Tree Inventory Approved
The City Council agreed this week to spend $20,000 to conduct a computer inventory of city-owned trees in Manhattan Beach, possibly the first step in a move to add several thousand trees to city streets.
The council voted to hire a private company to provide a computerized list of trees and prospective tree sites with details about the location, variety, size and health of the tree and to develop a computer program for maintaining the trees.
Manhattan Beach has about 3,000 city-owned trees, but a report prepared by Gold Coast Environmental Services, a company that provides computer inventories of trees, said the city has the capacity for 12,500 trees.
The move to hire a company to conduct a computer inventory was opposed by Councilwoman Jan Dennis, who said the city should wait until it knows how much it would cost to add and maintain new trees to city streets.
Councilman Jim Walker, a member of the city’s Ad Hoc Parkway Tree Committee, said it would cost the city about $170,000 a year to maintain an additional 5,000 trees.
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