Cedartown has been selected to receive $200,000 over the next four years as part of the Trees Across Georgia Program.
The Georgia Forestry Commission (GFC) in cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (USFS) heads up the Trees Across Georgia (TAG) Urban and Community Forestry (U&CF) Grant Program. The program is designed to encourage projects that
plant trees and increase the benefits of tree canopy, create and support long-term and sustained urban and community forestry programs, and promote the care of trees in communities throughout Georgia with emphasis on disadvantaged communities.
Cedartown’s project will use Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) grant funds, along with technical, management and operational support from other sources, to create an urban and community tree program for Cedartown. The program development process will follow other successful programs in Georgia and will provide a model program development process for other small municipalities in Georgia.
“The diversity of projects chosen to receive funding represents Georgia’s commitment to conserve and enhance its sustainable forest resources,” said Georgia Forestry Commission Director Tim Lowrimore. “Trees provide so many environmental, health, and economic benefits that support us all. These grants will help to protect and grow tree canopy where it is needed most in GA communities. These grant recipients are acting decisively to increase tree canopy for Georgians of today – and tomorrow.”
This project will create incrementally, over a period of four years, a tree program plan for the City of Cedartown. Goals of the plan include improving and sustaining canopy cover to address heat island effects in public, residential, commercial and industrial areas.
Cedartown’s present canopy cover of 43 percent as determined by a recent Green Infrastructure Center’s mapping project will be increased toward a goal of 50 percent as per American Forest Association’s goal for urban communities. Canopy cover will be remapped in the last year of the project and calculated in combination with new trees planted to measure progress.
Through staff training and community outreach better care will be given to public and private property trees. Improved development regulations will stimulate tree and landscape business associated with planting and maintaining trees and increase related employment. Development projects will be higher quality and more appealing, resulting in improved local economy.
Public trees will be inventoried with hazards addressed along public streets and at public parks and campuses. A Storm Readiness Plan will be developed to ensure passage for emergency service vehicles during and after an event, mobilization of clean-up services, qualification for disaster relief funds, and recovery with replacement tree plantings.
Tree planting site locations are not known currently. These locations will be developed annually based on a public facility and street tree inventory to be done as a year one activity within this grant project. The goal is to plant 50 trees per year on public property and 100 trees per year through tree give-away projects on private property over a four-year period.
