After the oaks on Moti Sandman’s street were “murdered” by a city contractor, the city is taking steps to avoid killing any more.
That was the takeaway from a meeting of neighbors and city officials on Tuesday night. Beaver Hills Alderman Moti Sandman (pictured) and Alderman Carl Goldfield organized the meeting in response to constituent complaints about the sorry state of neighborhood trees.
After trees on Sandman’s street were gravely damaged by the installation of new sidewalks, the parks and public works departments are teaming up to ensure that future improvements don’t make the same mistake.
During a pre-meeting stroll near his house on Colony Road, Sandman pointed out what neighbors have been complaining about. “This entire street used to have a full canopy,” he said, gesturing at the tree limbs spreading overhead. “In the summer you couldn’t see the sunlight hit the ground.”
Then, several years ago, the sidewalks on colony road were re-done, Sandman explained. The 80-year-old trees were seriously injured by the city’s sidewalk contractor, which severed roots that were in the way of fresh concrete. “They just took saws and cut the roots,” he said.
Ever since then, the trees have lost their fullness and vigor, Sandman said. They’ve started weakening, and the city has had to take off dead limbs, diminishing Sandman’s prized canopy. He said neighbors have been dismayed at the changes.
Sandman said he organized Tuesday night’s meeting to bring the neighborhood’s concerns to the city, in hopes that officials will prevent future tree damage during sidewalk repairs. He also said he wanted to know if anything could be done to save the ailing oaks that line his street.
More than a dozen people, including three aldermen and Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts, gathered at 6:30 p.m. in an art classroom at Hillhouse High School. Bob Levine (at left in photo), director of the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Trees, and Howard Weissberg (at right), new deputy public works director, said that they met on Tuesday morning to discuss tree health in New Haven.
Weissberg said that his department is in the process of creating new tree-friendly procedures for looking at sidewalks that need to be fixed. “We’re working with parks and recreation to develop a form and train people doing sidewalk inspection,” Weissberg said.
When the procedures are in place, public works will be taking tree health into greater consideration when it looks at how to fix cracked or uneven sidewalks, Weissberg said.
For instance, if a large root is lifting a sidewalk section and creating a “trip hazard,” the Department of Public Works might create a gentle grade in the sidewalk up and over the root, Weissberg explained. This would allow the city to avoid chopping out the root and flattening the sidewalk, thereby harming the tree. Public works could also look at bending the sidewalk around trees.
“This program will make the tree an important part of how the work gets done,” said Levine. The city will be working with contractors to make sure that sidewalk repairs are done with trees’ best interests in mind, Levine said.
Goners
The city’s promised attention to trees was welcome news, but Beaver Hills resident Nan Bartow wanted to know what could be done for the sickly oaks on Colony Road. She said that some Colony Road neighbors were looking into hiring arborists to try to revive the trees.
Tree expert Chris Ozcyk (pictured), of the Urban Resources Initiative tree-planting group, told her it was probably too late.
“Arborists will say you can do this and this and this and it may help,” Ozcyk said. “But it could be throwing good money after bad.”
“The big thing is from here on out … get those protection measures in place,” he said.
“Eighty years is a pretty darn good life” for an urban oak tree, Ozcyk said. “They are getting close.”
Shelly Altman, who lives two doors down from Sandman on Colony Road, wanted to make sure he was hearing right. “Those trees are all at their expected end?” he asked.
“I expect that you will have spotty decline,” Ozcyk said. “That’s not a happy answer. I’m sorry.”
However, the trees could hang on for a while longer Ozyck said. “The decline of a tree can take 20 years.”
Power In Company
Alongside tree-hacking sidewalk repairmen, a second villain emerged at Tuesday’s meeting: chainsaw-happy power line clearers.
Levine’s advice? Run out on the street and make a stink.
Bob Caplan was the first of several neighbors to bring up the problem of United Illuminating employees chopping away at street trees that are too close to power lines. The issue was the subject of some debate several years ago at the Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills Community Management Team, which Caplan used to chair.
Caplan said that although UI’s tree-trimming practices might conform to “arboreal standards … the standards don’t address the final look and feel.” Caplan asked if there was some way to prevent UI from cutting trees into “obnoxious V’s” that “look ugly.”
“They have a set of standards that don’t really address aesthetics or health,” Levine said. “We’ve had battles with them.”
“I feel like these trees are a part of my life,” said Altman (at right in photo), speaking about the oaks on Colony Road. He said that UI had butchered one tree in particular when it cleared the lines. “They may as well have cut the tree down… They’re destroying the neighborhood. The trees are what makes this neighborhood.”
“We have a licensed arborist on staff and a certified tree warden,” Levine said. Both staffers work with UI to oversee the company’s tree trimming. “It’s a tough discussion to have,” he said. It can come down to a choice between aesthetically trimmed trees and power outages caused by limbs hitting the lines, he explained.
“We make their life miserable for as long as we can, and then we try to get something out of them,” Levine said.
CAO Smuts suggested that neighbors join in the city’s effort to “push back” against heavy-handed UI tree-trimming.
Levine mentioned Wooster Square’s as a possible paradigm of pushy citizenry. “Go anywhere near a cherry tree and it’s World War Three,” he said. “All hell breaks loose. People come pouring out of their houses.”
Altman asked if Levine was suggesting that Beaver Hills residents run out and protest when they see UI coming through.
“There’s a chance that the level of discussion would greatly increase,” said Levine.
Levine also mentioned the possibility of holding a public meeting whenever UI is planning to trim trees. Caplan suggested that the company could meet with the management team of whatever area it is targeting.
Future Germinations
“I think it went well,” said Sandman, walking out of the high school after the meeting. He said that he wanted to see details about the new procedures for sidewalk repair that Weissberg mentioned. “I want to see a game plan on the requirements their contractors are going to have on trees. I want to see something in writing.”
Sandman said he was sorry to hear Oczyk’s prognosis for his street’s oaks. “The trees on Colony are dead. It’s unfortunate,” he said. “The trees were murdered by the construction company … It’s depressing.”
Sandman said that he would try to plant more trees on Colony Road, “for my kids and grandkids.”
Oczyk was also cautiously optimistic about the meeting. “Everybody seems to be on the same page,” he said. “Then it’s the execution.”