Victoria City Council has decided to spend nearly a million dollars on tree management.
At Thursday's City Council Meeting, the motion was passed to increase the funding of the Tree Management plan by $860,000.
Councillor Geoff Young says the city has a lot of trees, and the increase in funding will be used to hire new people to manage tree cover.
"Which means examining trees to make sure they’re healthy more frequently, planting more, and also maybe taking an inventory of private property tree cover? There's been a lot of concern that our tree protection bylaw is not sufficiently protective of trees on private property."
He adds tree management includes pruning and making sure branches won't fall on people, power lines, or cars.
Young says the increase is more than needed, adding that although they need to manage the trees in the city, he's a little wary of maintain trees on private property.
Cherry blossom trees were also discussed at the meeting, and Young says the city has decided to move forward with the Urban Native Tree plan, and have them replaced.
"The decision to get rid of the cherry blossoms is not new, it was made I think two or three years ago. I felt, I didn't support it at that time, but the decision as 'we are going to plant native trees'. I'm not a tree expert, but I don't believe there are native blossoming cherries, we have dogwoods, but I don't think we have native blossoming cherries. And anyway, you wouldn't want to plant the same species everywhere anyway, you'd use several different kinds. But there's no 'ands' 'ifs' or 'buts' about it, those trees are going, under the plan we have now. And if you don't like it you should let your council know."
However, Young says it's difficult for trees to survive in an urban environment, and the fact that the city wants to use native trees, it limits the kind of trees they could use.
"Obviously people like Gary oaks, but whether this former bog is the right place for it, I'm not sure. And whether a Gary oak is a good urban tree, I'm not totally clear on."
Young says the city won't be planting a single species, and instead be gradually replacing the cherry blossoms with a variety of trees.
He says the cherry blossoms will not be prematurely chopped down; the city will wait until they die, become ill, or fall down naturally before replacing them.