To the editor:
Re: "Fruits and Nuts," Central Park, Oct. 5. I'll tell you what is nuts-a public administration that is negligent in carrying out its legal duties in maintaining the city's trees that are already planted while planning to spend more taxpayer funds to support the spin of having the "Greenest City 2020 action plan."
As citizens of Vancouver, my neighbours and I have brought our badly overgrown trees to the attention to the city via emails and telephone calls. One of the city arbor-ists even came out to see them. He would have seen that the trees are so overgrown, they now touch in the centre of the street and have many dead branches and some sort of leaf disease. In my email I explained that the trees were so overgrown multiple branches were touching all of the lines coming into my house, including my power lines. I also explained that when a large branch fell off right onto the street, if a car had been under this tree, it would have inevitably led to a lawsuit.
City workers are aware of the condition of the trees because they patched up the pavement this summer for a tree whose roots have buckled the cement. Yet last week, the city was out cutting trees on a street around here that were not as badly overgrown, nor would they have posed a risk to any vehicles. One would ask how work is prioritized and why potential legal liability isn't one of the biggest factors in deciding what the priorities are.
The city needs an "action plan" to maintain the trees that are already in the ground before they start spending more money on new trees. The public also deserves to know the numbers of newly planted trees that have died (the city is keeping numbers on this) and how much that has cost us because there is no plan to maintain those new trees.
Clearly, there is a need for some common sense in all of this since, as far as I know, city coffers do not flow endlessly. If they did, perhaps they would have more workers available to maintain the vegetation and facilities that already exist in Vancouver.
Tracey Young, Vancouver
