The District of Squamish plans to allocate additional money to hire arborists to manage danger trees on municipal property.
The danger trees are a public safety risk, the district says, and it is allocating $10,000 more in its existing budget to hire arborists.
“Due to development and on-going tree clearing, the forest canopy is becoming more broken which increases the wind loading on individual trees causing them to break off, fall down and become dangerous,” district says.
Putting more money towards removing danger trees is among service-level increases the district is planning as part of the 2021 budget.
It is also proposing to hire two part-time labourers for trail and road maintenance.
The district also plans to provide an extra 15 hours to the emergency program staff because of increased workload due to COVID-19.
Hiring of a film liaison, an IT analyst, a second deputy fire chief, and two part-time clerks for the Squamish RCMP detachment are other service level increases being planned.
