AUSTIN, Texas — Austin city leaders want to take stock of all the trees in the city, but it could cost millions of dollars.
Earlier this year, Austin City Council directed the city manager to look into what it would cost to do a citywide tree inventory. Within the past couple of days, city staff got an answer for the council members and said that would cost about $10 million.
When the council passed a resolution to start looking into this, council members said the condition of all of the city's public trees is unknown because of the lack of data.
"This is really important because trees are a critical part of our infrastructure, just like roads, pipes and the energy grid. And just as we wouldn't operate our water utility without a pipe map, we need to have an understanding of our tree infrastructure to know where our needs are and where to focus our proactive maintenance," said Austin Council Member Ryan Alter.
Other cities, like Dallas, Denton and Chicago have recently inventoried their trees.
City staff members say a budget recommendation for this process will likely be ready for the 2026 fiscal year.
In recent years, trees falling on power lines during ice storms have caused power outages for hundreds of thousands of people in Austin. Last year, a city auditor said Austin is behind industry standards for tree trimming, which makes this problem worse.
In March, the city council approved an additional $28 million for Austin Energy to catch up on trimming trees.