Parks Officials Stand Behind Plan To Cut Dangerous Willows

City parks officials say the trees at Manito Park’s duck pond are too dangerous to leave standing, yet they held a public meeting under one of them Monday. Parks officials said they aren’t backing down from a plan to remove the remaining willow trees because they are a threat to public safety.

Residents living near Manito Park aren’t very chipper about the city’s logging of the stately old willows.

About 20 residents showed up Monday evening to hear from Parks Director Ange Taylor and other officials on the controversial logging.

Taylor said the removals are not negotiable.

Rot has weakened the center of the willows’ multiple trunks and branches, and last fall’s ice storm simply called attention to the problem, he said.

“When a tree is unsafe, we have the responsibility to do something,” Taylor said while standing under a gnarled willow slated for logging at the northwest corner of the pond. In fact, a good portion of the meeting was held beneath the mammoth tree because officials wanted to show off its weaknesses to the residents who showed up.

Officials said a large branch or one of the several trunks could fall at any time without notice.

Park horticulture supervisor Jim Flott said, “The city does not want to take the risk for this hazardous tree.”

Officials explained that the city could face a large financial loss if someone were badly hurt or killed beneath a collapsing tree.

Between the logging and ice storm damage, the pond will have lost 15 of the 20 willows that stood there just five months ago.

One resident argued that the trees that remained this week have already survived the weight of ice on their branches last November as well as high winds the previous autumn, so they should be safe, at least for now.

Residents asked parks officials to delay logging of the remaining old willows so the pond won’t look barren when the operation is finished. They suggested that the city plant new trees now to replace the ones already taken out and then return in several years to finish the removals.

Parks officials said that would have been a good idea a decade or more ago when the problem was first recognized, but now it’s too late for a phased logging.

Last week, nearly 40 residents signed a petition protesting the cutting.

“The people who signed these petitions are very concerned with the way trees are being cut down without advance notice or explanation,” said residents Lee Ann Cogert and Sunni Mace in a letter to the mayor.

During Monday’s meeting, officials said stumps lining the banks will be ground down into the lawn. The three willow stumps on the island will be left to help maintain the stability of the island soil. Flott showed the residents a section of trunk taken from one of the logged trees at the park. It showed rot through the center.

He explained that large branches or trunks can collapse when rot affects 25 percent of the wood. Many of the trees being removed had rot in 40 to 45 percent of the wood, he said.

Park Board member Carol Barber said a city park plan in 1987 called for doing something about the city’s stock of aging trees, but there never was any money available to pay for removals and replacements.

“We need to spend money on trees,” she said.

Dying trees and tree removals on East Mission Avenue and at Corbin Park on the North Side in past years called some attention to the problem, but nothing like the ice storm, she said.

“That storm really cut a swath through us that is going to last for a long time,” Barber said.

She said the Parks Department now has an urban tree program in place to begin replacing damaged old trees in parks and along streets.

, DataTimes