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.
Who was the one against?
ReplyDeleteTo 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.
Yup, And they voted to defer the tennis bubble which would have been done within this term & cost the town nothing.
ReplyDeleteThose 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.
ReplyDelete14:28
ReplyDelete" Your maple "
Your responsibility.
@14:28
ReplyDeleteTake your case to Cllrs Abel, Gaertner and Humfryes. They never met a tree that they wouldn't throw $$ at.
16:12
ReplyDeleteI wish your statement was correct. If I elected to cut it down it suddenly stops being mine, it is a Town issue.