By Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Tyler Waugh
Mount Pearl will get to double down on its urban forestry efforts this year thanks to a grant from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities that upped the budget to $400,000.
FCM contributed $200,000 through its Growing Canada’s Community Canopies program and the City matched that amount for a $400,000 total budget for Phase IV of the Urban Forestry Plan.
“This is something we’ve been working on for a number of years,” said Councillor Isabelle Fry as council prepared to award the tender for Phase IV.
The City received two proposals when the tender closed June 15, and administration recommended awarding the contract to the lowest qualified bidder, O’Neill’s Gardenland Ltd., at a cost of $272,549, including tax. And since tender submissions came in under the $400,000 budget, the public works department requested and received permission from the FCM to expand the project.
“This will be executed by tree number or site number increases, remaining within the original grant amount,” said Fry. “FCM encourages the planting of additional trees. All changes made will be reflected in the FCM reporting documents and casefile.”
Public Works director Glen Dollimount told council most of the work in Phase IV will take place on Sagona Avenue and roll into Old Placentia Road down toward Richard Nolan Drive. The work will entail the planting of trees and shrubs in 2026 and into 2027.
The Mount Pearl Urban Forestry Plan, called Setting Roots & Growing Forward, was developed with the guiding principles of maintaining and fostering growth amongst the city’s existing trees and promoting projects and policies that grow the city’s overall tree canopy.
At the time, it was estimated the city’s canopy coverage was about 20 per cent. By the year 2035, the City hopes to have grown the canopy coverage to 45 per cent by planting a diverse collection of tree species year over year, and planting a minimum of 1,000 trees annually, depending on budget.
“I’m delighted to see this here. It was sort of timely in that having a chat with residents they expressed concern about all the trees we’ve been removing up on the Kenmount Road area with Avalon Ford and developments up there,” said Deputy Mayor Jim Locke, adding that he informed the residents of the municipal urban forestry plan and its goals. “They were delighted to know that council had taken this initiative and staff have implemented this so that trees we remove we will return. Our goal is to return trees we’ve been removing – they may not be in the same area – but we’ll certainly increase our tree canopy.”
Murray’s Landscape Services provided the other tender proposal for Phase IV with a bid of $338,838, including tax.