City moves to pay University of North Texas to perform UTC analysis; Denton, TX

City agrees to fund tree survey Denton Record Chronicle News for Denton County, Texas Local News:
11:50 PM CDT on Wednesday, September 16, 2009By Lowell Brown / Staff Writer
A plan to measure the amount of tree coverage in and around Denton won support Tuesday from the City Council.
Council members informally agreed during a nonvoting work session to spend an estimated $40,000 on a joint project with the University of North Texas to survey the city’s tree canopy. The expense is included in the city’s proposed 2009-10 budget, which faces a council vote Tuesday.
City planners say the project would help set target percentages for tree preservation as part of an ongoing overhaul of the city’s 2004 tree code. The project also is designed to identify wooded land the city might want to buy and protect — a longtime goal of tree preservation advocates, said Chuck Russell, Denton’s planning supervisor.
Code revisions proposed last year called for a citywide tree canopy target of 30 percent, but city officials acknowledged in February that they didn’t know the current canopy percentage.