Adopt Tree Inspection Policy

Statement Watch

My name is Michael Robert Kaditz. I'm representing Stanley Park Preservation Society opposed to the motion. We strongly urge you to reject the proposed policy as written for the following two reasons. The first reason is the policy contravenes WorkSafe BC guidelines by mistakenly prescribing track as the assessment methodology in forested areas. The Wildlife Dangerous Tree Assessors course is the methodology prescribed by WorkSafeBC for municipal parks with native trees and where there are wildfire prevention activities. The Stanley Park Forest is a municipal park and recreation area containing native tree species. Wildfire prevention has been cited as one of the major purposes of the ongoing risk mitigation project. The WorkSafeBC guidelines to Part 26 of the BC Occupational Health and Safety Regulations state, and I'll quote, for greater certainty, WorkSafeBC considers the following to involve harvesting trees and to therefore be forestry operations. Falling trees in connection with forest firefighting or fire prevention activities. Part 26 continues to say, quote, in the context of forest harvesting and silviculture, parks and recreation, and wildland fire safety operations, only a person who has completed the wildlife dangerous tree assessors course can complete a risk assessment and make recommendations for managing dangerous trees. The hazard criteria and tree assessment procedures taught in the course can be reliably and defensively used to inform land managers where to implement mitigation strategies that will promote visitor safety while preserving trees of significance. The majority of assessment procedures recommended in this training are applicable to BC parks and recreation sites and trails. They can also be applied to native tree species found in municipal parks or other wooded areas such as golf courses and ski hills. These worker safety modules are applied to tree assessments in work sites in recognition of employer responsibilities to manage tree hazards under Part 26. The second reason you should reject the policy is the proposed policy errantly treats each track level as a standalone method of inspection, assigning distinct levels to distinct categories of tree populations at distinct time periods. however track should be correctly understood as a three-tier filtering system used to drill down on dangerous trees in a single population during a single time period the correct understanding of the procedure for forested areas would be to perform an initial level one visual assessment to identify suspect trees immediately not 10 years later or three years later, immediately followed by a level two basic individual inspection of suspect trees. And if doubt remained, a level three advanced inspection would be performed. The track manual, which I have here, clearly states... Quote, a constraint of limited visual inspections is that some conditions may not be visible from a one-sided inspection of a tree. Also, a level one risk assessment may not be adequate to provide risk mitigation options. You might use the level one assessment to determine which trees require further inspection at the basic or advanced levels. The track manual also states... An assessment of a population of trees may use a level one assessment as a filtering mechanism to determine which trees or subsets of the population will require a level two assessment. In some cases where a population of trees is being assessed, the priority may be to first locate any extreme risk trees and have them singled out for immediate mitigation. Finally, it is incoherent to define the, quote, complete scope for forest area trees as a level one visual inspection only as this proposed policy does in that it completely omits direction for what to do when trees are found to be suspect during a level one visual inspection. The implication is that wide swathes of trees will be prematurely removed based on limited level one inspections only and this would be a final death knell for the remaining native forests in Stanley Park. For all of these reasons, any new tree inspection policy should require certified assessors following the wildlife dangers tree assessors course in forested areas. Where track is prescribed, first, a level one visual inspection should be performed to identify suspect trees to be immediately followed by an individual level two and possibly level three inspection to determine which particular suspect trees, no more and no less, require mitigation.

Do any commissioners have questions? Commissioner Herr has a question for you.

Statement Watch

Good evening. I'm Norm Overson for Trees of Vancouver Society. I'll just tell you right now, a level one inspection is we stand here, we look at the trees, and what you see is what you got. Okay? Level two is we walk up to the trees, we walk around the trees, we feel the trees. and we find out what we've got. A level three inspection, aerial inspection, which by the way is being deleted according to the new policy. You never brought that up on the board. That's where we climb into the tree or we take a bucket under the tree and we do a detailed inspection of the tree. Now this presentation is full of misinformation and a lot of information that you should know and it's not included. That said, I'll begin my speak now. I don't support the proposal for the tree inspection policy, obviously. The proposed policy fundamentally weakens the existing tree inspection policy to facilitate the contracting out of... tree service pruning to private sector companies, including large American tree service companies with unfair cost advantages. So what this new policy is, is it's all about contracting out for cost efficiencies. That's what the policy is all about. It's not about the health of trees. It's not about the urban forest canopy. It's about cost efficiencies. And the way they're going to do that, the proposed policy will replace our current high-quality qualitative approach. with a cost-efficient, low-quality, quantitative approach. So we're going to prepare batches of street trees, and we're going to put those out in the market for tender to low-cost private sector companies who compete against high-cost government unionized public service parks workers. That's what it's all about. Now, what's going to happen as a result of this switch, proposed policy switch to the quantitative approach, is the tree pruning costs are going to go lower. They're going to go a lot lower. But the risk of death, personal injury, and property damage is going to go higher because the qualitative approach is a high-quality approach. It costs more. But you get better results downstream in terms of public welfare and safety. And if that's not enough, the proposed policy changes... and eliminates the level three aerial detailed inspection. So under the new policy, the guys on the street, the parks workers, they'll no longer be inspecting while they're pruning. That's gonna be gone because the new policy being what they say is proactive. requires a block of trees to be risk-assessed clean so it can be delivered to tender to the market as clean, risk-assessed. And that way the city will minimize its liability, its exposure, because it's done its due diligence, it's assessed. Level one, which is the lowest level of assessment, it's only assessing half the tree, by the way, from the street. It doesn't assess the half the tree on the homeowner's side, and that's the half that's going to be threatening the homeowner. So it should be a basic, and it's not. They're doing a level because it's cheap. So this demonstrates that management's disregard for welfare and the safety of our citizens by using this policy. Now, what we need is a cost-effective approach, not a cost-efficient approach. Forget cost efficiencies and look for something that's effective. The WHTAC manual, the Tree Risk Manual, is... It should be used and not TRAC. With TRAC, you're on the wrong track. With WHTAC, you have a manual that's designed for the field, for operating. It's got cards. TRAC is designed, it was originally designed for a classroom. It's an educational tool. It doesn't have cards. You need the cards. The field crews need the cards to communicate. And using WHT is two or three times or four or five times faster because I've used it for 20 or 30 years in addition to track. I mean, I do hundreds of these track assessments per year. And I can tell you it's much more effective and much more efficient than using track. Unfortunately, TRAC's been adopted for the municipalities because it's been required for tree removals. And so it became a very big, widespread qualification for that purpose.

Sorry, your time is up. Any clarification questions from commissioners? Sinan, thank you very much for coming to speak tonight. You're welcome. Our next speaker is Catherine Kaditz.

Statement Watch

I'm Catherine Kaditz. and I represent myself tonight, and I request that the proposed tree risk policy be either rejected or subject to amendment for the following reasons. Track is not the appropriate assessment protocol for forested areas of native trees. Rather, provincial guidelines specify wildlife danger tree assessment course, also known as WHTAC. The proposed plan is quantitative rather than qualitative. For the sake of blanket assessments, dangerous trees will be overlooked, while safe trees will likely be removed. The quantitative in the proposed approach lends itself to more outsourcing. which historically has favored American companies, such as Save a Tree, rather than in-house labor. This is no time to transfer profits to the United States. The plan is not slated to take effect until January, 2027, which is after the new park board is seated. The new commissioners will have ample time to review and amend this policy. It is not right to impose this plan on a future park board. So I request that the proposed tree risk policy be either rejected or subject to amendment for the reasons I stated. And I also find it very interesting that the software upgrades, the upgrade management is called UFO.

I thought that was very funny as well. Commissioner Herr, she has a question. Catherine, Catherine, come back, come back. Commissioner Herr has a question.

Statement Watch

Hello, can you hear me good? Yeah, I'm Anita. And I'm obviously also opposed to this this new policy. And I was thinking, how could I present that? And the way I would like everyone to think about, let's say you have a person who has a hard time speaking up for themselves. Obviously, trees, some people can't hear them. You have a person who has a hard time speaking up for themselves. They go to the doctor because they have a cough. The doctor examined them from across the room by looking at them, saying, you look a bit pale. You might have lung cancer. Let's take your lung out. That's really what the analogy to a level one for the trees. You just eyeball and you make an assumption and an assessment. Let's say that person then have a hard time speaking up for themselves. Go to a surgeon. He arranged for the surgery. You go to VGH and they do the surgery. Later on, what if that person was a loved one of yours and you find out what happened? What would you want to do? Sue the doctor, right? But because this is a gross malpractice, it's negligence. Same thing, a level one would be gross malpractice, negligence, and grounds for a lawsuit. So in this case, though... And this medical thing actually, things like that have happened. But not only will the doctor that did the wrong assessment or no assessment from across the room by just eyeballing the patient get sued, the surgeon who also followed along without doing a proper assessment can get sued, and the hospital who made that happen and anyone involved. So aside from that, I think we all have to remember trees are alive. Why are we all here? And I don't mean this room. Why did you come? As a soul. Okay, we cannot harm the mother, the mother earth, unnecessarily. There will be a price to pay, not just for the children to come, but as a sole burden for anyone who facilitates unnecessary destruction of the Mother Earth. There will be a sole burden. Okay? And secondary, your question about the park, we find that we have asked many times to get the list of all the trees in Stanley Park that were cut. to see if they were assessed, and they were not. They were exactly just eyeballed. And I feel personally that the city is trying to make that a policy that it's okay just to glance at a tree and then take it down with no respect for the tree and for the Mother Earth. At least, even if you don't like nature, you're scared of nature, you think it's dangerous everywhere, at least have some respect. for nature. Because without it, we wouldn't be here. And the air in Vancouver would not be as fresh if it wasn't for the trees. Go to any other city. You can barely not breathe. Toronto is full of concrete. You come here, and it's so fresh and healing. Why? Because of the trees. They do a lot more than people give them credit for. So to just chop them down without a proper assessment is disrespectful. And it shows a deep disconnect to Mother Nature. And I'm for, too, that if a tree is dangerous, of course you don't want to fall on the head of people, but it needs to be assessed first. Just like we want to be assessed properly before we have something cut off our body. It is the same. And if you've forgotten who you are and why you came, I invite you to go sit under a tree and get your spirit back in your body and know why you're here. You didn't come to facilitate unnecessary destruction, right? That's not why any one of us came here. Maybe you got contaminated along the way. This is all about money or fame or a name, but that's not really why your spirit and your soul came here for. You've forgotten. If you are like that, you've forgotten who you were. So that's all I have to say. Anyone? Questions? Yeah.

Statement Watch

Hi. I'm Mary Etty, and I'm opposed to this policy as well. And I really, really respect and appreciate all the speakers who came before me and want to support everything that they said. From what I've heard is that there was a time, you know, years ago, I've been here a long time, when there were a couple of crews of four each of, I think, park rangers who kind of went around and looked at everything all the time. I remember seeing them because I grew up here. And I'm wondering if it would be more effective to have for them if they could get paid. I don't know if they were already tree assessors, but if they could be paid. paid and that be made part of their job, you know, to be tree assessors, then, you know, they're driving around all the time. They probably can do all the trails in the park and the roadways at least weekly, maybe even daily, if there's eight of them, like there used to be. And then, you know... dangerous trees can be assessed. They can do level one at least and maybe even more levels, I don't know, or else the other people can do level two and three, I don't know. But in any case, I don't see why it should even be only every few years. Why not, like, when there's a dangerous tree, like, let's deal with it right away so it doesn't fall on people's heads. And that could just be part of, that should be, I think, the main part of the ranger's job, really, isn't it? Isn't the ranger about protecting people in the park? Anyway, just my wild thoughts is probably something someone else could say about it and knows more than me. Yeah.

Statement Watch

I'm speaking for myself. I oppose this new tree inspection policy as it weakens the current policy more or less, eliminating level two and three track inspection. The most important part of an urban forest strategy is increasing the canopy size while at the same time maintaining public safety, but this policy will likely reduce the canopy further. To me, this looks like a thinly veiled attempt to justify more logging in Stanley Park as you have added a new category, forest area trees, and maybe even in Champlain Heights too, as that's mentioned in the report. The urban forest strategy is a target of 30% citywide canopy cover by 2050. which is not much of an increase over a long period at all. And how are you going to manage this goal if you keep cutting down Vancouver's street and park trees? From your tree inspection policy report, the city includes many densely forested areas, mostly in parks, e.g. Stanley Park, but also in other areas historically or currently managed by REFM or engineering, e.g. Champlain Heights. Staff believe that these forested areas of the city in parks and elsewhere would benefit from a... proactive inspection regime targeting areas that are accessed and used by the public that language is already leading to cutting the new policy will require those areas to be inspected by level one visual assessment every three years again not level two or three and the wildlife dangerous tree assessment should be used in forested areas not track as michael pointed out and your tree inspection policy treats each level as a standalone method of inspection when it is a tree tier inspect system. If a tree looks possibly dangerous, it could be cut down after an only level one track inspection. This is not acceptable. Here you are listening to staff instead of to Vancouverites or even yourselves. Using the word proactive inspection regime sounds like staff are urging you to look for problems instead of maintaining these forest areas as forests. Sorry. Your tree inspection policy is all about risk and there's little about protecting trees. I've kept a list of countless small to medium-sized street trees that were either cut down for developers or because of small issues. Most of them didn't need to come down or could have been pruned. I understand that larger issues must be managed as some of Vancouver's deciduous street trees are very large and a potential huge risk to the public if not inspected properly, but to level three track, not just one. But your past decisions like Stanley Park, et cetera, have almost always been on the side of cutting trees down instead of protecting them. I hope that you can change as of now and start looking at this a bit differently. We need these trees to keep Vancouver cool, but instead they are disappearing. Thank you.

Statement Watch

Hi. I've never spoken in a meeting like this before. I'm a longtime Vancouver resident since 1979. I would love to speak about the trees. I would love to speak about the trees, I'm sorry. And as an ex-Canadian PGA pro, I've actually spent a lot of time under trees and injured trees. And I would love to speak about trees and the difficulty of assessing the injured trees. And I would love to, but I actually came here as a member of the tennis community at Kitts Beach and Queenie. I grew up as a... a young tennis player and i apologize i think um i'm out of line and i do apologize this this public consultation is um is is uh we would like to seek this for a public consultation when i signed up i've never done this so i didn't know that this was for tree cutting or trees inspection um and you had a report that you you're implementing a pilot project for for tennis.

I'm really sorry to cut you off. I know. We can only speak on the topic. No, no, I understand.

But if there was a way that we could ask to put something like this in the agenda so that the public tennis players can have public engagement, because there's no engagement for... Why don't we take this offline and we can chat after the committee meeting, just after this item, we can chat about that if you'd like.

That's okay. No problem. I'm sorry, we've got to stick to the topic at hand. Yeah, yeah, you're welcome to talk. You've got 3.40 left. Go ahead.

Okay, thank you. So I ran a golf course for over a decade, and assessing trees and damaged trees and the potential for hazards for the golfers actually was a major concern. So when I would work with my superintendent and we would get the report from the arborist, it was very difficult to... to gauge the damage to the trees. And unfortunately, I see how heated this meeting is. And just as a person that's been in this field for a long time, trees will get injured and damaged. And unfortunately, that decision is a hard decision. Somebody that's had to make that decision, it's not easy. And whatever steps there are, there will be problems. So having that risk assessment of is it really a danger to the public is very important. So I understand from the people that want the trees preserved, I just hope that that resolution, that compromise can be found because this is unfortunately, When it comes to public safety, I understand the park board's decision and whatever decision can be made. It's tricky because trees sometimes look healthy, but inside there's actually a lot of problems that the general public may not see. And arborists are expensive, so outsourcing them might be a way for the park board to be able to maintain expenses and costs. So with that, it would be very interesting to see the numbers for the outsourcing Because it's very important for the city to assess the trees. They may look healthy, but upon further inspection, it's very important to know the health of the trees. I've hit many trees with a golf ball, and I've actually almost been hit by a tree, falling branches. and stuff so yeah it is very important that the park board um assess the trees properly so that there's no harm to the public that that may happen even if the tree does look healthy so that's my input on that great thank you very much and welcome to our your first meeting here we hope you come back again uh do any commissioners have clarification questions

Statement Watch

Yes, I do. Thank you. My name is John Irwin. I'm speaking for myself, not representing anyone else. I guess what interests me about this policy is the inclusion of the laneway trees and the trees that are isolated and the trees that people don't notice. That got me a bit excited. I sent you some photos. There's only about three of them. They're laneways. Dave Demers, former commissioner arborist, brilliant gardener, he lived behind those trees. And that's a route in and out of my neighbourhood. But it also, those trees hold a lot of birds, insects. I've seen raccoons in them. I had more pictures. I thought I could do pictures, but I was wrong. And so what I have is the trees that are actually in our easement by where we live, and it keeps our building cool. So I think it's very important to put these in as the policy is doing. I went on a Jane's walk with a colleague over the weekend and we looked at the stumps and my take on it as someone who studied ecology and earned a PhD in that field is that we're dealing with climate change with a lot of these issues, the looper moth in the forest here and the street trees. I'd say the only thing I'd like to caution is, are there zones in the city where we already have trees where we could inspect a little more rigorously? That would be maybe one thing to think about. Yeah, and I too looked at the UFO and thought about making a joke, but someone's beat me to that punch. So, yes, and it's important to remember that the street trees as well really reduce the urban heat island effect. So on this walk, we're on one intersection, had a couple of trees taken down. Justifiably, I think you could see the rot in the core, right? But so I think we need to figure a way to... get those trees back in. If someone on the board can ask staff about whether you can, you know, as reading online, because I knew nothing about this. I'm just, I'll be honest with you. You know, it just came to me. Can you core down into the stump? and get it to rot faster so the stump removal is less expensive and we can get new trees in sooner. Another policy idea I would like to float is I as a resident put bags on our street trees and look after them. I'd be willing to donate a tree to replace the tree that got lost due to one of our contractors. So I don't know if that's a program that could be followed. I think I had something else to say, but I don't want to take too much of your time today. Yeah, 20 temperature records were broken in BC yesterday, so we clearly know that we're on stage two water restrictions. You know, so but, you know, one tension with the policy is, I was looking at the trees behind where Dave used to live, Dave Demers, former park board commissioner, and I was having a hard time figuring out, is that tree in the private property or is it in the lane? So I think it'd be good to know that so that we'd know, okay, we can call 311 and have the city come and look at it. versus it being our responsibility or the property owner's responsibility. Anyway, thanks for your time. Good luck with this. Some improvements, some challenges, but that's always the case. Thank you. Take care.