"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Wednesday 9 April 2014

The Emerald Ash Borer...the Ice Storm... ,,and Other Disasters

Council decided last night to spend $38,000 treating trees  in the parks to protect them fom the emerald ash borer.

We lost 150  trees in the ice sorm. Twenty five in the parks and  125 on street boulevards.

99% of the street trees lost were ash.  They  received the treatment last year.

It costs $100 to treat a tree. The  treatment needs to be repeated every two years  for ten years.

It's a new treatment. Nobody really knows if it will be successful. The makers say it will.
Don't they always. How can  we know when it's a new  process. Never been proven.

I am told it will cost $25,000 to replace the trees.

It would have cost $25,000 to replace them  if we had done it before spending $100.00
a tree with the treatment.

Last night we voted to spend $38,000. treating  remaining ash trees in the park from the emerald ash borer. We haven't got anything to treat them for ice storms.

Maybe it was the treatment for emerald ash bores that made  the street  trees break  in the ice storm .
Ninety-nine per cent were ash.

Or maybe it was because ash trees are prone to break when they're frozen, weighted down with ice and tossed about in the wind.

Whatever...

If there's another ice storm  next winter and ash trees in the park  are destroyed we will have spent $38,000 for nothing.

Ah well... I suppose  there's  the comfort of knowing  there's more where that came from....in your pockets. All we need to do is dip in....

The recommendation to spend $38,000 didn't come from staff. The   Parks  and  Recreation  committee

A  citizen thought it would be a good idea. The  committee agreed . Then Council agreed.

The vote was eight in favor and one against.


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who was the one against?

To be fair, the treatment for Emerald Ash Borer did not make my 50 foot Deborah Maple prone to breakage when the ice brought down one of it's major limbs.

I think that you need to consider the $100 as insurance.

I think that the prices from the "tree surgeons" or arborists that I have received to deal with my maple are really the criminal element however. I think that the Town should subsidize that.

Anonymous said...

Yup, And they voted to defer the tennis bubble which would have been done within this term & cost the town nothing.

Anonymous said...

Those ash trees do sound awfully fragile if that many were on the clobbered list. For the most part throughout town there were large branches of other species but it appears to be a culling job by nature and the trees themselves seem healthy enough now. I do agree with you that the money seems wasted but in an election year you can see the panic with each vote.

Anonymous said...

14:28
" Your maple "
Your responsibility.

Anonymous said...

@14:28
Take your case to Cllrs Abel, Gaertner and Humfryes. They never met a tree that they wouldn't throw $$ at.

Anonymous said...

16:12

I wish your statement was correct. If I elected to cut it down it suddenly stops being mine, it is a Town issue.