Tempe residents, ASU students and city officials voiced what matters most to them about Tempe trees Tuesday night.

A crowd of about 20 people attended the meeting to discuss the city’s plan for the trees growing on public property like parks and sidewalks.

Project Developer Dana Karcher and Urban and Community Forestry Specialist Tina McKeand of Davey Resource Group — part of a tree-expert company the city hired to review its urban forestry program — lead the public discussion at the Tempe Public Library.

This is the first public meeting Tempe has held on the issue.

“Taking a vested interest in the community is important,” said Andrew Bryant, an accounting freshman who attended the meeting.

The city has been interested in further developing its urban forestry program for about two years, said Steve Amelotte, a landscape contract coordinator for the Tempe Parks and Recreation Department.

Other cities’ programs sparked Tempe’s interest, Amelotte said.

“We hope to have a management plan that will work to encourage the urban canopy to be something that’s worth while,” he said.

The city contracted Davey Resource Group earlier this summer to look over the current health and maintenance of city trees and gather feedback from the community to help advise Tempe on what direction it might take with its urban forestry program, Karcher said.

Davey Resource Group is also conducting an online survey on the City of Tempe’s Web site to gather feedback from residents by having them rank what aspects of the urban forest they value most.

Karcher and McKeand asked meeting attendees to rank the various benefits of having community trees on large sheets of paper posted on the walls.

Of the seven reasons, including aesthetic value and reducing air pollutants, energy savings came first.

The results of the online survey, which will run through the end of September, are scheduled to be delivered to city officials in November. But when the final results and management plans will be released to the public is yet to be determined by city officials, Karcher said.

McKeand said that in the storms that hit Tempe in recent weeks, nearly 400 trees were lost on public property alone, causing an estimated $1.3 million loss in benefits such as air quality and energy savings.

Some residents raised concerns about whether the city would ever be able to replace the loss.

Amelotte said the city does plan to continue to use low-water-use plants and even to improve its low-water-use program.

“One of the things that we try to do when we’re dealing with trees is think outside the bark,” Amelotte said.

Reach the reporter at deborah.bevers@asu.edu.