Well, we'll do it.

And welcome to our budget work session.

Who should I turn it over to?

Steven, are you up?

Mr.

Bentley.

Sorry, I didn't know if budget was going to say something.

Well, I'm not sure either, so.

I know.

Let's let's talk trees.

I got it.

We'll go from here.

Good afternoon.

Mayor and council members, I'm Stephen Bentley, Director of the Raleigh Parks Department, and your backup materials, you have a detailed memo.

But I do have 12 slides that I would like to go to that break down the memo and some of the strategy and recommendations that we put before you today to consider.

The first is I just want to emphasize that leaf out is not just about trees, it is looking at how the city is going to promote natives and the use of natives and limit our use of invasive species within our projects.

We have developed a plant list for the development community to refer to when they are considering their private development.

We have also developed a native plant list for our community members to use at home, and we will work across departments from transportation to stormwater to rally water on best practices to be used related to trees and to natives and invasives.

We also now have a landing page on the city's website.

What we're here to talk about today is the leaf out proposal of 24,000 trees, and then we highlight in this leaf out program that we cannot do this alone as a city, that community partners are going to be the way we move the needle on some of these recommendations.

What are some other funding options to move the project forward or the leaf out program forward in year one, and then ultimately we do have a set of recommendations for you to consider today.

First, with the grant.

So the funds did come from the federal government and are coming through the state to uh Raleigh.

Um I was informed that the grant has to be expended in two years, so we feel confident when we do get our contract from the state that we can move forward with getting that grant award and funds uh moving forward.

The two areas we focused on in our grant is tree maintenance, which is pruning and removal of dangerous trees in Raleigh, and then tree planting.

And two areas that we'll focus on in tree planting is not only contractually but also community based.

It does not address staffing, it does not address outreach and education, and those were some of the things that we would put forward you today to fund uh with our recommendations.

Um we intend on um having contractors install some of the larger caliper trees, which are caliper means the uh measurement used for tree size, and we would do that on city-owned and city managed properties.

Um paralleling that we would develop a grant program so that we can work uh more clearly and intentionally with community partners and set that up so it is ready by fiscal year 28 so that we do not lose a year of planting.

We're gonna focus on the procurement, we'll say generally of a lot of trees so that we can work with community groups and faith-based groups on tree giveaways and tree events and uh from a so to maintain a kind of a community-based focused.

Um our targeted strategies.

Um, early on when we worked with the SWOT, which is Sustainability Wildlife and Urban Tree Committee, they had a focus of looking at at least a thousand trees to be planted in year one.

We will meet this goal.

We are confident we will exceed that goal.

Um how we will do that is through contract contractual planting uh as well as community-based planting, and we have some ranges there for you over the course of the next next fiscal year.

It does not include the 2,000 trees that will be planted.

We estimate annually through the real estate development process.

So when you have a rezoning and then you have a developer come in, we estimate that at least 2,000 trees are planted through that process alone.

Here is a summary table, and I'll pause here.

I would just encourage the council to consider this minimums.

So we are establishing kind of a baseline threshold, and our goal will be to work through our partnerships and resources we have, both within the parks department, this grant, and the recommendation of some fees that we're gonna ask you to move forward with that we will exceed this uh these minimums.

So you can see the grant over a two-year period, the development process, which I just referred to.

We do have a street tree planting fund, and I'll go through that in the next slide on what that those funds are, and then a supplemental planting.

So we plant trees every year outside of the grant and outside of the development projects in the parks department, and that is that supplemental planting.

So it estimates around over 3300 trees being planted annually at a minimum by the city.

So here are the I would say, for lack of a better term, the buckets of funds we have available for tree planting, payment in lieu of tree conservation.

So if a developer cannot meet the ordinance requirements, they pay a city a fee.

Those fees can only be used for tree planting and land acquisition, and we use those fees annually to plant trees.

Then payment in lieu of tree ordinance.

If developers cannot uh meet those ordinance requirements, they paid the city for us to address that.

And then ultimately donations and grants.

Um if you have specific detailed questions, I do have our city forester here, Zach Manor, who could help answer those.

Here are our recommendations for the council to consider.

Um I've worked with the manager's office, and the parks department is prepared to reallocate a 25-hour, we call permanent part-time position, which means they have access to some benefits to initiate this program, begin to scale it up.

We would also reallocate some funding within our um ongoing operating budget for simple things like a phone, a computer, and then access to our motor pool or vehicles that we already have.

Essentially, we're going to utilize this position and then use the capacity within the parks department.

We're a pretty large department with equipment, marketing staff, so this individual, he or she will be able to utilize the resources we have in place to help scale and get the program up and going.

And then finally, our last recommendation is to use a hundred thousand dollars of the payment and lie tree conservation area funds to increase funding.

So you saw the baseline of around 3,300.

If we add a hundred thousand dollars, depending on the tree size, that's why I have 500 to 1,000, whether it be uh one gallon tree or a seven-gallon tree, we feel like we can add even 500 to 1,000 more trees to those totals that you saw.