The Cullman Tree Commission discussed the possibility of a future tree survey for the city during Tuesday morning’s meeting.

The commission had previously discussed the survey at other meetings, with the goal of counting all of the city’s trees and documenting their species, size, condition and other factors that may be useful for the commission to manage them. 

The commission would have to ask the Cullman City Council for approval to be able to conduct the study, and the question of asking for the survey was brought up again during Tuesday’s meeting. 

Arborist Charles Chandler, who took over the position in October, said he had considered a tree inventory, but pointed out that there are some factors that the commission would need to consider before asking the city council for approval for the survey. 

Part of the survey would include documenting the condition of each tree in the city, and finding that there are a lot of trees in the city in bad shape and that would mean the city would have to pay to remove them, he said. 

Lee McBride, a private arborist who works in the area, agreed that the survey could find lots of trees that need to be removed, and after finding that out, the city would be on the hook for potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to do so. 

“Once you identify the risks, then you have the legal obligation to take care of the risks,” he said. 

McBride said the commission could conduct what the International Society of Arborists calls a Level 1 assessment, which would only require a drive-by or walk-by look at the city’s trees to mark down the number of trees and their species, along with any other factors the commission wanted to document. 

Any levels past that would would require a 360-degree inspection of the trees or using advanced diagnostics to get a clearer look at their conditions, he said.

“There can be a Level 1, it could literally be just a windshield assessment, but you would just need to decide what those parameters are going to be,” he said. “Whether it’s counting the number of trees so you can get a grant for tree planting or to get a grant to get equipment to take care of the problems and risk and actually develop a tree pruning program.”

After the discussion, the commission opted to table the discussion until Chandler has more time to get his own look at the city’s trees, and if necessary, he can return to the commission to ask its members to forward the request for the survey to the city council.