Request for Proposals: Urban Forest Management

Common Ground is seeking proposals from independent contractors who can manage  implementation of key aspects of a forest management plan for Common Ground’s 20-acre campus and adjacent forested land. We seek a individual contractor or firm who can:

• Manage successful implementation of forest restoration and stewardship activities – including planting, invasives management, and stewardship of existing and new plantings – ensuring that we reach goals and deliverables in our plan, and tracking progress toward the deliverables in the grant funding this plan. 
• Perform on the ground, hands-on planting, invasive management, and stewardship work (approximately 8-12 hrs/week).
• Provide training and coaching to members of Common Ground’s site team and other staff working to enact the forest management plan – maintaining and checking progress against a schedule of management activities, ensuring implementation of management best practices, and building the long-term capacity of this team to steward our urban forest.  
• Train and supervise crews of 3-6 Common Ground High School students working on these forest management activities through Common Ground’s Green Jobs Corps program (4 hours/week for 12 weeks fall,  4 hours/week for 12 weeks spring, 20 hours/week for 5 weeks summer), and maintain ongoing communication with our Green Jobs Corps coordinator and director to support the success of these students.

This contract will extend from September 2024 to June 2026, pending final contracting from a grant approved by the CT DEEP Urban Forest Capacity-Building Program. The contractor will bill Common Ground monthly for their work toward the deliverables above, averaging 16 hours of work per week, at $40 per hour. Contractors will have access to a materials budget to support this work, and our partners at the Urban Resources Initiative are committed to providing and planting additional trees to help reach project goals. 

The contractor will work closely with Chris Ozyck and other staff of the Urban Resources Initiative, who developed the forest management plan that this contractor is helping to implement, and with members of our project oversight team: Site Manager, Farm Director, Director of Community Programs, and Director of Community Impact & Engagement. This team will meet with the contractor monthly (more frequently if needed) to monitor progress and plan next steps.  

Priority forest management activities to be implemented over the contract period include:

• Plant and steward heat-tolerant, high-production sugar maples and fruit-bearing trees and shrubs to expand areas of productive, publicly accessible food forest and sugarbush on our campus. 
• Create and monitor protected forest restoration zones within our forest classrooms, while also addressing hazard trees and branches. 
• Control invasives including autumn olive, multiflora rose, and burning bush along the forest edge, and plant white pine and red cedar (for habitat, invasive management, and temperature control), serviceberry, and other native species in their place 
• Plant nutrient-absorbing species (e.g., sassafras) to reduce nutrient loading and other wetland shrubs like native viburnums and spicebush to stabilize soils in drainage areas below our animal yards that are prone to erosion and overland flow.
• Continue and refine an annual maintenance regime that helps native grasses and wildflowers outcompete mugwort, while planting additional trees to shade out invasives, increase habitat value, and sequester carbon. 
• Remove invasive vines that are threatening canopy trees, and invasive understory plants that are preventing regeneration – radiating outward from our campus into West Rock Ridge State Park, and along Wintergreen Brook.  

Applicants should email a proposal/cover letter and business overview or resume describing relevant experience to jtolman@nhep.com. Questions can also be directed to this email. We aim to select a qualified contractor in September 2024. 

In performing the Services the CONTRACTOR shall at all times operate as an independent contractor, maintaining the CONTRACTOR’s own identity as distinct and separate from that of NHEP.  Nothing in this Agreement shall be deemed to create or constitute the relation of employer and employee between NHEP and CONTRACTOR.  CONTRACTOR and NHEP agree that (i) CONTRACTOR shall be solely responsible for and shall pay all taxes in respect to the engagement hereunder (ii) NHEP will not withhold taxes and other amounts from any payments of compensation to CONTRACTOR hereunder; (iii) NHEP will report all payments to the CONTRACTOR under this Agreement to the Internal Revenue Service on an information return (Form 1099) or as otherwise required by the Internal Revenue Code; (iv) CONTRACTOR is not entitled to any employee health and welfare benefits, nor any compensated vacation or sick days from NHEP; and (v) CONTRACTOR is not covered by NHEP’s Workers Compensation insurance or any other liability insurance carried by NHEP.