Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 42(4): July 2016 of grants or scholarships to attend conferences, rather than a dollar value. Technical assistance could be the number of times advice was received about drafting a new ordinance, implementing a new tree inventory software program, or even a state employee sitting on a hiring panel for a new local forester. Educational assistance refers to individual instances of attending a confer- ence or reading periodicals (e.g., newsletters). No other studies have used the same three broad measurements of assistance; however, at least one study is very similar. From the seven specific examples of assistance that Ries et al. (2007) reported on (all n = 57), an index was created to match the three broad measurements of assistance used in this study. From Ries et al. (2007), cities that had reported receiving a grant (47%) was compared against the results of finan- cial assistance from this study. The results of edu- cational assistance from this study was compared against a composite average of 54% derived from four questions from Ries et al. (2007). Those four questions were listed as 1) the city reported they had visited the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) website to access urban forestry infor- mation (55%), 2) reported receiving a program newsletter or other printed material (83%), 3) reported they had sent city staff to an ODF educa- tional workshop (53%), and 4) reported sending city staff to the annual state urban forestry con- ference (25%). The results of technical assistance from the current study were compared against a composite average of 67% derived from two ques- tions from Ries et al. (2007). Those two questions were listed as 1) the city reported receiving advice by telephone or electronic mail, and 2) reported receiving an onsite technical assistance visit. Researchers also compared relative program size between Texas and Oregon by calculating a ratio of state urban forestry employees per state resident. This calculation was based on total state # of cities in size class (population) 250 70 26 6 352 # of cities contacted 165 50 22 6 243 271 urban population, not just the population of the responding cities. However, Oregon (81%) and Texas (85%) have very similar percentages of their population in urban areas as of 2010, making com- parison reasonable (Iowa State University 2015). RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Usable surveys representing 79 home-rule cities in Texas were returned for a response rate of 33%. Table 1 shows that an effort was made to con- tact at least 66% of the cities in each size class; however, the small city size class only had a re- sponse rate of 21%, and thus these results may not be representative of small home-rule cities. Components of a Program Staff The average number of staff per city was calculated with mega cities standing out at an average of 28.8 staff per city (Table 2). This large amount of staff illustrates the size of municipal forestry pro- grams in cities with over 500,000 residents, rela- tive to smaller cities in Texas. However, the average number of residents per staff member was simi- lar between mega cities (60,764:1), large cities (67,427:1), and medium cities (46,181:1), with a weighted mean of about 55,000 residents per staff member. Small cities had an average 8,608 resi- dents per staff member, although 39% of small cities responding to this question (n = 28) reported 0 staff. No standard is known to exist that prescribes an appropriate ratio of city residents per staff member. Additionally, many cities may prefer to rely on fewer in-house staff who manage contrac- tors to perform urban forestry work. This survey question wasn’t designed to capture contracted employees. But the existence of a professional staff member is the first program element repre- sented in the SOAPs (USDA 2012). The point is that the individual responsible for the urban forest Table 1. Home-rule city population sampling rates and response rates by city size class. City size Percent of cities in size class contacted (%) Small (pop. 5,000–29,999) Medium (pop. 30,000–99,999) Large (pop. 100,000–499,999) Mega (pop. 500,000 and greater) Overall 66 71 85 100 69 Number returned (sample) 35 26 14 4 79 Response rate (%) 21 52 64 67 33 ©2016 International Society of Arboriculture
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