What: Davis City Council meeting

When: 6:30 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Community Chambers, City Hall, 23 Russell Blvd.

Watch it: On City Government Channel 16 on cable television or via streaming video at www.cityofdavis.org/media

Notable agenda items: Water project timing and deadlines, urban forest program, bicycle action plan

If City Manager Steve Pinkerton learned anything from his decision to lay off two tree trimmers last month — that was, among seven other Davis City Employee Association workers — it’s that nobody messes with the trees in Davis.

And so about a dozen letters to the editor, several waves of public comment during City Council meetings and a Tree Commission public protest of the firings later, Pinkerton has heard the concerns of the constituents and on Tuesday at the City Council meeting, will publicly present his plan on how the city will maintain its trees in the manner to which residents have grown accustomed.

Davisites may be surprised by what the city believes it can accomplish — even without the two tree trimmers. According to a staff report, the city has 14,500 street trees and 4,800 park trees.

“The modification to the urban forest service model will result in greatly reduced cost and increased service levels for street and park tree maintenance,” says the staff report prepared for the City Council by Herb Niederberger, the new general manager of utilities, development and operations, and Rob Cain, the city’s urban forest manager. “(It also) has resulted in a net savings of $120,000 to the urban forest budget for fiscal year 2012-2013.”

The new urban forest service model the two city officials are referring to will feature a competitive services delivery model, which, among other things, appears to shift tree work from public employees to private contractors.

Core tree services include young and mature tree maintenance, tree planting, tree inspections, development review, tree protection, program administration and hazard tree removal.

In the past, the city has divided up forest management services between three groups: city employees, who focused on removals, off-cycle pruning of mature trees and minor pruning required from resident service requests; volunteers from organizations such as Tree Davis, who assisted with tree planting, young tree maintenance and education; and private contractors, who performed removals and the regular maintenance and pruning of street trees.

The new urban forest program pares down the use of public employees and ramps up the use of volunteers and private contractors, a cost-saving tactic to which Pinkerton has alluded for months: that Davis needs to continue partnering with private sector companies.

But if the city begins awarding tree work to private companies, some believe that money should stay in-house, or in other words, the city should start contracting with local tree maintenance businesses.

In recent years, the city has contracted with Anaheim-based West Coast Arborists to take care of removals and regular maintenance and pruning of street trees.

At a City Council meeting several weeks ago, Natural Resources Commissioner Alan Pryor urged the council that, if it was going to utilize private contractors more in its urban forest program, it should take advantage of the capable local companies.

“I don’t know if it can be done economically, (but) I’d really like an effort put into (pursuing that),” Pryor said. “I’d like to see some of this tree pruning business go to our local service providers instead of being shipped off to a Southern California firm.”

In addition to privatizing tree services and asking for more help from volunteers, other ways the city hopes to increase services include intensifying its block tree pruning.

The city plans to step up street tree pruning frequency from an eight-year cycle to a seven-year cycle.

Additionally, the city plans to start block pruning park trees, something that has never been done, starting at a 10-year cycle with the aim to trim them at a seven-year clip in the future.

“This increased level of service will help maintain tree health and vigor, reduce the risk of limb and tree failures thus increasing safety for Davis residents and maintain the benefits obtained from a healthy urban forest,” the city’s staff report said. “Resident service requests will be serviced at the same level.”

The City Council will hear the new service plan as an information item on Tuesday — meaning there are no actionable recommendations for the council to vote on — but council members are likely to have lots of questions for city staff.

Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk has been most vocal about the issue, presenting concerns at the City Council meeting on June 26 about whether the city could maintain service levels after layoffs.

The city laid off nine DCEA employees in June in case the Public Employee Relations Board denied the city’s appeal of a previous decision that found the city guilty of unlawfully imposing its last, best and final offer on the DCEA in August 2010. The PERB then denied the appeal last month, forcing the city to make whole the employee association.

The ruling cost the city about $1 million, approximately the same amount it takes to compensate nine employees.

— Reach Tom Sakash at [email protected] or (530) 747-8057. Follow him on Twitter @TomSakash.

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