The City of East Lansing is initiating a Street Tree block pruning program on a 7-year cycle. Staff have organized the City into seven zones, each with roughly similar numbers of trees and size class distribution. The intent is to perform structural pruning, tree training, and preventative maintenance in one zone a year. This contract is for year/area one (1) but may be extended into future years with the mutual agreement of the City and Contractor.
The goal of the block pruning cycle is to remove dead or damaged branches, select and develop a dominant leader, trim for road/sidewalk clearance, and generally improve the health and resiliency of City-owned Street Trees located in the public Rights-of-Way. This includes major road rights-of-way, local road rights-of-way (typically the are between sidewalk and curb in residential subdivisions), City Parks, and City-owned properties. Utility line clearance is not a goal of this project and is performed by area utilities.
The City manages roughly 9,000 trees, and in 2018 they were electronically inventoried. This managed database is used as the basis for the number and size classes identified in the Bid Form. Year one of the block pruning program includes roughly 1200 trees.
