This year, Bryan, Texas met all of the standards set by Tree City USA and for the 21st time was named a Tree City USA.
The requirements necessary for a city to apply to become a Tree City are to have a tree department, tree care ordinance, community forestry program and an annual budget of at least $2 per capita and a citywide observance of Arbor Day.
Sponsored by the Arbor Foundation in cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the National Association of State Foresters, the Tree City USA program names thousands of cities every year that corresponds with their requirements.
“This is a program we are very proud to be part of,” said Darrell Lovelette, Bryan’s director of parks and recreation. “Over the course of that time we have been taking care of trees over the city properties, maintaining everything we have and making sure that when trees come down we are putting ones up in their place.”
“This is something we have done for 21 years, it is important for us to preserve our trees,” said April Saginor, City of Bryan communications director. “It is something we aesthetically [want] as well, it looks good for the city and we want to encourage our residents to look good as well.”
In addition to becoming a Tree City USA, Bryan is also taking its own initiatives to become more environmentally friendly. With its Web site, www.begreeninbyran.com, the city is encouraging residents to be environmentally friendly.
Bryan has become the first city and first government agency to join The Green Grid Consortium, an organization that develops standards to measure data efficiency to be more environmentally friendly.
The Consortium had been made up of primarily large corporations like IBM, Microsoft and Dell.
Gus Roman, information technology director of Bryan, heard about The Consortium in January at a conference in Austin. One of the speakers said they would love to have government participation to see what the cities are doing in areas such as green computing, Roman said.
“Instead of being on the sidelines, we are getting involved now,” he said. “We looked into how to become a member and we got a notice a couple weeks ago that we were accepted.”
Roman said right now they are going digital with all their files. Instead of having boxes of paper files, they will be stored on a digital machine, which Roman compares to the iPod. The new digital system allows them to look up files, e-mails or other documents with the click of a button, instead of having to search through boxes.
“Now it is going to be digital. We can pull up that document immediately,” Roman said.
They are also converting their 8 mm back-up tapes to what Roman calls “the equivalent of a Tivo.” The tapes go bad after a certain amount of time, so this allows them to conserve resources while also being more convenient.
“We just really hope that people in the city of Bryan will visit www.begreeninbryan.com,” Saginor said. “We want to reduce our environmental footprint. The simplest easiest thing everyone at home can do is recycling, there is a place in Bryan that you can take it to and get money for it. It doesn’t cost you anything and doesn’t cause too much effort.”