After 237 people signed the petition on the Jonah Center website to replace the 100 trees lost in Middletown every year (that’s just the trees on public property), we are asking our readers to email the Common Council. Please urge them to increase the tree planting budget for Fiscal Year 2021 from $8500 (17 trees) to $58,500 (117 trees). Explain why trees are important to you and ask that they support this increase before we get further behind. Already, approximately 300 dead ash trees from prior years are waiting to be removed.
Here is a sample text that you can insert into your message.
We are reaching out to you now, before the budget hearings begin, to ask if you will support the initiative of the Jonah Center and the Urban Forestry Commission to address the rapid and alarming loss of trees in our community. Trees are essential to our quality of life and provide many documented benefits, including carbon absorption, air cooling, removal of air pollution, improved physical and mental health, enhanced beauty, increased property values, and reduced crime.
Use the email address Council@MiddletownCT.gov to reach all the members of the Common Council with one message. The email addresses of individual members of the Common Council may be found here: http://www.cityofmiddletown.com/458/Common-Council
4 comments:
Perhaps efforts can be better focused in getting the DOT to stop clear cutting along roadways. They claim it's to remove dead trees. Funds in town could better be used to remove all the dead and ready to fall or drop major branches on streets and sidewalks.
The DOT is following Federal guidelines to keep medians clear thirty feet from the roadside to prevent high-speed collisions with trees when motorists run off the road. Tall trees along the edges of highways must be kept from falling on roads and vehicles. While I do not like the look of clear-cut medians, it's not easy to change Federal guidelines such as these. Please be pro-active about hazardous trees or branches along city streets -- call the City's Tree Warden and provide as much information as possible as to tree and location.
Thanks for all the emails. It will make it easier for us to defend an increase in the city budget for tree maintenance and plantings.
Ed McKeon
Common Council
Edward.McKeon@MiddletownCT.gov
Clear cutting along roadways also aids in HAZMAT and other roadway incidents, making a sort of firebreak as well as space for emergency vehicles if needed, when these incidents happen.
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