The Perils of Tree-Topping

The City Parks department is very powerful and uses its power to frustrate the public instead of doing its real job, which is taking care of our city trees. I’ve been an arborist for more than 40 years, and I can see the city trees are dying, and city streets are full of deceased and under-watered trees. The only trees in town that are beautiful are the trees that belong to the public.

Our City Council has given this power to this department because they are without doubt the great artistic directors of what a beautiful tree should look like. This is like putting Frankenstein’s monster in charge of a beauty contest. City homeowners love, cherish, adore their trees — so it’s only natural that the city gives citations to homeowners if Parks feels the owner has nipped off a little too much, or, God forbid, made the tree round at the top when it should come to a point.

I endured this insult to my profession a year or two ago, and I was found faultless in both cases, which only goes to prove that some small modicum of common sense still exists in our great country, but it’s not something very evident in the City Parks department.