such as the urban Franklinton area and newer Far West Side neighborhoods.
City Council Pro Tempore Elizabeth Brown said it’s important to create denser canopies, especially in neighborhoods of color, where many residents don’t have as many trees as predominately white neighborhoods.
“It has to get done,” Brown said, calling the goals “environmental rights in action.”
Seventy percent of the city’s tree canopy is on private property.
The plan said the city did not have unified urban forestry goals, and no well-defined ordinances and policies for tree protection and preservation on private property.
In January 2019, The Dispatch reported that a city program that was supposed to plant 300,000 trees by 2020 didn’t come close to that number.
The Dispatch reported in August 2018 that the city had planted 35,718 trees since the Branch Out program began in 2015. And by January 2019, the total had increased to just 38,631.
Kerry Francis, a spokeswoman with the city’s recreation and parks department, said the city has planted or will plant a total of 4,165 trees from this past spring into this fall. From 2015-2019, the city planted an average of 3,000 trees a year, she said.
“Protecting our urban forest would be something our department would be focused on regardless of the past,” she said.
City Council in July 2020 approved spending just over $2 million to purchase the former Stockbridge Elementary School site on South Champion Avenue on the city’s South Side. Francis said Columbus plans to plant thousands
of trees on the school property, located adjacent to the city’s Stockbridge Park, which is accessed from the 3000 block of Lockbourne Road.
The city removed 1,800 trees this year that posed a property or safety hazard, she said.
Brown said this funding is the first in a series of steps to meet city’s goals.
“The plan is big. The plan is ambitious,” Brown said.
Anthony Sasson, an associate with the Midwest Biodiversity Institute and long-time environmental advocate, agreed that the plan is ambitious – and needed.
Sasson has commented on the plan, and said more trees will help keep waterways cooler and protect fish and other species as well as the whole food chain in streams.
He also said the city needs to spend more to get rid of invasive plants such as honeysuckle that crowd out native trees.
Within the $1.45 million City Council is to vote on Monday is a $300,000 increase of a contract with Davey Resource Group, headquartered in Kent, Ohio, to continue a citywide street tree inventory, bringing the contract’s total amount to $539,250.
Money also will be spent on tree installation, hazardous tree removal, stump grinding, tree-site preparation, urban forestry professional services, cellular service, office supplies, forestry supplies, uniforms, and safety equipment.
At its meeting Monday, the council also plans to vote on a $2.27-million contract with G&G Concrete Construction of Columbus for new sidewalks along Deshler Avenue between South 18th Street and Lockbourne Avenue, and Kossuth Street between Linwood Avenue and Carpenter Street, both on the South Side.
The city is calling them Celebrateone sidewalks because they are in neighborhoods the nonprofit Celebrateone program is targeting to improve infant mortality rates. mferench@dispatch.com @Markferenchik