Federal stimulus funds to plant 23,000 trees and support 200 jobs for California

California ReLeaf » Trees Benefit from Federal Funding:
In an effort to create jobs, improve the environment and stimulate the economy, the federal government in December awarded California ReLeaf $6 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.
The ARRA funding will allow California ReLeaf to distribute grants to 17 urban forestry projects throughout the state, planting more than 23,000 trees, creating or retaining close to 200 jobs, and providing job training for scores of young people over the next two years.
ARRA funding has been responsible for a variety of green jobs including jobs in solar panel installation, alternative transportation, fire suppression, and more. The California ReLeaf grant is exceptional in that it provides jobs by planting and maintaining urban trees.

US Forest Service issues job announcement for leader of national urban & community forestry program; USA

USAJOBS - Search Jobs:
The Assistant Director (AD), in conjunction with the Director of Cooperative Forestry, develops and implements broad policies and guidance for U&CF to increase program effectiveness at the national, regional, state and local level. This includes helping to establish policies, positions and agreements for the Forest Service on difficult and complex urban and community forestry issues. The AD provides leadership in cultivating partnerships with other federal agencies, state and local governments, tribes, community organizations, non-profit groups, universities, special interest groups and private industry to accomplish the strategic goals of the Forest Service and U&CF. The AD works with the staff to develop program priorities and is responsible for national level administration including financial planning, performance-based budget allocations, and program accountability. He/She also exercises the full range of supervisory duties including performing overall work planning, establishes work schedules and priorities, assigns and reviews work of staff, sets performance standards, provides performance reviews, and ensures that employees are provided developmental and training opportunities.

City creates non-profit to link community, business and government in efforts to turn brownfields into green; Richmond, VA

City hails progress of local nonprofit urban renewal program – Richmond Confidential -- Richmond, California News, Information, Art and Events.:
Owing in part to its industrial legacy, Richmond is a city with urban environmental challenges.
Which is why Mayor Gayle McLaughlin hails the establishment of a local nonprofit dedicated to cleaning, restoring and reusing urban parcels of land that lay dormant.
The new nonprofit, named Groundwork Richmond, will “operate in areas adversely affected by industrialization and within poor urban communities with significant numbers of brownfields,” McLaughlin said during a ceremony Monday at City Hall celebrating the completion of a feasibility study and strategic plan. The completion of the documents is a key step toward securing funding, she said.
Groundwork Richmond is part of a network of independent community ventures aimed at improving urban environments through local action by linking local people, business, government and other organizations, according to a program summary.

Words of advice for new mayor include continuing tree canopy, green jobs efforts; Baltimore, MD

A few words of advice - baltimoresun.com:
Mary Sloan Roby hopes the incoming mayor will keep the city's new recycling campaign rolling - along with the rest of Sheila Dixon's Cleaner Greener Baltimore initiative.
'Baltimore is considered a 'green' city, which 20 years ago would have seemed impossible,' Roby says.
Roby would ask Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake to make the city greener still, and to understand why Baltimore must embrace the color and the concept.
The new mayor, Roby says, must make sure the city's tree canopy continues to spread, must create more green jobs, must repair city pipes that wastefully leak water, must require LEED standards for all city buildings, must pay attention to neglected city parks and must figure out how to pay for an improved storm water system.

The Delaware Center For Horticulture seeks to fill Urban Forest Administrator post; Wilmington, DE

The Delaware Center For Horticulture - About - Job Openings:
Delaware Center for Horticulture, Trees for Wilmington
Urban Forest Administrator
Job Announcement
DATE: January 5, 2010
POSITION: Urban Forest Administrator
START DATE: TBD
SALARY: $45,000 per year with full benefits, negotiable
CONTACT: Jen Bruhler, Assistant Director of Urban Forestry
Organizational Description: The Delaware Center for Horticulture (DCH) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization working with neighborhoods, community groups, and businesses to grow a greener Wilmington through planting and educational programs, environmental leadership, advocacy and by building community capacity.
Position Summary: The Urban Forest Administrator (UFA) will implement the street tree planning, regulation, and urban tree canopy expansion for the City of Wilmington. The UFA will work closely with diverse groups of people throughout the city of Wilmington to manage, maintain and plant trees along streets and in public spaces and parks. The UFA will report to the Commissioner of Public Works. The UFA will have workspace at the headquarters of Wilmington Department of Public Works offices.

Casey Trees is hiring Arborist/Auditor to fulfill residential urban stormwater program goals; Washington, DC

Alliance for Community Trees : Jobs:
Casey Trees is working in partnership with the District's Department of Environment on the implementation of a new environmental initiative, RiverSmart Homes. District residents who enroll in the RiverSmart Homes program are eligible for a stormwater audit, where various river-friendly landscaping techniques are prescribed to reduce erosion and stormwater flows. DC DOE refers homeowners interested in tree planting to the Casey Trees arborist-auditor who evaluates those homeowners' properties for tree planting opportunities. Eligible homeowners pay a nominal co-pay for any tree to be planted by Casey Trees. The Casey Trees arborist-auditor will coordinate all aspects of this tree planting effort.

ARRA money helps Georgia provide green jobs through state Forestry Commission; GA

The Weekly Online!:
MACON, Ga., (December 17, 2009) - The Georgia Forestry Commission (GFC) will assist in the creation of more than 30 jobs in north Georgia as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The federal program will subsidize a grant totaling $897,000 to help stimulate the economy and restore ecosystems impacted by growth and urbanization. The funds will not replace or supplant state mandated GFC budget reductions, but can only be used for job retention or the creation of new, temporary positions in the forestry industry.

“Georgia’s ‘Growing Green’ project will help many north Georgia counties where the highest net changes in employment rates have occurred,” said Susan Reisch, Urban and Community Forestry Coordinator for GFC’s Sustainable Community Forestry Program. “The funding will help create and retain green jobs in nurseries, tool and equipment sales, and landscape architecture, among others. These jobs will help sustain the health and diversity of north Georgia forests, which have been impacted by the pressures of growth and urbanization.”

Tree Foundation to receive stimulus funding for jobs; Sacramento, CA

Sacramento Press / Tree Foundation to receive funding for jobs:
A non-profit group that promotes an “urban forest” through programs to plant and maintain trees is likely to receive a $750,000 federal stimulus grant to hire additional staffers. The Sacramento Tree Foundation has been selected to receive the American Recovery and Reinvestment grant and is ironing out the details for how it plans to use the money.
The federal stimulus dollars will be distributed through the U.S. Forest Service and will be administered through California ReLeaf, a Davis-based environmental group.
“We’re privileged as well as excited to receive the grant from the Forest Service,” said City Councilman Ray Tretheway, who is the foundation’s executive director. “It hits at an acute time where non-profits are normally struggling.”

Seattle mayoral candidate calls for UTC goal, green jobs creation; Seattle, WA

Mallahan: Make Seattle greener:
Joe Mallahan, running against former Sierra Club leader Mike McGinn for Seattle mayor, on Monday released his environmental goals.
'I am committed to continue leading Seattle forward so we can be the premier city for environmental protection and innovation in North America. That means enacting creative, outcome-based strategies to protect Puget Sound, to create an open and accessible waterfront, to achieve and exceed the Kyoto climate goals, to improve transit options, to enlarge Seattle's forest canopy, and to generate family-wage, green-energy jobs,' Mallahan said in a statement.

Also covered in:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politicsnorthwest/2009959684_mayorenvironment.html

Lawmakers angered that USDA fire Stimulus is funding green jobs UTC effort; Washington, D.C.

Stimulus money for wildfires going to DC parks Washington Examiner:
By: MATTHEW DALY Associated Press
09/23/09 5:15 PM EDT
WASHINGTON — Nearly $3 million in stimulus money targeted for fighting wildfires is being spent to restore public parks and watersheds in the nation's capital, which has no national forests.
The Forest Service has directed that $2.8 million in "Wildland Fire Management" funds, approved under the economic stimulus law, go to groups that will create "green jobs" in the District of Columbia. The projects are intended to restore public parks and watersheds in the city and highlight the value of urban parks, including a park 2 miles north of the White House that once was plagued by crime.
The stimulus money was awarded to the D.C. Department of Transportation's Urban Forestry Administration, which passed most of it on to Washington Parks & People. A city transportation spokesman could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but the agency said in a news release that the grant would create green jobs in the District and improve the health of the city's urban tree canopy.

USDA Secretary and NYC Mayor team up to create $2 million Green Jobs effort to support NYC UTC goal; NYC; 4/8/09

AGRICULTURE SECRETARY VILSACK AND MAYOR BLOOMBERG ANNOUNCE $2 ...USDA.gov (press release) - Washington,DC,USA
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that the Department of Agriculture has awarded a $2 million grant to create green jobs and restore urban forests in New York City. The grant will create up to 20 new jobs in horticulture and forestry over the next two years for graduates of the MillionTreesNYC training program. MillionTreesNYC is a public-private partnership between the Bloomberg Administration and New York Restoration Project (NYRP) that aims to plant one million new trees throughout the five boroughs by 2017.
"These young Americans will embark on careers in the growing field of urban natural resource management and restoration and help show others that green jobs programs can be a path out of poverty."

Boston College's Eric Strauss and colleague connect UTC efforts, Green Jobs opportunities, and UTC efforts for CNN audience; Boston, MA; 4/4/09

Commentary: Shovel-ready projects that create jobs CNN - USA
Spending billions of dollars on green restoration in urban and suburban downtowns and along highways will create jobs for everyone from high school students to research scientists, from people comfortable swinging a shovel or sitting at a computer.
Friday's bleak unemployment report demonstrated just how vital it is to create jobs in this economic downturn.

Stimulus could provide link between UTC efforts and Green Jobs opportunities; Annapolis, MD; 3/28/09

Our Bay: This week's take: Stimulus could build green ...Annapolis Capital - Annapolis,MD,USA
Opportunities to use stimulus money to create jobs by planting more green infrastructure abound, Claggett says. The goal of the federal-state Chesapeake restoration is to line 70 percent of all streams and rivers feeding the bay with forested buffers at least 35 feet wide.
To date, about 6,100 miles of buffers have been planted, which leaves a whopping 22,000 miles to go. In addition, many cities have a goal of increasing their tree canopies to improve air quality.
The stimulus plan puts a premium on financing traditional infrastructure, such as roads and bridges that are "shovel ready," to get the economy moving quickly.

State budget crisis threatens youth Green Jobs program; CA; 2/7/09

California Work Program for Young Is Threatened New York Times - New York,NY,USA
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to eliminate the program as the state struggles with a $42 billion budget deficit. Under the governor’s proposed budget, the state would take back the $34 million in general funds it spends on the corps each year, though some money would be funneled into work corps programs run by local governments and nonprofit groups.
California’s program is modeled on the Civilian Conservation Corps, which put three million young, unemployed men to work from 1933 to 1942. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “tree army” or “soil soldiers” planted more than two billion trees, restored eroding soil in the Dust Bowl states, developed 800 new state parks, erected one million miles of fences, and built bridges, roads and 13,000 miles of hiking trails in places like Yosemite and Grand Canyon National Parks.