268 O'Herrin and Shields: Assessing Municipal Forestry Activity in Texas, U.S. a benchmark to track changes over time. Only a few states, such as California, Oregon, and Missouri, have had multiple iterations of municipal forestry program assessments; Texas has never had even one such study devoted to this purpose. Tracking changes (e.g., spending on urban forestry) over time increases the value of these research efforts by mea- suring the impact of changes in policy or spending. This is especially important for the State of Texas, whose population is growing very quickly. Texas is the second largest state in the United States by GDP, population, and population growth (U.S. Census Bureau 2013). If the population growth rate seen between 2000 and 2010 contin- ues, Texas will more than double in population to over 55 million residents by 2050 (Potter and Hoque 2013), surpassing California as the most populous state in the U.S. (State of California 2013). This doesn’t mean that Texas is a barom- eter with which to gauge urban forestry activity in other states; what it means that Texas is inher- ently important because it represents a significant proportion of the land area, population, and eco- nomic activity of the United States. Consistently and frequently establishing benchmarks is even more important when changes come more quickly. The purpose of this research study was to determine the most common components of municipal spending forestry programs and the level of on urban forestry in Texas home- rule cities (pop. 5,000 or greater), as well as how much assistance those cities are receiving from the Texas A&M Forest Service, the agency hous- ing the State of Texas’s urban forestry program. Measuring Municipal Forestry Programs Assessment criteria and the selection of program components for this study were distilled from a review of 17 similar studies that assessed urban forestry activity and/or spending at the state, regional, or national level. Criteria and components of municipal forestry programs were also adapted from the USDA Forest Service Urban and Com- munity Forestry Program (Federal UCF) metric, called SOAPs (Staff, Ordinance, Advocacy, and Plan). SOAPs is part of the framework that state ur- ban forestry coordinators use to report urban and community forestry activity at the local level back ©2016 International Society of Arboriculture to the Federal UCF, which is a requirement of each state receiving federal funding for urban forestry. Based on previous studies, researchers mea- sured three major factors of municipal forestry programs: 1) components of a program, 2) expen- ditures on urban forestry at the local level, and 3) amount of assistance received from the Texas A&M Forest Service. Components of a program are the aspects common to a comprehensive municipal forestry program. These components should not be viewed as a measurement of the “impact” a municipal forestry program is having on the com- munity, but rather a measurement of the “capacity for impact.” This is because the existence of these program components does not mean a municipality is effectively managing the urban forest, but only that these program components aid in that effort. Measures of expenditures on urban forestry at the local level have been applied more consistently (though less frequently) in studies reported by the literature than measures of program components or assistance from the state. This allows for some com- parison over time. However, measures of spending have never been confined specifically to Texas, which leaves researchers only to compare against national averages, and the last such national bench- mark was set in 1994 (Tschantz and Sacamano 1995). Spending on urban forestry per capita has been used in measuring municipal forestry activity since at least 1974, which is when Ottman and Kielbaso (1976) conducted their nationwide study of municipal forestry programs. This was the same year that the Arbor Day Foundation began the Tree City USA Award program, which utilizes the spending on urban forestry per capita measure as one of the award’s requirements. This measure has also been used by Giedraitis and Kielbaso (1982), Kielbaso et al. (1988), Tschantz and Sacamano (1995), Thompson and Ahern (2000), and Kuhns et al. (2005). Spending per capita allows research- ers to compare cities of varying sizes against each other by standardizing spending per resident. Adjusting for inflation allows researchers to com- pare spending rates from various periods in time. Ottman and Kielbaso (1976), Giedraitis and Kielbaso (1982), Kielbaso et al. (1988), and Tschantz and Sacamano (1995) have all used the “percent of total city budget” measure. The advan- tage of this measure is that it should be shielded
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