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Proposed Levels of Service for Street Trees, 2013-2017 Current staffing and funding levels are sufficient for service levels 1 and 2 for most mainte- nance activities. It is recommended that the program be grown to service level 3 by 2017 (Table 10). This would entail the following actions: • Complete a full tree inventory in 2013-2014, followed by inventory and inspection of one-fifth of publicly maintained trees each year • Increase mature tree pruning frequency to prune each tree every 5 years • Initiate a root collar excavation program to correct easily preventable and potentially fatal root problems within 3 years • Increase small tree pruning frequency to prune each tree every 3 years • Increase treatment of harmful pests and diseases to 370 trees per year • Accelerate tree planting to replace the hundreds of trees that have been removed and begin to fill the thousands of available planting sites
Estimated Costs for Street Tree Work to be Performed by Contractors and Staff
Currently, almost all planting, maintenance, and removal work is performed by private con- tractors. Town staff perform limited maintenance and removal work when contracting would be too slow or inefficient to perform the required work. However, the current workload is large enough to support a crew of town staff that would be responsible for planting, maintaining, and removing trees on town property. The costs of private contractors and the hours of town staff time were estimated for each service level by comparing data from the 2012 tree inventory with information provided in the 2004 Tree Inventory Report by Davey Resource Group, the American Public Works Association, and the town’s most recent maintenance contract. It is recommended that the town continue to contract some tasks, particularly those that require expensive equipment, extensive experience, or bear very high levels of risk. However, for many routine tasks, the town would save hun- dreds of thousands of dollars by hiring staff. Neighboring municipalities, including Raleigh and Durham, rely on full-time municipal employees to perform urban forestry maintenance work. Calculated Costs of Staff Annual salary data were located for 4 full-time permanent tree maintenence positions. One was advertized recently by the City of Raleigh, another by Wake Forest’s Electric Department, and two additional positions were generally described by the American Public Works Association. The total costs of all employee benefits were added to the salary ranges and divided by esti- mated working hours to determine the total hourly cost to the town (Table 8).
Summer interns often perform tree inventory services for between $11 and $15 per hour with- out benefits, depending on experience. Given the state of the economy and Wake Forest’s
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