You can help trees

Well, it’s budget time again. Allocation of the Park and Recreation funding is being debated. The City Charter requires the department to fund maintenance of our shade trees and parks. Since the Park Board was created, competing demands for funding have redirected resources from caring for our shade trees and parade grounds to many other projects.

Park maintenance, swimming pools, senior centers, golf courses, urban forestry (care and replacement of our public trees) and more are competing for a piece of the pie.

Spokane has thousands of mature trees in public parks and planting strips between sidewalks and streets. These trees soften urban spaces, shade paved surfaces, capture airborne particulates and carbon dioxide while releasing oxygen.

In an attempt to fill the financial gap, an opportunity for city of Spokane utility customers to support urban forestry was initiated last fall. As one of Spokane’s 75,000-plus utility consumers, you can donate directly to our urban forestry program using the paper utility bill you receive each month.

If only 20,000 of us donate $10 each year, we would fund nearly two-thirds of the urban forestry budget!

Carrie Anderson

Urban Forest Council

Spokane