Survey distributed to 2004 Town Meeting - Summary of Results
(Presented orally by Patricia Thomas, Chair of Tree Committee, on June 2, 2004)
The survey indicates a lot of tree-related activity over the past two years:
- 70% of you have trimmed your own trees and 60% of you have seen DPW or NStar trim trees on your street. Several of you commented on the disfiguring, slingshot trimming sometimes done by NStar crews.
- One third of you have removed trees from your property and an equal number have seen street trees removed.
- Planting is less common than removal, so that overall there appears to be a net loss of trees (not large 33% removed overall, 23% planted on street and 25% on private property). Tree warden Bill Jones confirms that this is the case for street trees: in 2003, 142 were cut down and 125 planted.
Most trimming/removal done because tree was dead or diseased, though with street trees people often said they didn’t know why tree had been removed.
Asked about trees in public parks and schoolyards, half of you thought the overall condition of these trees was good and 45% thought the trees were in fair or poor condition. Many of you thought tree work was needed in these public settings:
- 35% said existing trees need trimming
- 30% said more trees should be planted
- 17% thought some trees needed to be treated for disease and an equal number knew of trees that should be removed.
Most of the time there is one crew of DPW tending to 18,000 street trees plus more in public parks and schoolyards, although when storms fell lots of trees at once this crew is split into two. Ideally we would have more people doing tree work, but DPW is short staffed across the board.
We asked about benefits vs. drawbacks of trees, and you felt the benefits of trees outweigh their drawbacks by about two-to-one.
As you will see if you read the Tree Committee report, we believe it would be premature to propose a tree bylaw at this time. Asked what such a hypothetical bylaw should emphasize,
- Three-quarters of you said "maintaining and replacing trees in public parks and school grounds"
- Three out of four of you also favored protections for native and noteworthy trees on public land.
- Fifty-eight percent thought a bylaw should protect trees during demolition and construction on public and private land.
- Aside from demolition/construction situations, only 37% of you favored a bylaw to protect native and noteworthy shade trees on private land.
As we learned by looking at ordinances from other towns, it is quite possible to have a tree preservation law that allows property owners to do whatever they want with their trees. Some of these laws have features that might be useful for Arlington, such as requiring arborists to meet standards and pay an annual fee in order to do tree work in the town. Nearly half of those who responded to our survey said it would be helpful to have a list of licensed, certified arborists.