On April 9, 2026, the Syracuse City Council held a work session focused on proposed updates to Chapter 22 of the city code, which governs public trees along streets and in parks. The presentation was led by Karen Firehock, consultant with the Green Infrastructure Center, and Steve Harris, City Arborist with the Syracuse Parks Department. Councilors discussed new standards for tree protection, replacement, and a dedicated tree fund, as well as broader plans for future zoning changes affecting private development.
Overview of Tree Benefits:
Proposed Changes to Chapter 22 (Public Trees):
Future Zoning Changes (Article 4.5):
Community Engagement:
Thank you, everyone, for being here. Could you please say your names into the little microphony things? Sure. I'm Karen Firehock with the Green Infrastructure Center, and I'm your tree ordinance consultant. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Steve Harris, City Arborist, Syracuse Parks Department. Steve. Say Shopper Commissioner Parks. I'm Hannah Aaron Wright, Chair of the Parks Committee. Donamore, Councilor District. All right, we'll get started. I hear you have some stuff to tell us. I do. Counselors, thank you for coming, attending this meeting today. And the reason we're here today is we went through an urban forest master plan process in 2019 and 20. And the result of that process was a recognition that the community feels trees are infrastructure that the science backs that up, but our language laws and practice don't always treat trees as infrastructure. And it starts with modernizing our tree laws. So today we're bringing to you chapter 22, which is solely focused on the trees that the city owns and are mostly along our streets, our right-of-ways. Um working closely with Deputy Commissioner Jake Disha on Codes and our zoning administrator Zhi Tongwu, we will bring changes to you that will be impacting development, uh both tree protection and design measures that we feel uh we need do new developments to have in order for us to uh uh like our peers be a modern city that treats trees as infrastructure. That is more complicated and has more consideration, so it's gonna take us more time to do that. Okay, so as it relates to trees being infrastructure, this is just a a breezy tour of the benefits of trees. Uh trees provide civ significant stormwater control, which is why as part of uh the county's Save the Rain program, they invested 3.5 million dollars in tree planting, which the city oversaw working closely with the county and why uh they estimated they invested about five percent of their total program cross costs in tree-related activity. Probably the most important things that trees do is create shade, which not only which mitigates the negative impacts of heat islands, the idea being if the ambient temperature, if it's 79 degrees, uh but in a parking lot, uh because of the sun, it's eighty-eight degrees, and in a forest it's seventy-one degrees, that's the impact of the heat island, and that is hardscapes absorbing sunlight, making it hotter than it actually is. And when that happens, um that heat bakes pollution and makes it worse. And we know there's a correlation between poor canopy and uh outdoor airway problems like asthma. So we see public health as one of the most important benefits of trees, and um larger trees are better at that. So we had a heat map done in uh 2016, and at 11 a.m. on a 79 degree day, there was a 12 degree uh temperature swing between uh the forest by Webster Pond and uh the parking lot at Destiny from 71 to 87 degrees. So here are the many ecosystem services that the urban forest provides. They're all quantifiable. Uh you could probably spend half a day uh reviewing the science for each one of these things, and these are all these things are important to our citizens. That's what we were told during our master plan and uh why the community uh overall cares about trees. That's why we're proposing the changes we are, and to explain what those changes are, which we'll you'll be able to review in your slide deck. I will turn it over to Karen. Thank you very much, Stephen. So, just one thing we want to emphasize before we get into the fun of codes, is just that large trees provide greater benefits than smaller trees, and I'm sure that's pretty intuitive. But if you just think about the amount of stormwater, they can take up the amount of leaf area to clean and filter the air. And so the U.S. Forest Service has actually quantified, they've actually estimated the value of large trees. So if we just um I didn't update this for 26, but if you just think about a large tree is worth about $7,411, and a smaller tree is worth about 450 dollars in terms of ecosystem benefits. So that's why we want to try to preserve large trees in our city. Preserving plants. Yeah. And I bailed a slide earlier. Thank you for covering that. Okay, so let's go over what's proposed to change. And I'm in this uh slide deck is going to present these changes at high level, but at any time you can refer to the actual code changes in the ordinance handout. All those changes are in blue highlights to make it easy to find them. But essentially, uh, that's under your slide.