Falls Church’s Urban Forestry Commission is considering ideas to increase the city’s tree canopy without breaking the bank.
With several years of difficult budget years on the horizon, it may be hard to find funding for some previous proposals, such as creating a city urban-forestry management plan and a comprehensive tree inventory, said Erin Flynn, the Council’s liaison to the commission.
“Things are resource-dependent and budget-dependent,” Flynn said of the prioritization of funding proposals.
At the May 20 commission meeting, there was some skepticism that any new urban-forestry initiatives would win Council support, whether or not costs were kept down.
“Even in years with a budget surplus, we’ve been invited to submit a wish list — and we’ve gotten none of it,” commission member Tim Roche said.
An urban-forestry plan doesn’t need to be created in a vacuum or from scratch, commission members said. The city could review similar plans approved by other Northern Virginia jurisdictions to come up with best practices, then move ahead.
Charles Prince, the city arborist, said he would make inquiries of his colleagues across the region.
“Let me ask around,” he said, citing the town of Vienna and city of Fairfax as two jurisdictions he would target.
Flynn seemed amenable to such a middle-ground approach.
“The city is not going to spend money right now to hire a consultant [to write the report], but it may still make sense to collect the management plans that have been done from surrounding jurisdictions and see what’s in there,” she said.
Commission chair Amy Crumpton said having a policy document in place would be a net plus for the city, and the commission should be “making a good argument” to the Council and public for developing one.
Creating a comprehensive tree inventory likely would require a specialized consultant — one certified by the International Society of Arboriculture — to do the work.
Without a scientifically valid tree survey, city leaders would have no starting point for efforts to increase the overall tree canopy, or to measure the impact of mixed-use development proliferating across Falls Church.
Having a survey in hand provides “a general understanding of your tree canopy and gives you general guidelines on how to increase it,” Crumpton said.
Shortcuts might be possible, Flynn said. She suggested the possibility of piggybacking on work already done by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and the Northern Virginia Regional Commission “as opposed to doing our own thing.”
Last year, Prince estimated Falls Church’s overall tree canopy at 48% — higher than in Arlington or Alexandria, but slightly below the regional goal of maintaining a minimum 50% sought by the Council of Governments.
According to a 2024 COG report:
“In 2023, an estimated 49.6% of the region’s 2.2 million acres of land was covered by tree canopy according to Chesapeake Bay Program data, down from 51.3% coverage in 2014. COG experts noted that an average of 4,383 acres of tree canopy are lost each year due to development and other factors. If this trend continues through 2050, the region’s tree canopy coverage would drop to 44.4%.”
At the May 20 meeting, there also was discussion of changes related to urban forestry emanating from the 2026 General Assembly session.
