ANALYSIS:
A cost analysis to maintain the trees in the public ROW was performed in March 2018. To determine routine tree maintenance costs, all of the trees and palms in the City’s ROW were included in the computation (commercial areas, major thoroughfares, entrances to the City, municipal facilities, Beachwalk, etc.) in addition to the trees in all swales adjacent to residential properties. Every tree/palm in the ROW would be pruned on a regular cycle to professional industry standards to avert hazardous conditions, especially in preparation for hurricane season. The total number of trees (as determined by the City’s tree survey) is approximately 19,000. Of this total almost 8,400 are palms which require pruning four times per year to remove dead or hanging fronds and fruit (particularly important for liability reasons in areas frequented by pedestrians and vehicles) and 1,900 palms that require pruning only twice per year. All other trees are categorized as small, medium, and large canopy trees that require pruning once a year to remove dead wood, crossed or damaged limbs, low hanging limbs, street light and signage obstructions, etc., as well as dead tree/palm removals.
The work should be performed by or under the supervision of an ISA Certified Arborist or equivalent who is employed by a company that specializes specifically in tree maintenance, not a typical landscaping company. In determining the cost, it is estimated that the contractor would need three to five tree trimming crews, and a tree trimming supervisor to manage the contract and crews. Each tree trimming crew would consist of one lead tree trimmer, one tree trimmer/equipment operator, two ground/flag men to direct vehicular and pedestrian traffic, one bucket truck, one chipper, and associated equipment.
In order to determine the current level of tree services provided by City of Miami Beach staff within the ROW, Greenspace Management performed an assessment of its emergency and contracted arboricultural activities.
EMERGENCY TREE WORK REQUESTS
Since a portion of the tree work performed in 2017 and 2018 was done in response to Hurricane Irma related damage, information from those months was not used for this analysis. For the purposes of this analysis April 2018 was the final month of Irma attributed tree work. From May 2018 to December 2018 Greenspace Management has completed the following number of daily tasks directly related to tree events:
137 Emergency Requests for Tree or Palm Trimming
113 Emergency Requests for Tree or Palm Removal
42 Requests for Tree or Palm Stump Removals
30 Emergency Requests for Tree or Palm Re-staking
TOTAL: 322 Emergency Tree Work Requests
Therefore, Greenspace Management resolved an average of 1.9 emergency tree requests per working day (322/173 working days). It is estimated that including travel time, each emergency tree event take around 7.5 man-hours to complete, including staff’s return to tree removal sites at a later date to stump-grind and re-grade the area.
In conclusion, emergency tree requests consume approximately 2,415 man-hours or 1.16 full time equivalent (FTE). This time does not include administrative time to review sites prior to sending crews out and/or following through with residents and staff to close the communication loop.
The distribution of emergency tree work requests by geographic location in the City is as follows:
North Beach 29%
Middle Beach 31%
South Beach 39%
The distribution of where emergency events occur and where maintenance contract exists is as follows:
55% of events occur in an area that is maintained by the City’s landscape maintenance contractor
45% of events occur in areas not maintained by the City’s landscape contractor.
Greenspace Management did document the maintenance costs associated within a sample residential area (attached).
The landscape maintenance contracts for the City’s ROW will be re-bid and awarded before the end of the calendar year 2019. Planned changes to the contract format include having a unit cost for each service item including tree and palm trimming. The awarded contractor will be required to provide the City with a unit price for these services. Therefore, a current contractor cost per tree can be established and evaluated by dividing the contractor unit cost by the number of trees or palms in the site. That per cost unit can be extrapolated to a cost estimate for the non-contracted sites. Finally, an estimated contracted cost for the entire city can be computed for both tree and palm trimming.
Based on staff’s emergency tree response analysis, which reflects that the City currently dedicates a significant amount of resources to tree related issues in the ROW, and of that response effort, approximately 45% of that work is performed in areas that are not under the City’s landscape maintenance contract, and that residents are currently performing routine landscape maintenance in their swales per City ordinance, it is recommended that the City continues to provide emergency tree response as it exists in its current capacity.
If there is a desire to increase the level of service to include non-emergency related routine tree maintenance in the ROW, then a budget enhancement can be prepared that will seek to fund the hiring of contracted tree care professionals to perform the services Citywide on an annual basis. However, the order of magnitude of this enhancement will be in excess of one million dollars and such measures have been cut during previous budget deliberations.
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