The article mentioned that residents presented council members with a petition addressed to the mayor and each council member as well as Township Manager Joe Martin, Town Engineer Jim Helb and Code Enforcement Officer Tom Jacobsen last Monday night.
The petition was described as signed by more than 120 residents urging township authorities to maintain a "no net tree loss" policy and to enforce the town's Shade Tree Code.
The article quotes the begining of the petition:
"One third of all public trees were recently cut down and many others damaged on Morningside Road between Lakeside Avenue and Forest Avenue due to sidewalk renovations...This action shows little environmental awareness and should be prevented in the future..."To read the complete article please click here
We need more tree advocates voices to be heard, thank you!
I received the following message from Elaine:
ReplyDelete"My husband and I read the article in the Verona Cedar Grove Times yesterday and would like to let you know that if you ever need signatures on another petition, please contact us. We would like to be involved in this issue since it is something we have been dealing with for at least 9 years. I first wrote to the Township in 2000 regarding the removal and non-replacement of trees around the Township. I received a few written responses, but nothing was ever done. At the time, the trees on our street, Hillside Avenue, were massacred the same way Morningside recently was. I wrote to Teena Schwartz yesterday and my husband and I plan on attending the July 20th meeting which apparently is going to discuss the tree issue. As you can see, nothing has changed in 9 years and, in fact, it seems to have gotten worse. I hope the Township's current policy regarding tree removal and replacement can be revised before it is too late."
The property owner for each tree was contacted ahead of time and given the choice of either letting the town remove it or taking responsibility for the maintenance of it. You can't blame them for making the right choice for themselves.
ReplyDeleteMost of the trees were far too big at this point to be sustained in such a tiny strip between the street and the sidewalk, we don't live in a forest and need to responsibly manage our outdoor spaces. Sometimes this means trees need to be removed.
Let the property owners decide if they want to town to plant new trees, its their house and their street. You shouldn't try to petition and force anything on them.
The following are some e-mails that I received from the property owners that you mentioned:
ReplyDelete"If the city's defense is "We notified each homeowner that we were going to take down their tree", my response would be as follows: I am a trusting citizen. I figure there must be a reason why my tree is being taken down. It never occurred to me that they were going to take down A LOT of trees. If i had known that, I would have questioned them more thoroughly. So a lot of the blame still rests with the city government."
"Is there no exemption to protect 80 year-old trees? I'd be surprised if there was no such exemption. Did the city even look at this possibility?"
"When I looked at the list of each tree that was removed and why, the tree in front of our house was listed for removal because the
roots interfered with the road. But they also mentioned something was wrong with our tree. A well respected local tree surgeon looked at
that tree last year found nothing wrong with it. So how sure are we that the trees supposedly had a problem really had a problem?"
"When I opposed to the tree removal I was asked to sign a liability document, is that legal?"
Simply replanting does not suffice, we should focus on preservation of trees. The following is from a Time Magazine article:
"A big tree does 60 to 70 times the pollution removal of a small tree," says David Nowak, a project leader with the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Research Station in Syracuse, N.Y. The
crown of a large tree is also a freestanding anti flood reservoir, in some cases intercepting so much rainfall that more than 1,500 gal. a year evaporates instead of hitting the ground. Chop down the tree, and you increase the volume of storm water a city must manage..."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1635842,00.html