KJZZ: Phoenix approves $60 million plan to increase shade across the city

Katherine Davis-Young, KJZZ

The city of Phoenix is planning to add thousands of trees and shade structures over the next five years. The City Council on Wednesday approved a new Shade Phoenix action plan.

“Phoenix is the hottest big city in the country, but thankfully, it’s about to become a little cooler,” Mayor Kate Gallego said, calling the plan an exciting milestone for the city.

The plan allocates $60 million of federal and city funds to pay for 27,000 trees and more than 500 shade structures at schools, parks, bus stops and private properties with the goal of protecting residents from Phoenix's extreme temperatures.

“These hundreds of structures and thousands of trees will be placed intentionally in areas of our city where they’re critically needed, and of course, where they can thrive long-term,” Gallego said.

The city will invest more than half of the funding in low-to-moderate-income communities, according to the plan. These neighborhoods tend to have much less tree cover than more affluent areas, the plan says.

The city has set ambitious goals like this in the past. Reporting from the Arizona Republic last year showed a 2010 plan to significantly boost shade tree cover citywide had fallen short.

The new plan acknowledges only about 70% of actions from the 2010 plan have been achieved or are in progress 14 years later.

“Uncertainty around financial resources was presented as a major challenge in the 2010 Plan as the City had made significant cuts to tree and shade initiatives during the Great Recession,” the new shade plan says. But, it adds, “the new Shade Phoenix Plan more explicitly identifies financial resources that are available to support its vision, strategies, and actions."

The new plan calls for an updated citywide tree inventory to begin in 2025 and requires annual progress reports on tree-planting and other goals.

Gallego said she’s confident the new plan has enough funding and support to meet benchmarks.

“We are the first city to have partnered with American Forests, the national nonprofit, to track where we plant trees and make sure we do it in an equitable manner,” Gallego said. "Arizona State University and the National Science Foundation have also helped us, so we have great partners in this."

If new goals are met, the city will nearly double the number of trees it has been planting annually.

Read the original article here.