Join Us at a Community Budget Forum
By Erica Timm
Friends of Trees appreciates all of you who have taken the time to write letters and emails to the Mayor and City Commissioners expressing your support for Friends of Trees, and those of you who have put on your tree team shirts and joined us at the last two Portland community budget forums.
Your support has helped encourage the Mayor to add much of the Friends of Trees funding back to the proposed budget but, unfortunately, the funding remains uncertain.
Additionally, the Friends of Trees funding in the proposed budget has been moved to the Portland Parks & Recreation Bureau. This creates two challenges.
• First, the funding will come from the general fund, rather than from stormwater rates, as it currently does. Trees help manage stormwater and enhance watershed health, and therefore should be part of the sewer and stormwater bureau’s green infrastructure portfolio. Stormwater rates should be used as a consistent funding stream for green infrastructure projects that provide cost-effective ecosystem services to our community.
• Secondly, the Bureau of Environmental Services houses the extensive street tree planting canvassing team. This team of trained professionals is able to reach out to many Portlanders in diverse neighborhoods, offering them the opportunity to plant trees. The canvassers create equal access for all Portlanders to plant trees, and we don’t want to lose this vital resource. For example, before canvassers reached out to East Portland, a historically underserved area of the city with low canopy, we planted just over 100 trees throughout the entire region east of I-205, last year we planted over 700 trees, thanks to the BES canvassers offering tree planting opportunities. In addition, BES planted 2,050 trees in this same area, just this year. Canvassing really helps to engage everyone interested in trees.
Last night, a small group of Friends of Trees staff and volunteers attended the community budget forum at City Hall to share these concerns. Our City Council, Bureau Directors, and Mayor will make decisions in the next few days that will determine the health of our urban forest for years to come.
How can you help?
Share your story! Our City Council and Mayor need to know how much you appreciate the trees in your neighborhood and the camaraderie and community spirit that Friends of Trees’ plantings inspire. You can do this in two ways:
First, please consider attending an upcoming community budget forum. The next one is tomorrow, Saturday, May 18, from 3:00 to 5:00 pm at Warner Pacific College – McGuire Auditorium (2219 SE 68th Ave). If you have a Friends of Trees shirt, please wear it to show solidarity with the others there who care about our city trees.
If you can’t attend a hearing, or even if you can, please email City Council and the Director of the Bureau of Environmental Services, Dean Marriott. You can copy and paste this short message into your emails or write a more personal message about why Friends of Trees is important to you: “We appreciate our city trees. Thank you for restoring 90 percent funding to the Friends of Trees contract. We hope that every Portlander has the opportunity to plant a tree, and that’s why we’d like to ensure the street tree canvassing funding is restored. Every home deserves a tree!”
These are the email addresses for our Mayor, City Council Members, and the Director of BES:
• Mayor Charlie Hales – [email protected]
• Commissioner Nick Fish – [email protected]
• Commissioner Steve Novick – [email protected]
• Commissioner Amanda Fritz – [email protected]
• Commissioner Dan Saltzman – [email protected]
• BES Director Dean Marriott – [email protected]
All of us at Friends of Trees appreciate your taking the time to let our city leaders know that you value our city’s trees. Your voice can make it possible for us to work with Portland residents to continue improving our city by planting trees, neighborhood by neighborhood! Thank you!
–Timm is a Senior Neighborhood Trees Specialist for Friends of Trees.