City Trees is a premier publication focused on urban + community forestry. In each issue, you’ll learn how to best manage the trees in your community and more!
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18 City Trees TCIA Accreditation and SMA Municipal Accreditation: A Symbiotic Relationship by David Rattigan Excerpted from an article that ran in the January 2016 issue of Tree Care Industry Magazine When Daren Mindham joined the planning office for the City of Carmel, Indiana ten years ago, Carmel's pop- ulation was booming. Listed as the No. 3 place to live in America by Money mag- azine in 2014 (formerly No. 1), the Indianapolis suburb was situated in the fifth-fast- est growing county in the United States, with a popula- tion that's grown from about 36,000 residents to its current 86,000. With that kind of growth has come a similar boom in development, and Mindham does all of the landscape plan reviews for the city. Carmel has been involved in the Tree City USA program for 21 years, and last year Mindham's department received a Tree City USA Growth Award (for continuous work toward high stan- dards) and achieved Municipal Accreditation with the Society of Municipal Arborists (SMA). In order to be accredited by SMA, a municipal program needs to be certified as a Tree City USA, have earned a Growth Award, agree to follow a code of ethics, have a certified arborist on staff, and have an urban forestry management plan. "As the urban forester, I deal with every tree in the city," Mindham says, including new landscaping, existing trees within landscapes, and city landscaping over 50 square miles (130 sq km) of territory. Mindham estimates that there are up to 25,000 street trees in Carmel. With all that development and all those trees, Mindham and his staff have to be vigilant about tree topping and other potential activities of fly-by-night companies. In Carmel, jobs requiring outside contractors are either put out to bid, or Mindham will solicit three bids. Not surprisingly, when- ever possible, Mindham gives preference to more professional tree care companies. "Normally, I've been getting three quotes, and if you're TCIA accredited—which our current removal contractor (Bartlett Tree Experts) is—those are the companies I'm going to get quotes from first," he says. "I know they've done good work in the past, and I know people who have worked for these companies who can attest to the training and safety programs they do." Not surprisingly, the SMA Municipal Accreditation program is strongly supported by TCIA, which has had its own Accreditation program for businesses in place since 2004. Part of the reason is that, from a business standpoint, SMA Accreditation might bring a deeper appreciation of TCIA Accreditation to urban forestry departments. Many urban forestry departments already give preference and perhaps tie-breaking status to TCIA-accredited compa- nies, but there's a hope that more departments will gain an appreciation, and make TCIA Accreditation a require- ment, not just a preference. But there's also a more altru- istic reason for TCIA's interest. "We support the SMA Municipal Accreditation program because it does raise the bar for every- one and holds both the municipal forestry departments and the commercial tree care companies to a higher professional and ethical standard," says Bob Rouse, TCIA's chief program officer. "We want to do what we can from the commercial side to help it grow and help it get better notoriety, and through that we hope more municipalities will jump on board." Most municipal arborists recognize the need to hire profession- al companies, but often have to sell that belief to superiors in their town or city, which can be a challenge. TCIA-accredited companies still have the task of educating the public as to the accreditation's importance. "TCIA gives companies a lot of support to market their credential, but they have to do the footwork," Rouse says. "Some companies are more than happy to go through the accreditation process for their own internal purposes, but they often don't market it out to their clients—either consumers or even the municipalities they're bidding with. That's an important thing for them to do, even if that's not their main reason for being accredited." Rouse says that in addition to promoting and educating people on the value of TCIA Accreditation for themselves, commercial tree care companies should promote municipal accreditation among local municipalities. "It will help their town improve in taking care of trees and con- tracting, and it could also lead to TCIA Accreditation being part of the bid spec for their town or city," Rouse says. "I think accredit- ed companies can really help, especially if there are three, four, or five accredited companies in a single city or town, and they all get together to encourage the municipality to look at SMA Accreditation; I think they could really move the needle on that." Learn more about SMA Municipal Accreditation here and about TCIA Accreditation here. Carmel, Indiana Urban Forester Daren Mindham TCIA Chief Program Officer Bob Rouse