Attachment C
Public Tree Maintenance Objectives
For public tree maintenance, the main objectives for tree work associated with our target 7- year pruning cycle are:
• Public Safety. This involves tree work to achieve hazard reduction, pedestrian clearance, vehicle clearance, and sign or street light visibility. For some species and situations this may also involve crown reduction and/or end weight reduction pruning.
• Tree Health. This work focuses on the removal of dead, damaged, or diseased tree parts. This may also include removal of basal sprouts and defects such as crossing branches.
• Tree Longevity. This work focuses on structural pruning to ensure long term tree stability and growth.
The goal of the maintenance program is to keep the tree growing according to its natural form whenever possible. Most tree species do best when allowed to grow based on their genetics. This generally results in fewer long-term issues, and lower overall long-term maintenance costs. Correction of major issues when a tree is young and then minimal regular maintenance to catch new issues involving the main objectives of public safety, tree health or tree longevity as they arrive is our core maintenance strategy.
In order to include aesthetics as a stand-alone maintenance objective, a significant budget increase would be required for the Street Tree Maintenance contract. Reducing the pruning cycle down to a 3- or 4-year return time would allow for an increased level of service. At that higher level of service an increase in proactive maintenance would allow for greater attention to smaller details, leading to more emphasis on aesthetics. This would catch potential tree issues when small, and corrective measures would be more minimal than if they occurred during a 7-year return time.
Purely aesthetic pruning tends to lead to artificially perfect trees, requiring even more maintenance than a 3-year cycle could provide to maintain the forced shape. An example of this level of maintenance would be the urban canopy at Disneyland or other similar highly manicured resort destinations.
It should be noted that the Electric Line Clearance Tree Trimming Contract is part of a separate program. That contract has a much narrower scope of work and does not provide whole tree maintenance as part of the scope for either private or public trees that require line clearance pruning. The main objectives for that work focus primarily on compliance with state regulations on clearance distance and public safety.