The City of San Diego retained tree maintenance work and added $300,000 for planting trees, in the FY2021 urban forestry budget. This followed the Independent Budget Analyst recommendation that the funds address the backlog of 1,800 tree requests. Attention to the details will ensure that these additional funds are clear investments in climate action and environmental justice, and in community engagement for tree care and planting. THANK YOU! to all nine councilmembers, who advocated for keeping the urban forestry budget!
The additional $300k for tree planting (approved in the FY 2021 budget) can be a substantial “down payment” to both Climate Action Plan (CAP) implementation and environmental justice.
- Climate change is accelerating, cities are warming, and public desire for action is increasing. Trees are affordable, amazing and highly visible ways to cool neighborhoods and implement goal 5 of the CAP.
- All San Diegans deserve healthy neighborhoods, yet decades of inequitable public investments (locally and nationally) have perpetuated environmental injustice. The City can acknowledge and address some environmental justice wrongs by planting and caring for trees in these neighborhoods.
Traditional approaches to public programs may need to be assessed, and pandemic realities may drive us to innovative, effective ways to work together and make investments.
- Reliance on the “free tree” request program (that developed in FY 2018 when the Mayor added $300k for tree planting) and continued with the annual $100k for planting trees in ROW in the order that residents have requested a “free tree. City staff contact residents to confirm their watering agreement, and then a contractor plants one or two trees in their parkway.
- A sobering reality is that public trees can be easily ignored (not watering), vandalized, and die within a few years of planting. Neighborhood pride will counter that, and communities can and should have a hand in deciding where and how the City invests in trees. Detroit’s experience was that 1/4 of the trees were rejected in their 25,000-tree planting effort because of distrust of the city, even with awareness of shade tree cooling benefits. The survey identified success factors: inviting community (not individual resident) tree care, engaging youth, and offering some choice in species planted. NYTimes article
- There are many success stories of community engagement in other cities, notably Los Angeles and Sacramento. The CityPlants program in Los Angeles (financed by LA Water and Power and others) incorporates many of these elements, https://www.cityplants.org/, and may be a model for San Diego.
Community engagement for tree planting has started with Kate Sessions Commitment, and now needs political support.
- Community members and urban forestry professionals have been working for more than a year on a campaign to plant healthy trees for healthy neighborhoods. (This was launched after 30 spoke on urban forestry issues, at the April 18, 2019 meeting of the Council’s Environment Committee.)
- From this, the Kate Sessions Commitment started in January, inviting communities to plant 100 trees annually and setting up processes to engage communities and educate residents. These feature Kate Sessions’ legacy (planting 100 trees for use of City land for her nursery), focus on neighborhoods with low canopy, share how to plant and care for trees, and the power of “taking action” to invest in our future.
- Tree planting could and should be prioritized by the climate equity index that was proposed in the 2019 CAP appendix. These are mostly neighborhoods in districts 4, 8 and 9.
- Funds could launch a public education program. Some neighborhoods have few parkways and parks for additional tree planting, so tree canopy increase must rely on residential and commercial tree planting and care. The 2008 General Plan established policies for mitigating urban heat that included public outreach and education, and these were affirmed in the 2018 Five-year Urban Forest Management Plan action steps.
- There are many innovative, effective ways to work together in new ways, as Covid-19 has been teaching us. Conversations and collaboration need to begin, to apply collective and creative action to this “new” $300,000 for tree planting.
Contact Anne Fege, afege@sdrufc.com, Chair of the Community Forest Advisory Board, City of San Diego, and Executive committee of the San Diego Regional Urban Forests Council.