Way To Engender More Quality Care Supervision Needed Yahoos With Chain Saws Threaten Beauty

Only God can make a tree, but any Yahoo with a chain saw can destroy one.

A proposed tree ordinance in Spokane aims to protect the city’s trees from such butchery. The proposal is very narrow in its scope. It applies only to trees in the public right of way - the strip of land between a homeowner’s sidewalk and the curb.

The proposal would create a public-private partnership to care for the trees that add so much to our lives, to the city and to property values. The ordinance would:

Create an urban forestry program.

Set up a tree committee to make recommendations, work with the public and set criteria for financial assistance.

Give landowners the responsibility for caring for street trees that adjoin their property.

Establish a fund to be used to buy trees, inspect the removal, pruning and planting of trees and educate people about tree care.

Now, work done in a public right of way requires a city permit. The ordinance extends that requirement specifically to pruning or planting a tree or shrub. Major pruning would have to be done by a licensed arborist. We require our hair stylists to be licensed; surely our trees deserve nothing less. Bad haircuts will grow out but a mangled tree is often mangled for life.

What really makes people nervous about the ordinance is that any person who destroys or defaces a tree risks paying the cost of replacing or repairing it and could face a maximum $250 fine.

The reality is, the tree ordinance’s bark is worse than its bite. The city obviously cannot monitor all pruning and planting. The ordinance merely provides a vehicle for punishing individuals or utilities that mutilate trees by topping them or chopping down healthy trees without good reason.

By passing the ordinance, the city can apply for Tree City USA designation by the National Arbor Day Foundation. Such a designation would make Spokane eligible for grants to buy trees and expand our urban forest.

In 1915, Aubrey White, the father of Spokane’s parks, urged citizens to plant street trees at their expense. In response, Spokane turned from a city of pines to one of elms, locusts, maples and oaks.

Let’s work together to protect those trees that our forebears planted and that we still enjoy today. Let’s plant more. Support the ordinance and watch our forest grow.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see “Let city be helper, not our overseer”

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