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Our street tree program is important to establishing and growing our Urban Forest canopy. Research <br /> shows that trees benefit our community by reducing carbon load, cooling the air around us, providing <br /> calming effects between traffic and pedestrians, enhancing property values and so many more benefits. <br /> Again, it takes staff to monitor and maintain our street trees, assist neighbors with removal of hazardous <br /> trees and of course planting new trees throughout the city to grow our Urban Forest. <br /> Volunteers can be a great asset to accomplish some of this work but they must be organized and lead by <br /> professionally trained people. Volunteers can be utilized to ease the burden of work on City staff to <br /> enable staff to address more technical work but volunteers should not become part of the work load <br /> equation. They should be considered a valuable bonus to the equation, as their availability and level of <br /> skill is variable. Volunteers are an asset but It cannot be overlooked that it still takes time and resources <br /> to prepare and oversee them. <br /> A person can be a collector of classic cars but if the cars are not maintained and cared for the collection <br /> just becomes a junk yard. This same analogy can be used for our parks and other green assets. These <br /> gems are real assets to our city but left to themselves and not maintained properly they just become <br /> urban blights. <br /> Thank you, <br /> Katrina Lindahl <br /> 2515 East Grand Avenue, Everett WA 98201 <br /> 425-258-1126 <br />