The Park City Council recently voted to again set up a Forest Advisory Board, which aims to set policies for vegetation to deal with drought and wildfire hazards.
City Planning Director Bruce Erickson told KPCW that the board has been reconstituted—in part so the city continues to receive a national designation.
“We’ve been a Tree City, USA from the US Arbor Commission for the past 20 years.” Erickson explained, “You’ll see the sign on our wall and all that. The forestry board is required to be in force and we are required to spend a certain amount of money every year in order to maintain our reputation as Tree City, USA. This board’s been around it’s been pretty quiet, and we reconstituted it differently to achieve some different goals especially with respect to wildland fire and drought tolerant landscaping.”
He said that planner Liz Jackson formulated new policies and changes for the Land Management Code.
“We’re going ahead with changes to the land management code in two weeks.” Erickson continued, “Which will adopt a plant materials list consistent with all the other resort towns that we deal with. So that inside of our city rights-of-ways, our open space lands, we will have an approved plant list that works for drought tolerant and works for fire wise. Also works for wildland fire interface. Two, we have the opportunity to make recommendations for people on private property to use this plant list. So, if they use the plant list that Liz has put together then it speeds through our approval process. If somebody wants to change it, then I have to make a recommendation.”
Last week, City Council member Steve Joyce pointed out the city is mostly built out. So how do we deal with existing homes and their surrounding vegetation?
Erickson said they can educate. And also, the city can act retroactively if it wants to.
“For example, the building official reviews all of our commercial structures on an annual basis for fire protection.” Erickson said, “If we really really want to do wildland fire protection in this community, we will do annual inspections. I have another planner who works for me that we got out of the San Diego department. They inform us that California actually fines land owners and property owners if they don’t remove standing dead trees on their property. This is especially effecting Truckee and the Tahoe Basin and the fires you saw in California. We also know up in the colony, which is a private HOA, that they require tree removal within 400 feet of their approved structures every single year. So that’s several tens of thousands of dollars for the property owners.”
The board right now is made up of professionals from the city—Erickson as the City Planning Director, the City Engineer, and Managers for Sustainability, Trails and Open Space, and Parks.
“We did get some commentary from the council on why we didn’t have citizen representation on this.” Erickson explained, “There’s a specific reason for that. We did not want to task one or two people with the responsibility of responding to the public. We wanted to be able to reach out to the members of the public that we would influence on any one point at a time. We believe we’re being more diverse by not appointing representation.”
With an eye to the recent headlines about wildfires around the west, Erickson talked about what he will be doing next.
“The first step is we’re getting together with the fire district and we’re going to have a little bit of a professional conference.” Erickson continued, “Some of the resort town planners that have experience, our team that has experience, and the fire fighters make sure we’re doing the right thing. Sun Valley has had two fires in the last two years. One that almost took out the hospital. We had the Brian Head fire two years ago and the ones down in Spanish Fork this year. So, we’re trying to learn from that experience. Our sympathies go out to the folks in Paradise, California because I have no idea of what it takes to be the planning director of that community and rebuild that place.”
