Pensacola Councilman Charles Bare wants to undo using tree trust fund to cut down trees

Pensacola City Councilman Charles Bare is asking the City Council to reconsider the use of the city's Tree Planting Trust Fund to pay for the removal of up to 30 dead or dangerous trees.

Bare is proposing a budget amendment that would use other Parks and Recreation Department funds to pay for the removal of the trees and move $90,000 back into the city's Tree Planting Trust Fund.

Bare is also proposing that the city's Environmental Advisory Board review a proposed ordinance that would ban paying for the removal of trees with the Tree Planting Trust Fund in the future.

In January, the council passed a $90,000 allocation to remove dead and dangerous trees in city rights-of-way and $10,000 to plant new trees to replace them in a 4-3 vote.

It was the first time in the city's history of the Tree Planting Trust Fund that the removal of trees was authorized with those funds. The trust fund is paid for with fees paid by developers for cutting down protected species of trees for commercial or large-scale residential development.

City Attorney Charlie Peppler issued an opinion that the ordinance creating the Tree Planting Trust Fund allows for it to be used to remove trees as long as those removals are part of the maintenance of the city's tree canopy. Pensacola's City Arborist Kris Stultz said that removing the 30 trees was needed maintenance for the city's tree canopy.

Tree Trust Fund votePensacola approves funding removal of dead trees with tree planting fund

Paying for tree removalPensacola looks to remove 30 dead trees with $90K from Tree Planting Trust Fund

Earlier this month, the city's Environmental Advisory Board voted 7-0, asking the City Council to reconsider its decision and restore the funding back to the Tree Planting Trust Fund.

Bare was one of three council members to vote against the proposal in January and told the News Journal on Monday that he's trying to avoid setting a precedent to use the tree trust fund to cut down trees.

"The money's available elsewhere. I'm giving the council an opportunity to see that, and if they are willing to do so I'm hopeful I'll get the votes," Bare said.

Bare's proposal gathers the money needed to cut down the trees from eight different line items from the Parks and Recreation Department's budget. The smallest line item is $2,462, with the largest at $39,122. Many of the items note the last time the city paid for an expense out of them was in 2018.

"I think there are things like that all over the budget, and you just have to know where to find that," Bare said. "That's why it's important for the council to have its own staff."

Last year, the Pensacola City Council hired the city's former budget manager Yvette McLellan as a member of council staff after her retirement from the city.

Bare said McLellan's knowledge of the city budget was how he was able to put together the proposal finding potential alternative sources to remove trees.

"It's really difficult for a council member to identify where the funding is," Bare said. "When we're told, 'Well, this is the only place to take it from,' people don't necessarily look for other sources. And I can tell you, when I was on council before, I wouldn't have been able to find the money."

Bare's second proposal changes the language of the Tree Planting Trust Fund ordinance to prohibit the removal of trees with the funding. The ordinance proposal also makes clear that the trust fund can only be spent inside the city limits and ups the city contribution for grants from the fund to neighborhood associations and other groups who plant trees from 50% to 75%.

Bare is asking the City Council to send the ordinance change to the Environmental Advisory Board before coming back to the council.

The council will discuss Bare's proposal at its Tuesday agenda conference at 3:30 p.m. and vote on the item at its Thursday meeting at 5:30 p.m.

Bare said he is meeting with Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves Tuesday morning to discuss the proposal.

Reeves told the News Journal on Monday that his intent was to follow his administration's and the council's direction that has already been voted on.

During his weekly press conference last week, Reeves noted that the city had already started to move forward with seeking bids from contractors, and it was unclear if the contracts would come back over the $ 25,000 mark requiring a referral to the EAB or a second vote by the City Council.

Reeves said Monday that the proposal to use the Tree Planting Trust fund has always been a "one-time use" to catch up on needed maintenance.

"The history of this trust fund was that it was not used by the administration because we couldn't maintain what we have," Reeves said. "Our administration's proposal is to maintain what we have so that we can use the Tree Trust Fund in an optimal way. If Councilman Bare feels the need to change how that works from this point forward, that's certainly his prerogative. This catch-up in maintenance is meant to be a one-time catch-up and maintenance."

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola tree trust fund shouldn't be used to remove trees, Bare says