Urban Forestry Master Plan Presentation and Discussion - Norman City Council (September 9, 2025)
Urban Forestry Master Plan Presentation and Discussion - Norman City Council (September 9, 2025)
The Norman City Council held a conference meeting on Tuesday, September 9, 2025, at 5:30 PM to receive a presentation and hold a discussion on the proposed 20-year Urban Forest Master Plan developed by Davey Resource Group in partnership with city staff. The meeting covered the current state of Norman's urban forest, community engagement results, benchmarking data, and a series of strategic recommendations.
Presentation of the Urban Forest Master Plan
- Introduction: James Briggs, Park Development Manager, opened the presentation, explaining the plan was contracted in late summer 2024 to guide the city's forestry division for the next 15 to 20 years. He noted the plan graphically aligns with the Community Wildfire Protection Plan and the Parks and Recreation Master Plan.
- Findings and Community Engagement: Dana Carcher, Urban and Community Forestry Specialist with Davey, presented the findings. The planning process included a park tree inventory, a steering committee, stakeholder focus groups, public meetings, and a community survey. Key findings showed 84% of survey respondents felt there were too few trees in the park system. Cooling shade and providing wildlife habitat were identified as the most valued benefits of trees by the community.
- Current Forestry Operations: The citywide tree canopy is approximately 30%. A park inventory counted 5,775 trees (excluding wilderness areas). Eastern Red Cedar is the most prevalent species, approaching the recommended 10% diversity limit. Other major species include Lacebark Elm, Bald Cypress, American Elm, and Loblolly Pine. The forestry division operates with relatively low staffing (one primary forester and part-time support) and an annual budget of roughly $450,000, which staff noted allows them to do a significant amount of work with limited resources.
- Recommendations: The plan offers five strategic pillars:
- Grow Crew: Expand to a dedicated 3-person tree crew plus a crew chief (requiring a $1.4 million budget increase) and acquire a grapple truck.
- Prioritize Maintenance: Implement routine maintenance cycles (5-10 years), care for young trees, and outsource high-risk removals.
- Protect the Urban Forest: Adopt climate-resilient species, monitor pest threats like Emerald Ash Borer, manage invasive species, and track canopy changes.
- Plan for Sustainable Growth: Identify priority planting areas, expand NeighborWoods, review development impacts on trees, and preserve historically significant trees through a mechanism for creating 'historic tree districts' currently being drafted by city staff.
- Partner on Implementation: Engage volunteers, nonprofits, institutions, and utility forestry, along with regular reporting to the Parks Board.
Council Discussion and Key Positions
- Councilor McPico questioned the status of Eastern Red Cedar as an invasive species and inquired about programs for historically significant trees. The presenters confirmed the plan includes recommendations on both topics, and staff noted a 'historic tree district' ordinance is being drafted for future council consideration.
- Councilor Pico asked about the proposed $1.4 million budget increase, which was confirmed as solely for new staffing and equipment, and inquired about federal funding. Dana Carcher stated that federal urban forestry programs have been heavily cut and advised the city to stop depending on such grants. Councilor Pico also asked how other cities finance these programs, learning that general funds and dedicated taxes are common. Councilor Pico expressed strong support for a parking lot tree retrofit program modeled after Hanford, California, and advocated for aggressive replanting policies on city projects, specifically suggesting a replacement ratio of four new trees for every one removed.
- Another Council Member praised the work of the city's sole forester, Colin, but strongly advocated for incremental staffing additions. The member argued it is poor business practice to rely on a single person for critical institutional knowledge and expertise, stating, “It is never a good business practice to only have one person… if you lose that one person, you just lost all that knowledge.”
- Councilor Pico aligned the city's priorities with the plan’s direction. He suggested identifying cost savings from reduced use of storm cleanup contractors to help fund staffing increases. He also raised the possibility of increasing the visitor tax and dedicating a portion of the revenue to fund the expanded parks and forestry functions requested in the plan.
Key Outcomes
- The meeting was a presentation and discussion only; no formal vote was taken on the plan or its budget recommendations.
- Council members expressed general support for the plan and directed staff to consider its recommendations during the upcoming city budget development process.
- City staff confirmed they are currently revising the tree ordinance to include a mechanism for neighborhoods to apply for 'historic tree district' designation, which will be brought before the council at a later date.
- The Urban Forest Master Plan is intended to serve as a 20-year strategic roadmap guiding the future of Norman's forestry division.
Meeting Transcript
Yeah, tried to run with it and software you can sure. Okay, just do it. All right, everybody. Let's go ahead and get started. It's 5 30. Welcome to the City Council conference for Tuesday, September 9th, 2025. We have one item on the agenda, and it is a presentation and discussion regarding the urban forestry master plan. And we have city staff here from to uh talk to us about that. Hello, thank you. I'm James Briggs. I'm the uh park development manager. Um I am actually in charge of our city, our entire city forestry crew. What you see here. We have one. We have another so uh we are excited about this. It's been a long time coming. So back in 24, we contacted and contracted with Davy Resource Group to produce an urban forest master plan, included a process of uh assessing the current state of forestry division here, gathering input from steering committee. We had stakeholder meetings, we had public meetings, we had a lot of uh data come in, and we'll go over that as you see in the presentation. We compared Norman's forestry division to cities of similar size, city is of similar region, and also to national uh standards as far as how forestry divisions operate. Um Davey worked in close partnership with all different city staff. We had meetings, uh, focus groups with different um departments, see how they interact with forestry. Uh because it's you know public works, every utilities will all interact with our tree canopy. So we're trying to achieve a uh urban forest master plan, which is sort of helped guide the work of forestry division in the city, all of us for the next 20 years, 15 to 20 years. So after months and months of public study, Davey presented us a Norman Forest Master Plan draft. We reviewed it, and then we kind of tweaked it to make sure it aligned up graphically and um philosophically with community wildfire protection plan, which y'all saw recently and we adopted um with the uh parks and rec and culture master plan, which we did as part of the A Norman process. Graphically it looks the same as those, so they all kind of marry together. Um parkboard last week, actually. So it's it went through park board last week, and uh they had a couple little comments, but we're uh excited to share with us tonight. We have Dana Carcher, who is the urban and community forestry specialist with Davy. I'm gonna let her go through her presentation and excited to get this done. Thank you, James. Thank you for having me here. I've been in this room before talking about trees. I think it was in 2019 I came and visited, and um we had a really good conversation, and I love where this has gone and what has happened in this community. So we'll start here. This is our agenda. We'll go through the process that Davy does. Um we'll talk a little bit about the urban forest, what your urban forest looks like, what the program actually looks like, how it hop how it operates and how it works, and the most important thing really are recommendations. So with our planning process, we really talk about it's a 20-year guide, right? It's going to show um not only citizens, but it will also show internally what will happen, what should happen with Norman Tree Norman's trees over the next 20 years. It sets goals that we worked on together, and then of course, recommended action steps to achieve those goals. We use a typical planning process when we do this, adaptive management. We look at what the city has, what they want. That's partly through community engagement. How do we get there? What are the steps that are needed to grow the urban forest, grow the canopy? We talk a lot about that. And then how are we doing this really the role of Norman? And how do you what are those benchmarks that you can measure yourself against or into the future? Here's where we started.
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