AUGUSTA — City councilors expect to discuss on Thursday a proposed forest management plan for the city’s wooded properties that includes plans for some logging.

City Manager William Bridgeo said the city routinely hires a registered forester to survey all the city’s forested properties “and produce a 10-year-plan for its scientific and environmentally appropriate management.”

Those plans include a recommendation for some amount of logging, which Bridgeo said has previously brought some money to the city.

The latest plan, by forester John Churchill, of Central Maine Forestry in Readfield, recommends taking steps such as marking property lines, placing tree identification signs in some public areas, picking up litter, marking trails and having some parcels selectively cut to harvest wood to sell.

Churchill’s plan recommends selectively harvesting wood on some 60 acres at Pleasant Hill, which could bring in about $20,000 from wood sales. The plan also suggests cutting and selling some of the wood surrounding the Hatch Hill landfill, which he said could generate $15,000 to $17,000.

Bridgeo said previously funds from the sale of wood harvested on city property have gone into a trail development account, used in recent years to help develop trails on city-owned land in the Bond Brook Recreation Area. He said councilors again could direct money to be raised from the sale of wood to an account for trail development, but they also could decide to do something else.

City-owned wooded land includes 27 acres at Bicentennial Nature Park, 29 acres between Civic Center Drive and Gilbert School, 200 acres at Pleasant Hill, 168 acres at the Bond Brook Recreation Area, 25 acres off Civic Center Drive, 7 acres at Savage Park off Riverside Drive and 25 acres at the Hatch Hill landfill.

City councilors meet at 6:30 p.m. in council chambers at Augusta City Center.

Councilors also are scheduled to:

• discuss additional tweaks to the city’s parking regulations meant to make it easier for downtown residents to be able to park overnight downtown.

In November councilors amended the city’s winter nighttime parking ban to allow vehicles to remain parked overnight on the left, or east, side of Commercial Street in the downtown area to accommodate an increase in the number of people living in the city’s downtown, where several new apartments have been built in old buildings. Previously, overnight parking was banned on all city streets to allow for snow removal.

Downtown residents with cars may get residential parking permits from the quasi-municipal Augusta Parking District.

Councilors also are scheduled to discuss further changes to parking rules meant to make it easier for downtown residents to park their cars near where they live.

The changes would exempt downtown residents with residential parking permits issued by the Augusta Parking District from the city’s bans on leaving a vehicle parked on a city street or in a municipal parking lot for a period in excess of 24 hours and from a ban on parking for longer than one hour on city streets between midnight and 7 a.m.

• discuss lengthening the Kennebec River Rail Trail a short distance to connect to the city’s waterfront park on the west side of the Kennebec River, making the park the trail’s northern trailhead.

Bridgeo said having the northern trailhead for the Kennebec River Rail Trail be in the city’s waterfront park was “on the drawing board since the rail trail was originally designed.”

The trailhead is currently under Memorial Bridge, next to the Maine State Housing Authority parking lot. The proposal would connect the rail trail to a walkway in the city park, which is only about 500 feet away. The trail, Bridgeo said, would zigzag back and forth to get down a steep hill between the housing authority and the city park.

City Engineer Lionel Cayer said the state Department of Transportation has approved the state’s 80 percent share of the $282,000 total cost of the trail connection, and it is scheduled for construction this year.

Bridgeo said the city’s $56,000, or 20 percent, share of the project cost could come from downtown tax increment financing money.

Keith Edwards — 621-5647

kedwards@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @kedwardskj

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