In response to the City of Victoria offering public input (until Jan. 23) on their draft budget, Creatively United has drafted this response. The public is encouraged to use this information to let the City of Victoria know that natural solutions, like trees, are an excellent and affordable way to offset carbon and provide innumerable benefits to the public vs millions more spent on destructive infrastructure that adds to the current asphalt sprawl and offers no relief from flooding and extreme heat.
Learn more, share and engage here: engage.victoria.ca.
Dear City of Victoria Decision Makers,
What appears to be missing from this draft budget are funds to protect, preserve and maintain our precious urban trees and a commitment to the City of Victoria’s Urban Forest Master Plan and meaningful climate action.
The city must stop funneling public money to infrastructure projects that don’t value natural assets, such as trees, and consider the excellent recommendations of this thoughtful toolkit produced by the Sierra Club for local governments:
Climate-Ready Communities Toolkit
https://sierraclub.bc.ca/stories-events/reports-and-publications/climate-ready-communities-a-toolkit-for-local-governments/
If in doubt as to the value of every tree left standing in our city, please take a moment to watch and share this informative 6-minute video made by the Halifax parks department: A Tree for All Trades. This film makes clear the fact that large, mature trees are exponentially more beneficial to communities than small trees.
- Without more trees, BC’s next heat dome could be even deadlier
- The genius of trees
- When heat and drought stress trees, the consequences can be tragic
Please consider these Urban Forest Policy Recommendations:
- Strengthen and enforce the Tree Protection Bylaw to stop routine destruction of trees on both public and private land. Develop achievable tree canopy targets based on urban forestry best practices and equity amongst neighbourhoods.
- Require developers to consider alternatives to tree removal and ensure that tree removal is a last resort.
- Develop achievable tree canopy targets based on urban forestry best practices and equity amongst neighbourhoods.
- It’s important to know what we have. Measure progress toward canopy targets, publicize LiDAR vegetation change detection metrics for Zoning Modernization Areas, neighbourhoods, and City-wide, each 4-year period that LiDAR vegetation surveys are updated. Adopt a City-wide Garry oak species detection as part of ongoing urban forest remote sensing updates.
- Ensure that Tree Reserve Funds, collected from developers who cannot replace trees, are applied where they are most needed. Create an Urban Forest Technical Advisory group with representation from community enviro, non-profit orgs, ecologists, biologists, and urban forestry experts including representatives specialized in urban arboriculture and Garry oak ecosystems.
- Large tree species are important for climate adaptation and public health. A 6-m backyard setback doesn’t do enough to retain existing off-property trees near the property line, as well as trees outside of the building envelope, and substantially limits soil volume and above-ground growing space for large-at-maturity replacement trees. It also makes the “Minimum Required Trees Per Lot” excessively difficult to achieve when spacing requirements in the Tree Protection Bylaw (21-035) are applied. Therefore, increase all setbacks by a minimum of 2m for Landscape area/Plantable space (i.e., soil area for planting a large species of tree) in the Priority Growth and Residential Infill Zoning Areas.
- 75% of the urban forest exists on private property
- There has been no mapping and analysis of the overall Garry Oak Ecosystem or individual Garry oak trees on private property City-wide in over 20 years.
- The new land use class scheme was determined without a City-wide biodiversity assessment on private property, presenting an obstacle to stewardship and conservation.
- The tree canopy targets for Priority Growth residential zones (dark yellow) are only 25%, compared to 50% for Residential Infill zones (light yellow). This represents an inequity, for example, greater flood and associated property damage risk and an increased risk of heat-related illness for residents in the Priority Growth residential zone.
- Section 488(1) of the Local Government Act: Form & Character Development Permit Areas (DPAs) for all new housing: Include requirements for a) protecting the natural environment, its ecosystem and biological diversity. However, the General Urban Design guidelines were crafted by the construction industry in the absence of an Indigenous land manager, or licensed ecologists, biologists or foresters.
- Tree Protection Bylaw (21-035) has not been updated since Bill 44, and the Draft OCP, and cannot provide physical protection for existing trees when trees are located within a proposed building envelope.