 Okay, we're ready to get started. Ryan, if you're ready, you can go ahead and start right to please meet yourself. Thank you. Good morning, everyone is Brian Linus senior planner or before she officer. With the city for development services or forestry, and this is an introduction to the purpose permits and procedures of our forestry. As you can see on site, and we'll share this presentation at the end. There's a website for our forestry. Management, I suggest everybody go there when they have a chance to become more familiar with our forestry section. And what we provide as far as direction for the city, its citizens and our teammates. The I'm trying to use this appropriately here. Today, we're going to go through a little bit of an introduction of our forestry, our purpose. What is applicable as far as for permits. And exemptions for permits throughout the city, we're going to cover the types of permits and approvals that we provide. What those permit requirements are the procedure that we go through when we look at permits. And then we'll conclude discuss if necessary, discuss if necessary. So introduction to our forestry first off the section of our forestry is responsible for the fulfillment of the city's tree canopy coverage goals. And this is across the city in general, we review and permit the removal and planting of trees throughout all the development within the city. Our team is assistant director Daniel Liao. Very well as our planning manager. I am currently the senior planner or before she officer. But that position will be unfilled. Shortly and then Caleb also is our senior plans examiner. Lucretia Summers is our plans examiner. And then we have 2 unfilled positions that we're hoping to get filled here within the month or 2. Plans examiner and our forestry inspector. And these are new positions when that we have never had within the city. So, our purpose our purpose is taken straight from our forestry ordinance. It is the 1st paragraph of our forest ordinance in the city. And it is to achieve 30% canopy coverage. Tree canopy coverage city wide and to promote a multi-aged urban forest. And we will do this by addressing the preservation and protection of healthy and significant trees throughout the city. And then also we will provide for the replacement and replanting of trees that are removed during development. To establish additional tree canopy and I'll link to that ordinance is provided here. If any of you aren't familiar, you can type in American legal for worse on your webs in your browser. And it should take you to the city of ordinance and we are section. Chapter 6.302. So these next couple slides, I'm going to hand over to. And they're going to walk you through the urban forestry permit. Avocability and exemptions. I'll go ahead and snag both these. So, for the ordinance guides, pretty much everything we do, especially regarding permit review. So, the most important part of the ordinance is finding out what kind of developments it applies to what kind of developments it doesn't. This is just the applicability language straight from the ordinance. As you can see for the ordinance doesn't consider a tree to be a tree. Until it sits, it's 6 inches in diameter. Anything under that's considered brush and doesn't apply. So the ordinance kicks in if you're removing any tree or trees that's 6 inches or greater. Anytime there's construction that requires a building permit. Number 3 is. Most of the stuff that kicks in for urban forestry is going to be for the removal of trees or building permit. But there's a bunch of other stuff in here. You can go through them. Makes use properties, new agricultural developments, right through your removal. That's the same as point 1 pretty much. And then the public projects that'll physically change the surface. Or again, remove trees, which is number 1 again. And we can jump over to the exemptions. So how the ordinance is laid out is you go through everything to see if it applies. If you meet 1 of the applicability standards, you then go through the exemptions. If you meet 1 of the exemptions, the ordinance doesn't apply. If you don't, it does. So these are the exemptions we have here. You can kind of go through them. They're it's pretty wordy. But the, the main exemption that we're going to see probably across the division or the department is number 2 there. The single residential lot 1 or 2 family dwelling that is 1 acre or less in size. So I'm sure the. Plans examiners know all about infill lots and those requirements. That's where that kicks in their exempt from the ordinance. You don't need to go through the urban forestry permitting process. If you're developing a lot like that. And then number 3, there's just change of use. Urban forestry doesn't kick in when all you're doing is change of use. And then as we go further down the list, the exemptions get less and less used. Typically, exemption number 2 is the 1 that's going to kick in for most of the projects. And that's pretty much it. Jump to the next 1 and I'll make Lucretia do these. Okay, I'm Lucretia summers. I am a plans examiner with the city of Fort word. Well, we're all with the sea of work with urban forestry. The types of permits that we have in urban forestry are tree removal permits. And that is typically if. Contractor or a builder has 1 tree that they need to remove. And that's it. If they want to remove that, then they can obtain a tree removal permit. As you see, those permits are free. But anytime they start removing anything more than that. Then they need to obtain an urban forestry permit. And as you see that urban forestry, those urban forestry permits are submitted online through a cella. And I don't know a lot of times they they're not really sure exactly where to go in order to submit the urban forestry permits. And so just so that you guys are aware, they're under the planning tab. So a lot of the times the applicants will call and they're not really sure about how to find it in a cella. It is under the planning tab. Once you click the planning tab, click the other tab and then you'll see urban forestry. The other types of permits that we have are the infill determinations. And those are determined case by case. Some infills, we try to use the infill when it's mostly third party. But again, those are determined case by case. Permits where UFC approval or review is required. Typically, we're going to look at them every day. We're going to look at demo permits. We're going to sign off on those. If an urban forestry permit is required, then we will put them on hold. Mostly commercial projects are going to go on hold because they're doing something new, whether it be a parking lot, an addition, or just a new building, then they're going to be put on hold because we need to make sure that they're not removing trees in the process of removing that building. Grading permits, we don't like them to do any dirt work before they obtain an urban forestry permit. So we're going to be a sign off and reviewer of the grading permits as well. Fill permits are far and few between. If the fill is affecting the trees, then we'll look at those. Building permits, typically we're going to look at building permit. Well, we're going to approve an urban forestry permit and we're really grateful for the zoning team because they do a really great job by matching their landscape plans with our urban forestry plans in order to push those building permits through. Next slide. Okay, so the permit requirements for a tree removal permit, again, there's no fee. The application is online and you see the link right there. So if anybody calls and they just want to remove a tree, you can always tell them they can go to this link. They can fill out the application there. And urban forestry requirements. Caleb pretty much went through the urban forestry requirements. But yeah, I'm trying to go through this. Site plans showing UFC compliance with the zoning ordinance. And again, that's when we're going to make sure that they're not removing too many trees. They're planting what they're supposed to plant, but also working with zoning to make sure that they're planting the right amount of trees. Sometimes zoning even require that they plant trees based on how much parking that they're putting in. If they're putting in more parking, then it'll require more trees. So again, we work closely with zoning to make sure that those building permits get whatever they're supposed to get. Infill housing, those again, we're working with zoning to make sure that those requirements are met. But for the most part, as long as they're planting the two trees in the front, one in the parkway, one in the front yard, then we typically allow zoning to go through that. The only time we have an infill housing that requires an urban forestry permit is again, when the lot size is one acre or larger, then we're going to require a full-blown urban forestry permit. Next slide. Can I jump in there, Lucretia, and just have you clarify? If the lot, I'm sorry, this is Mary Wells. I'm the planning manager. If the lot size is one acre or larger, does it matter if there's a building on it or not? No, it does not. Okay. It's just the size of the lot. Thank you. It's just the size of the lot, yes. Residential lots, one acre or larger, they need to come through urban forestry because we never know what they're actually going to do on the lot. It might be an addition. It might require an urban forestry permit or not. I mean, we don't know, but we definitely don't want those larger lots removing trees because typically those larger lots are going to have larger trees. And just like our mission statement is or what our purpose is, we're trying to cover the city of Fort Worth by 30% of canopy coverage. And if we're removing the larger trees, then we're shortening ourselves. We're planting these smaller trees, but we're allowing them to remove the larger trees. Thank you. Thanks for clarifying. Oh, no problem. The next slide is permit requirements. This is something that we don't typically get a lot of, but we need to start getting it. Urban forestry requires, we have an urban forestry permit packet that the applicant needs to download and then they fill that out and upload it to a seller. In that packet is the urban forestry permit application. It's also the letter of authorization. The letter of authorization is basically a letter allowing us to know that the owner is aware of what's going on the site. We need calculations to make sure that there are planting enough trees, but also preserving enough trees. Sorry. And then we also need those urban forestry phase plans. We have urban forestry phase one plans that are existing site conditions only. And then we have urban forestry two plans that are the proposed condition plans. All right. And then I'll jump back in here. So here's an example of an approved urban forestry phase one plan. Like LaCrucia mentioned, the phase one plans are existing conditions. That's normally just going to be all the canopy that's on site. Distinctions, if there's any significant trees. A significant tree is pretty similar to what it sounds like. It's just a really big tree that we have extra requirements for. It's going to be 27 inches in diameter or greater. Or if we're east of 35 and it's a post oak or blackjack oak, 18 inches or greater. So on this phase one plan here, it's a little bit difficult to see, but all the kind of meshed out area is existing canopy to be removed. And then on that, that little top strip there is also existing canopy to be preserved. And you can't see it that well, but they also need to show where they're going to put in their tree protective fencing. Any trees to be preserved that are within 50 feet of development activities need to have some kind of protection for significant trees. It needs to be chain link fencing. And then for not significant trees, just the standard orange mesh with metal T posts. So this one approved phase one plan looks like. It's pretty obvious to see that more than 25% of the existing canopy is being preserved. And then it shows you everything that's going to be removed. And the approved phase 1 plans, this is what the step they need to get up to to get through. Like, you know, if they have a demo raising permit where they're removing multiple trees, they need 1 of these before we can complete the review. Or if they want to get like a grading permit where the trees are being removed, they need to get through this step to go there. And Brian, if you wouldn't mind drop to the phase 2. All right. And then like Lucretia said, phase 2 plans is the final conditions. Here you can see everything that's being built. It shows the existing trees that were protected still on site, because they're supposed to be. And then it also will show all of their proposed plantings. And then on the bottom left there, that is impossible to see. Those are the calculations just showing how they're going to meet the requirements. There's 2 main requirements for the phase 2 plans. The 1 of them is a sub requirement where 40% of all parks and drives on site need to have canopy coverage. So, you know, if you have 10,000 square feet of parks and drives, you got to have 4,000 square feet of canopy. And then the final, the, the main number is the final canopy requirement, which is based off land use. So this is commercial land use. 30% of the area minus the area of any easements needs to be covered in canopy. And those, all those circles down there are proposed tree plantings. The canopy amount, the canopy credit you get on the tree you're planning is based on their species that comes from a table that's in the ordinance. Typically applicants are going to plant mostly large species trees, because it gives them 2,000 square feet of canopy credit, even though the tree itself is, you know, 3 inches in diameter when it's planted. But these permits run with the land. So they're supposed to last for a long time, which is why they get so much prorated canopy. The approved phase 2 plan is what they need to get through the building permits process. If they don't have 1 of these building permits is going to kick them back and say, you got to go to urban forestry. Can you jump to the next slide here, Brian? All right. And so this is kind of me and Lucretia both kind of touched on this. So those kind of, I call them like consulting permits where we just kind of go in there and make sure everything's groovy. These are what's required for those demolition and raising permit. They need either the approved tree removal permit or the approved phase 1 showing what's to be preserved, what's to be removed. And then if there's any tree protection required, that needs to be showed. Grading is the same. They need the approved phase 1. So permits the same as grading. And like I said, the building permits, they need the approved phase 2 plan. Can you jump to the next slide? Here we go. All right, Brian, take it home. We're going to wrap up by showing our current staff. Again, Daniel Liao, our assistant director of zoning, is our assistant director over our group. Mary Wells, our planning manager. The planning manager over peels downtown makes use urban residential and urban forestry is our direct planning manager. Caleb Olson is your senior plans examiner for urban forestry. And then Lucretia Summers is your plans examiner. It's a small staff, but we're getting larger. There's going to be some add-ons this year working towards those right now. In fact, hoping before March to have, I think, 2 or 3 extra people from where we are now. As you can see, their contact information is up there. Feel free to ask them or feel free to direct most of your questions about urban forestry to Caleb and or Lucretia. You're source experts. And I'm just going to go through a couple of things real quick. Just to add on a little bit. These are our typical trees of Fort Worth. There's all kinds of trees in Fort Worth. And then I was going to roll into the discussion. And just so they all know that it is our job here at Urban Forestry to cover the city and trees. So are there any questions from anyone? Okay. Hey there. Hello. How did you all come up with a 30% number? That number was established by City Council in 2009. What was it after a survey or is it standards around all cities? It's a reference to the amount of plantings that were being required at the time before the current urban forestry ordinance was established. And then in conjunction with the community and development. I mean it was quite a while back so I couldn't tell you exactly. But it is in reference to our city's existing canopy coverage. Do they ever plan to review that or change that number? We are actually currently looking at an urban forestry. We are currently working through an urban forestry master plan. Where they potentially could change that. But that'll be done here in the fall after the urban forestry master plan is completed. And we have all of the data from our community. And from the departments within the city. To provide that information. Are we saying? So I'm not sure who asked that question. Does that 30% is high? I think that 30 is actually pretty representative of our natural ecology. I'm not sure who's asking the question. Aidaire Bradford. Oh yes I can quite hear that. What was that? I think that's kind of low actually. Yeah well yes in reality it's very high because it's 30% coverage citywide. So that's why I typically explain that. That includes roads, that includes roofs, tops you know. So there are places where you cannot plant trees obviously. Citywide 30% is pretty ambitious. So right now the reality with all the undeveloped land is 19. We are 19% coverage. So keep on developing land and still hit 30 is really ambitious. So yeah it can be revised upwards or downwards. In the frame of the urban forestry master plan as Brian said. But you know it is it is an ambitious book to me. Brian we do have a couple of questions on the shaft. The first one you went ahead and responded in the shaft. And let's go ahead and answer it for the for the group. The question is at what stage of the development process should a phase 1 or a phase 2 application be submitted? So typically for urban forestry the urban forestry phase 1 the application for an urban forestry permit should be the first permit anyone applies for in the city. Because it establishes at the beginning of any sort of development activity what the existing conditions of that particular site are at. And it allows us to properly represent the existing tree canopy on that site at that time. If not then we are having to play a guessing game about whether or not trees were removed or cut down before they started construction. So that's for the urban forestry phase 1 drawing or plan for an urban forestry phase 2 drawing. That is not required until before a building permit is applied for. So there's certain permits within the city that you can get with adjusted phase 1 drawing such as your grading permit, your fill permit, your demo permit, those permits that we listed in the in the slideshow. Demo grading fill and permits can all be acquired with just an urban forestry phase 1 drawing. But a building permit cannot be acquired without a phase 2 drawing. So that dictates when a phase 2 drawing is required. So right before you go for a building permit. That makes sense that I get that did I mess that up for everybody? And I'm just going to jump in here as well. And most the applications we get they're submitting their phase 1 and phase 2 plans at the same time. So there's different requirements for each plan to be approved. So sometimes they're at the point in the permitting process where their phase 1 is approved, but their phase 2 isn't yet. But that's all handled under the same permit application. And normally their phase 1 and phase 2 plans come in at the same time. It's not uncommon for them to be approved at different times. But yeah, so they typically all come in at the same time and then they get their approved phase 1 first. And then they do an inspection, something else, and then they get their approved phase 2 after. The second question is what is the city's existing canopy coverage? As Daniel stated earlier, it's approximately 19 to 20% at this time. Okay, we have another one, another question. It's a property owner required to hire a landscape architect or profession other professional for the plans of metal of these permits. No, they are not, but they are there are requirements. That typically require someone with a good deal of experience and professionalism and in creating them. Landscape plans, I'm not, I don't think they're required to be stamped by landscape architect within the city for work. But you want somebody who understands trees where they need to be planted. No, it's you just can't go plant a tree or show a tree planted in a location and think, oh, that's going to. That's the perfect. It's done. It's over. It's really not that simple. There are different conditions that require different trees. So my suggestion is whenever you can get somebody who's as skilled as as possible to create these plans and to develop them. For instance, on an urban forestry phase 1 that requires the typically requires the use of a survey. And you're not going to get that from anyone other than a RPLS. But then the survey or may not know the type of trees. That need to be preserved or not. So you'll need somebody. So, I guess to simplify the answer, no, a licensed professional is not required. But you would not be doing yourself a favor if you didn't use somebody with experience doing this. The next question is this urban forestry review any other kind of vegetation? No, we do not. The next question is how long is the process from start to finish for the UFC? If all of the information is submitted correctly, it is 7 days. The next question. How would the city raise the tree coverage to get closer to the 30% go higher? That's kind of a subjective question. There are many different ways to raise the tree canopy coverage of the city. So I don't know if I can really answer that right here. It's it's not really related to permits because again, there are so many different ways we could do that. If I can jump in, that's part of the reasons why we're doing an urban forestry master plan. So we have this goal from the 80s that just says, hey, the city should get a 30% total coverage. But we don't know exactly where we're at. We have an estimate that is around 20, 19%. But then you have the different zoning districts. So in single family, there are some requirements, 40%, 50%. In commercial is 30%. In others are lower. So all of that is in the hopes that combining all of those zoning districts, we will get 30%. But that's a big assumption, right? So nobody has really made those calculations. So that's that's what the consultant in the urban forestry master plan is going to help us doing. Saying all of those assumptions, you know, if we keep on those ratings in these in these zoning cases, are we really going to hit the 30%? Maybe not. Maybe yes, in excess. But I don't know if that answers your question. Yep. Any other questions? You can raise your hand or enter your questions in the chat. We still have a few more minutes. Okay, while we're waiting to see if there are any more questions, I'd like to go ahead and thank Brian, Caleb, Lucretia, Mary and Daniel. Thank you for this very informative presentation. And Brian, sorry to hear that you're leaving. We wish you the best in your new career venture. And good luck. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you for your service. Okay, it seems like we do not have any more questions. So thank you, everyone. Have a great weekend. Goodbye. Thank you.