278 O'Herrin and Shields: Assessing Municipal Forestry Activity in Texas, U.S. ern) budget expectation for municipalities that use Tree City USA requirements as their bar for measuring expenditures on urban forestry. National benchmarks via nationwide surveys, such as Ottman and Kielbaso (1976), are should be established every 5 or 10 years. State Urban Forestry Coordinators should begin performing state-specific sur- veys as a matter of course and share the results with their clients and their peers. The Texas A&M Forest Service should con- tinually reevaluate its budget priorities and the types of assistance it distributes (financial ver- sus technical and educational). However, sac- rificing staff positions in favor of increased financial assistance offered to communities is probably a poor strategy. This would almost certainly have a large negative impact on the delivery of technical and educational assis- tance, while having a negligible increase in spending on urban forestry at the local level. Texas city managers and others in city lead- ership should review the results of this study to assess themselves against their peers. This type of evaluation is a very common practice in city management whenever data is accessible. Urban forest managers and city leader- ship need to assign higher priority to manage- ment plans and inventories. Both components are labor intensive and/or costly and both require recurring inputs to maintain relevancy, but are worth the effort because both components may oſten result in increased attention, support, and funding for urban forestry management. The presence of advocacy groups in Texas is roughly average compared to other states, but should still receive increased attention. Tree boards and non-profit groups can advocate for urban forestry in ways that employees can’t, and both may require little or no tax dollars to implement. Acknowledgments. We wish to acknowledge the ISA Texas Chap- ter of the International Society of Arboriculture for awarding a scholarship to Keith O’Herrin while conducting this research as a master’s student at Texas State University. critically important and LITERATURE CITED Carroll, P. 2003. Urban forestry in large cities: ‘Cutting Edge’ or ‘Cutting Out.’ pp. 18–20. In: Proceedings of the 2003 National Urban Forest Conference. San Antonio, Texas: American For- ests, Washington, D.C. Elmendorf, W.F., V.J. Cotrone, and J.T. Mullen. 2003. Trends in urban forestry practices, programs, and sustainability: Contrasting a Pennsylvania, U.S. study. Journal of Arboriculture 29(4):237–248. Giedraitis, J.P., and J.J. Kielbaso. 1982. Municipal Tree Manage- ment. Urban Data Service Report. Washington, D.C.: Interna- tional City Management Association. Gordon, T. 2012. State and local budgets and the great recession. Stanford, CA. Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. Hauer, R.J., and G.R. Johnson. 2008. Approaches within the 50 United States to meeting federal requirements for urban and community forestry assistance programs. Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 34(2):74. Iowa State University. 2015. Urban Percentage of the Population for States, Historical. Accessed January 2015. Johnson, C. 1982. Political and administrative factors in urban for- estry programs. Journal of Arboriculture 8(6):160–163. Johnson, P. 2014. Semi-structured Telephone Interview. Conducted by Keith O’Herrin, June 2014. Kielbaso, J.J., B. Beauchamp, K. Larison, and C. Randall. 1988. Trends in Urban Forestry Management. Baseline Data Report. Washington, D.C.: International City Management Association. Kuhns, M. 1998. Urban and community forestry in the intermoun- tain west. Journal of Arboriculture 24(5):280–85. Kuhns, M., B. Lee, and D.K. Reiter. 2005. Characteristics of urban forestry programs in Utah, U.S. 31(6):285–295. Journal of Arboriculture Miller, R.W., and T.R. Bates. 1978. National implications of an urban forestry survey in Wisconsin. Journal of Arboriculture 4:125–127. Miller R.W., R.J. Hauer, and L.P. Werner. 2015. Urban Forestry: Planning and Managing Urban Greenspaces, third edition. Waveland Press. 560 pp. O’Herrin, K. 2013. A Description of Texas Municipal Forestry Pro- grams: How Critical Program Elements Vary According to City Size, Expenditures, and Assistance from the State. Masters of Public Administration, Applied Research Project. San Marcos, TX: Texas State University. Ottman, K., and J.J. Kielbaso. 1976. Managing Municipal Trees. Urban Data Service Report. Washington, D.C.: International City Management Association. Potter, L.B., and N. Hoque. 2013. Texas Population Projections, 2010 to 2050. State of Texas, Office of the State Demographer. Reeder, E.C., and H.D. Gerhold. 1993. Municipal Tree Programs in Pennsylvania. Journal of Arboriculture 19(1):12–19. Ries, P.D. 2014. Semi-structured Telephone Interview. Conducted by Keith O’Herrin, June 2014. Ries, P.D., A.S. Reed, and S.J. Kresse. 2007. The impact of statewide urban forestry programs: A survey of cities in Oregon, U.S. Journal of Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 33(3):168–175. Rines, D.M. 2007. A Survey of Tree Wardens to Assess Urban and Community Forestry Performance in Massachusetts (USA). M.S. Forestry, Thesis. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts– Amherst. ©2016 International Society of Arboriculture
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