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The purpose of this study is to consider how a local government authority may present a tree asset register of street trees for the decision-making of the authority's stakeholders.

Using the tenets of population density theory, urban form theory and social stratification theory, the approach of the study is to develop a tree asset register in a local government authority's setting that could be modelled using many different attributes to derive important information for decision-making purposes.

Tree asset registers represent a critical tool in managing street trees across local government authorities.

Although the efficacy of an asset tree register may be curtailed by lack of internal audit or yearly updates, the practical consequence of an asset tree register is that local administrators may use the register to gather summarised, organised and parsimonious measures of a wide range of environmental, historical, cultural, aesthetic and scientific values of street trees.

Tree asset registers affords ratepayers, developers, tree managers and valuers a technology to plan, coordinate and manage street trees to support ecosystem services.

Asset tree registers offer planners a means to bring about sustainable change management.

The originality of the study rests in introducing tree registers as a means to meet diverse strategies for street tree management by interested stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the monetary valuation implications arising from local government tree trimming, by calculating the loss of local government authority’ monetary tree value arising from trimming trees under power lines.

A city council model of estimation of the monetary value of city trees in a sample of three streets in a suburb of the Perth Metropolitan Area in Western Australia is applied to ascertain the loss of monetary value to the local government authority arising from tree trimming.

Using a sample of 274 city trees, the results of the study show that 156 city trees did not get trimmed thus incurring no monetary loss. However, the average loss of monetary value from 118 city trees that were trimmed was AU$2,816 per tree, suggesting a substantial loss of value to the council.

The use of monetary tree valuation should be treated with caution as there is a focus on monetary calculations rather than non-monetary evaluations of trees. Further, the analysis does not take into account increases in value of city trees resulting from their growth.

In trimming trees, monetary value and canopy cover of trees may be reduced. In terms of property management, it may be helpful for the city council to take into account loss of city tree value from tree trimming when considering a cost-benefit analysis of the above ground/underground trade-off of power line installation.

With increasing populations and demand on services, local government authorities may use monetary valuation techniques of trees to provide an accountability to ratepayers.

The results highlight the value loss of trimming a tree. The study’s originality rests in providing local government authority a valuation.