Just goes to show you, the left hand is unaware of what the right hand is doing

The blameless employees are protected again

“Viola says removal of the tree was an error, that City crews were working on the opposite side of the street, noticed the dead tree and decided to remove it without consulting with the property owner.”

I call BS on that. A city crew showing initiative? Walking across the street to do something that wasn’t on their to-do list?

“noticed a dead tree”.

Will they be replacing it with a dead tree?

The tree wasn’t dead if it was they would of told the tree owner to replace it or remove it fill in the hole at their cost.

Trees with leaves lose them in the fall, it doesnt mean its dead. Good thing the city isn’t in charge of removing all the “dead” deciduous trees in town.

To tree or not to tree, that is the question.

The city workers don’t just take the initiative to do anything. They filled a pothole by my house, the one I “reported”, but left the 6 right around said pothole. Yeah, so no extra initiative there. I highly doubt they walked across the street and decided “hey, this tree here looks dead, let’s remove it”. Yup sure that story is a really big load of bs.

While some of these negative comments about city works may have some truth to them; I personally have had good service for any requests I have had with the city. They patched the potholes in front of my house(when asked)and recently repaired my water service. All work done quickly and efficiently. Just my two cents worth and NO, I don’t work for the city.

Where is “Joni Mitchell” when you need her “Big Yellow Taxi” :)

While it’s nice to bash the city, what about the property owner. Nice civic attitude. Sure, they shouldn’t have killed your tree, but this owner’s answer is for them to use resources to put the tree back. So while he’s getting his little bit of justice, a crew that could have been fixing a pothole, or a damaged curb, will be putting this person’s tree back – really, that tree is that important.

ski50 – apparently the owner of the tree paid about $3200.00 to have the tree planted in the first place.

Okay, so maybe the tree was dead. Still doesn’t explain removing the grate and filling it with concrete. Was the tree being constantly damaged ? Could the city not find another tree ? Here comes Jack Hammer.

The dead tree story seems a bit odd. Why would removing a dead tree be an error? If the tree was dead this wouldn’t have been an issue to begin with. If I remember correctly the tree being dead was not mentioned when this story first broke. Why would taxpayers be on the hook for replacing a privately owned dead tree?

ski says…

“Sure, they shouldn’t have killed your tree”

Where does it say they killed his tree?

Anybody have a brick wall for me to bang my head against?

This is simply the city parks department finding the cuts needed to balance their budget that was cut. They simply don’t want to water the trees downtown so they cut them down and pull them out. Its a story of misplaced priorities by the city council IMO.

Dragonmaster wrote: “Why would taxpayers be on the hook for replacing a privately owned dead tree?”

I guess you have not been reading …..

It is not privately owned. Just as the streetlight along third and other streets are not provately owned, nor sidewalks nor the planters at the street corners. etc.

All those are publicly owned.

All those are paid for by downtown land owners and merchants who rent from landowners through their rents, typically after a local referendum and over a 10 or so year period.

So, the tree was public, paid for privately, and carried with it an expectation that the tree would be properly maintained…… it was not a two year rental …. O>

In my world it is called breach of promise …..

Reading some of the other posts dealing with the importance of a tree versus potholes ……

The importance here is of common application that the City is having of the concept of “standard of maintenance” …. whether it is pavement or trees, or lawns, or swimming pools, or lights, or whatever …..

The standard that ought to be there is that the operation of his City is sustainable and does not have to depend on continuous growth to feed maintenance of older parts. North America has been hooked on growth to feed itself for many decades and Prince George is not different.

The only difference is, PG has not been growing. Therein lies the rub.

BTW, has anyone even bothered to walk or drive downtown to look at the condition of the trees?

Most of the ones that were vandalized over the years or naturally did not re-establish themselves after planting have been replaced and seem to be doing quite well. It looks to me that they have replaced those trees with what is likely a hardier species.

So, cudos to the City for that.

“will have cement chipped out and new tree planted”

Too bad they do not have those planting hole surrounds designed in such a way that they will allow an unused opening to be covered with a metal or precast lid.

Having to “chip” it out seems like a waste to me…..