CITY’S PRUNING PLAN NOT FAST ENOUGH
BY PETE DAVIS
For 13 years, Sonia Ortiz watched the tree in front of her home on 163rd Street and 19th Avenue in Whitestone grow out of control. It got so bad that she worried that if a fire ever broke out in her home an FDNY tower-ladder truck would not be able to reach her children’s window and allow firefighters to rescue them.
After calling her community board, 311 and the NYC Parks Department countless times only to be referred to other city agencies, Ortiz finally got her tree trimmed last November.
However, many other Queens’ residents are not that lucky and are still waiting for years for their trees to be trimmed, cut down or removed.
Last April, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe announced the Trees and Sidewalk Repair Program – an initiative where the city pays to repair the root system of the tree and any damage caused to the sidewalk – requests for tree pruning, maintenance and removal have skyrocketed both city and borough-wide.
Under the new program, the city instructs residents to call 311 and register their request. Then, 311 operators are supposed to transfer residents’ requests to Parks & Recreation in order for them to determine a plan of action.
“We are tired of calling the city,” said Frances Williams, who has a tree in front of her house on 204 Street in St. Albans that she believes poses a danger, not only to her house, but to two or three additional houses on her block, if high winds or lightning strikes the tree.
“Of the total requests that have come in beginning March 31, it was slightly over 4,000, and we have inspected 98 percent of them,” said Queens Parks Commissioner Dorothy Lewandowski. “People are now aware if your concrete is lifted for whatever reason you can call 311.”
To date, Queens Forestry has fixed the most severe cases of sidewalk damage in areas located within Community Boards 1-7, and repairs for Community Boards 8-14 will take place in the spring according to Parks & Recreation spokesperson Gina Masullo.
Williams is not alone in her frustration with city agencies and the sometimes-slow response-time to handling tree requests, whether it be for the Trees and Parks Program or regular maintenance and pruning.
Joseph Santucci, 89, has lived in his Maspeth home since 1943, and has contacted the Parks & Recreation Department as well as the Mayor’s Office alerting them to the tree problem outside his home.
Santucci has two trees, one behind his garage and one on the sidewalk next to his garage that are growing out of control. The trees’ roots are protruding into his garage and causing damage to Santucci’s property, and he worries about potential greater damage that may occur if the problem is not handled.
“That’s a city piece of land, and if that tree falls, it’s goodbye garage,” Santucci said. “Nobody cares anymore.”
Santucci has taken care of the trees outside of his home for more than 20 years, either cleaning up the branches himself or paying money out of his own pocket to private companies in order to prevent a mess from occurring.
Lewandowski said that since Queens has more than 350,000 trees throughout the borough, and she expects that number to rise significantly once the totals from the most recent count that concluded in October are available, the department must prioritize where it focuses its resources.
“If they believe their tree is dead, we inspect it as quickly as possible, and we have a commitment to remove it within 30 days,” she said. Lewandowski said that the Department handles the most serious requests first using in-house Parks & Recreation employees for emergency situations and primarily contracts out the majority of the regular pruning and maintenance requests.
“The competition rate is really high, and the city picks on the lowest bid, so you have to work really cheap,” said Richard Ruckdeschel, R J R Complete Tree Service Inc., a Flushing-based private tree contractor, who used to be licensed to do city jobs.
However, for those residents who expect to see the city prune their trees every year, they will be waiting a long time.
Currently, the city is operating on a 10-year pruning cycle where they do routine pruning on all trees once every 10 years. They have a computer database that maps out a detailed pruning schedule to make sure that every tree is pruned once every 10 years.
“I can understand where people get frustrated,” Lewandowski said. “We try to do it in a systematic fashion, 10 percent of each community board each year.”
Some Queens’ residents are skeptical that this is actually taking place.
“I spent 13 years trying to get it trimmed because when I purchased [the house] they had never trimmed it,” Ortiz said.
Currently, Parks & Recreation is finishing inspections of the few sites that have not been inspected under the Trees & Sidewalks program, and they will begin sidewalk repairs again after the winter months pass.
“If anyone has any concerns, they should call in that issue to 311,” Lewandowski said.
City Councilman Joseph Addabbo, who sits on the council’s Parks & Recreation Committee, believes that the Trees & Sidewalks program is a step in the right direction because homeowners should not have to bear the expense that occurs from damage by city trees. He wants to extend the program and allocate more funding for it when it comes up in the next budget, but he said that the city must do more.
“The whole process regarding pruning, stump removal and overall tree awareness, I think we have to pay more attention to it,” Addabbo said. “Pruning really should be better than every 10 years, seven years or even every five.”
CITY TREES AT A GLANCE
