EVANS
––––
The term “urban forester” might seem like a contradiction, but City of Marysville officials hope their new forestry employee will help the city look a bit more arboreal.
Andy Evans, the city’s new urban forester, started at the city in January. The city’s decision to create this new position comes out of a few factors.
Public Services Director Mike Andrako said the city has recently cut down a large portion of its street trees throughout the city, partly because of the rampant emerald ash borer beetle. Evans’ will help create a plan that will allow the city to grow more trees in the city and have a much more consistent plan throughout Marysville.
“We need to start replacing all these trees we cut down,” he said. “We’ve lost a lot of tree canopy in the city by having to remove these trees.”
Additionally, trees are expensive and difficult to maintain. The new program will take the pruning responsibility off Marysville residents, and that will require work.
“We just couldn’t invest that much time into it,” Andrako said. “Now that Andy’s here, we can invest that time.”
According to Andrako, Marysville is behind other cities in regards to city trees. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if a part-timer is added in a few years to help Evans.
Evans graduated from The Ohio State University in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in horticulture. After working at a landscaping company, he was hired by the City of Reynoldsburg to manage park trees and other natural resources.
Evans said taking care of street trees is a specialized field.
“I think a lot of homeowners and people in general don’t realize that,” he said. “To prune a tree that has the potential to get a hundred feet tall, it’s just not in the public’s best interest to expect all that responsibility to fall on the homeowner.”
Andrako said there are thousands of trees within the city of Marysville, so taking care of them is a full-time job.
“Basically, we need someone whose job is to maintain all these trees,” Andrako said.
Officials said they hope to start planting new trees on an annual basis, gradually restoring those lost trees more and more each year.
Evans’ first responsibility has been taking an inventory of the city’s street trees, including species and size. Once he’s done with that, he’ll create an annual pruning plan for the city and carry it out himself.
His day-to-day routine will be constant pruning and tree assessment.
“Basically (he’ll be) doing the work making sure our street trees in our city are healthy and thriving,” Andrako said.
Evans will also be responsible for some of the smaller trees in the parks, but contractors will still need to be hired to tend or remove larger trees when needed.
Evans said his job will include working with the city’s engineering department to approve new street trees. For pruning, he said he plans to divide the city up into several sections to help organize the pruning program. According to Andrako, it will likely take six years for Evans to prune every tree in the city before starting the cycle over again.
Andrako said the city’s current public service staff has been busy with its various other projects, so tree maintenance has taken a backseat.
“We haven’t been pruning trees,” Andrako said. “It’s been the homeowners responsibility.”
Andrako also mentioned the city’s upcoming streetscape projects on West Fifth Street, and it will be able to use Evans’ input to determine what trees to plant for those projects, and where they should go.
“For all out capital improvement projects, he has input on those,” Andrako said.
Less routine duties will include submitting the city’s Tree City USA application every year, and coming up with a tree replacement program.
Andrako said street trees are assets to the community, and he doesn’t think they’ve always been treated that way.
“We’re going to start treating it like an asset, because that really does improve the quality of life considerably,” he said.