There is another side of the cherry blossom tree saga on Warfield Place. One that is being overlooked by many in the community, including the Gazette. These trees in bloom are beautiful, there is no denying that. My husband, who has lived on the corner of Warfield for 58 years, remembers when a neighbor planted them. I personally have enjoyed their beautiful pink blooms for the last 32 years.
Cherry blossom trees need care immediately when signs of pests and disease begin and these trees have been neglected, never having the diseased sections pruned to improve their health. They have hollowed sections and most are not well. They have outlived the expected life of a Kwanzan cherry blossom tree. They have served their purpose and provided the neighborhood with decades of beauty.
As I mentioned, we live on the corner of Finn and Warfield and the house has been in our family since 1941. So I want to share with you my perspective from the other side of Warfield because everyone’s life experience on the street is not the same.
According to city records, Warfield was last paved in 1931 when the sewers were put in. That makes the road 90 years old. It is in terrible condition. Are there worse streets? Maybe. But outside of my house, it is bad. It has been for a very, very long time. Longer than most other residents and renters have even lived here.
The sagging road creates pools of water that impede flow to the catch basin, which is also my family’s responsibility to keep free of debris to prevent flooding. The pavement around the catch basin is crumbling. The decades of patching have created so much unevenness in the road that every year the snow plow rips up my driveway footing and creates a hazard for my husband when he snowblows.
No contractor will touch the footing because it is city property and so the city patches it (eventually) until the added height is shredded once again the following winter during the first significant snowfall. The only way to properly fix it is through repaving.
I have a back injury and the uneven sidewalks make it difficult for me to walk on them, so on bad days I walk in the streets avoiding the divots and potholes. As for the argument that there is little traffic on Warfield, that may be true for the folks who live closest to the cherry trees but not for me on the corner. People pull in and turn around in my driveway regularly because they don’t realize that if they actually drove around Warfield they would get to the same destination much more easily.
I suspect when the traffic light goes in at State and Finn streets, the number of driveway turnarounds might even increase for me. Certainly in recent weeks, the number of cars driving in to protest has increased traffic on my end of the street.
So you see, it’s different for me, also a Warfield Place property owner who has been excluded from neighborhood conversations because I have a Finn Street address. If the road could be repaved this summer and the cherry trees saved, I’d be all in. I support pressuring the city to work with the neighbors who will lose sidewalk access from their driveways to their homes to create paths for them as well as insisting that a few of the new trees planted be cherry trees with the neighborhood having a say in the other trees as well.
However, after waiting so long to make the repaving list, I’m personally not OK with waiting any longer.
Paula Rigano-Murray lives in Northampton.