URBAN FOREST MASTER PLAN - Laserfiche WebLink

CITY OF PLEASANTON URBAN FOREST MASTER PLAN | 75 MONITORING PLAN 5.1 Assessing Our Progress The City needs a way to track actions completed within the Implementation Plan to measure the progress it makes towards its urban forest goals. The Community Assessment and Goal- Setting Tool was created by the Vibrant Cities Lab just for this purpose. Vibrant Cities Lab is a collaboration of partners which includes the United States Forest Service, American Forests, and the National Association of Regional Councils, and serves as an o nline hub of urban forest and tree research, best practices, and planning tools (http://vibrantcitieslab.com). The Assessment and Goal-Setting Tool is based on research of urban forest sustainability and establishes criteria and indicators to measure urban forest sustainability. The tool is used as an assessment to define the City’s current state of a specific area of urban forest sustainability. The user decides what the City’s current state of the metric is, and then sets where the goal metric should be. Each metric is assigned a point value, and the City is assigned a “Total Current Score” and a “Gap Score,” or how far off the current state is from the desired goal. A city that has a gap score between 20 to 40 is not far from achieving the goals of its urban forest program. Conversely, gap scores of 40+ indicates that a City is still implementing programs and policies to close the gap and develop a sustainable urban forest. Pleasanton’s first assessment was conducted on September 8, 2024, by City staff and the consultant team. Table 5-1 reflects the results from the first assessment, which set the baseline for the City’s “Total Current Score” at its pre-UFMP metrics. Staff used Vibrant Cities Lab’s rating descriptions to determine Pleasanton’s status (prior to the UFMP process) for the various categories and then chose the goals they want to achieve in each category to determine the gap between the two ratings. Based on the first assessment, the City has a current rating of 17, with a gap score of 78. The City’s UFMP monitoring plan should be based around the Vibrant Cities Lab Community Assessment and Goal Setting Tool and be retaken each year to track, measure, and highlight progress. The assessment can also be used to demonstrate successes and justify additional funding asks to City Council. After the completion of this UFMP, several of the responses that had significant gaps such as the lack of a UFMP (5) and an urban tree canopy assessment (5), will have already been achieved.