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HAMMITT Bob From: MEDLIN Johnny R To: HAMMITT Bob Cc: PLAMONDON Scott F Subject: Urban Forestry Work Load Date: Thursday, May 16, 1996 12:18PM Hi Bob, I have reviewed the anticipated meeting schedule for the Urban Forestry Service Profile as proposed by the Service Improvement Team. I'm in agreement with the number of meeting hours proposed but suspect it is the minimum estimate assuming we don't run into any complications. Also, the real meeting impact to PWM is for SIX people who are on the core team. Those people are Dick Morgan, Scott Plamondon, Adrain Stansfield, Mike Bellmore, John Luther and myself. Additional people such as John Etter, Louis Kroeck, someone from Planning and someone else from the Building Division will also be impacted for part of these times. Using Roland's figures of 24 hours of meetings I would add two hours of preparation and review time for each meeting hour proposed per person. The service lead would likely have an additional 40 hours. Hours People Total Core Meetings 24 6 144 Additional Staff 8 4 32 Preparation time 176 2 352 Service Lead 40 1 40 TOTAL 586 person -hours Assuming the average cost to the City for these people is $40.00 /hr, this project equates to about $23,000. Looking just at the Urban Forestry work unit, I think it would be beneficial to do this project, but I'm at a loss on just how to free up time to do it. Some things to think about: Please remember that the Urban Forestry staff is only Mike Bellmore and Scott Plamondon. I have moved the Vegetation Program and Kevin Foerstler into this unit but Kevin brought his full work program with him. 1. We are running a backlog of approximately 30 planning division referrals (PUD, site review, & land partitions) which Joys. Planners have asked for comment regarding tree impacts. These are the ones we are already late on and our backlog has been increasing over the past few months due to the incredible development activity which is happening. Reese remember that one of the justifications we are using for not doing everything the Tree Preservation code indicates Rtgig should be done in individual building permit review is that we are performing tree issues review at the earlier land development stages where we can have a greater impact eafly in the process. In this manner we said we are getting those comments to developers prior to their expenditure of funds that would otherwise be lost (or the loss of which would encourage them to fight our recommendations). 2. We have been unable to start ANYTHING regarding the street tree inventory project because we can't shake loose any of Scott's time to structure the program, develop inventory criteria, or recruit inspectors. This doesn't say anything about being the review and editing which would need supervision if we succeeded in getting the inventory started. 3. In some ways the popular NeighborWoods program has become too successful. Each year this program has been in existence we have received greater interest and it has drawn additional resources. The difficulty we are having is that INDIVIDUALS want to participate, but not as coordinators. Unfortunately we don't have sufficient coordinators spread out throughout the town to please these people with a coordinator in their area. We have to either tell them they can't participate or put in almost as much time into each individual for training and support as we put into the coordinators who achieve a much Page 1