NORTHAMPTON — City officials are engaged in an ongoing back-and-forth with a group of neighbors who want to stop the removal of 10 cherry trees on Warfield Place, and publicly available emails show that the two sides remain mired in disagreement.
The neighbors group Save the Cherry Trees sent an email to Mayor David Narkewicz on Thursday, laying out grievances related to the city’s repaving plan for Warfield Place. An email response from the Department of Public Works director accuses the group of running “a campaign to discredit” the DPW.
When the project was announced in April, neighbors formed Save the Cherry Trees to urge the city to pause the work until a number of perceived shortcomings could be addressed. The group wants the 10 trees on the street to live out their natural lives, regardless of any roadwork.
Save the Cherry Trees has said that officials are not listening to their assertions that the project violates city planning policies; that the sidewalk redesign eliminates wheelchair access for two residents with disabilities; that the process used to select Warfield Place for repaving was not transparent or responsive to citizen input; and that neither the project nor the killing of the trees is necessary, among a list of concerns.
Officials disagree with each of those claims, arguing that the street has not been improved since sewers were installed in 1931 and that the project is in line with the city’s goals for climate change mitigation, accessibility, and maintenance of a healthy tree canopy.
The project will widen the sidewalk on the tree-lined side of the street and remove the sidewalk on the other side. The city intends to plant saplings of an as-yet-undetermined species in an effort to restore the tree canopy over time.
In the email to Narkewicz, Save the Cherry Trees rejects the June 29 assessment by Bartlett Tree Experts that recommended removal of nine out of 10 trees on the street due to insect damage, disease, and internal rot. Save the Cherry Trees argues that Bartlett’s relationship to the city is too close for the report to be considered independent, a claim that DPW Director Donna LaScaleia deemed “offensive.”
Narkewicz had called the hiring of Bartlett to review the city tree warden’s recommendation to remove the trees an “extraordinary step” toward reassuring residents that removal was the right decision. But the neighbors’ group dismisses the idea that the company provided an unbiased assessment.
“The history of the city’s previous financial relationship with Bartlett makes us question whether this truly is an extraordinary step, whether the assessment can be considered an ‘outside opinion,’ and whether it is legitimately independent,” the group’s email reads.
Save the Cherry Trees, which said they tried to hire Bartlett on their own before the company learned the trees were public and not private, believes their own expert assessment is not being given proper weight.
“When we found a truly independent arborist—one who we did not pay and who volunteered his services freely—we did you the courtesy of sharing his assessment to you, first,” the group’s email to the mayor reads. “You did not reply.”
John Berryhill, a certified arborist, wrote a three-paragraph letter in support of the group’s position, saying the trees are not diseased and are “experiencing a rare and precious moment of maturity.” He said all of the trees “appear to have desirable structural strength relative to their size and the potential loads they could experience from weather,” and that they appear to be recovering well from weather-related stress that they experienced in 2017.
The Bartlett assessment is a five-page technical report detailing specific problems with each tree. LaScaleia, in a Friday email to Save the Cherry Trees, called the accusations of bias related to Bartlett “patently false and offensive,” and said that Berryhill acknowledged in his letter that he was “not aware of all the considerations that have been made while planning this work.”
She said the group is making inaccurate “public written accusations of financial and other impropriety against me, my employees, and a highly respected contractor” as part of “a campaign to discredit the Northampton Department of Public Works.” Since December of 2017, she said, the city has paid more to two similar companies — Cotton Tree Service and Lashco Tree Service — for technical services than it has to Bartlett.
Save the Cherry Trees took issue with the fact that the June 29 Bartlett report was released to the Gazette on July 19, hours before Narkewicz emailed the document to the neighbors’ group. They wrote that Narkewicz’s characterization of the report as independent is “disturbing.”
“What is even more disturbing is that you sat on the assessment for three weeks, and then released it to the press, and sent it to us only after we had already received it from (the Gazette),” said the group’s email to the mayor.
LaScaleia said that, even though the Bartlett assessment backed up the city’s position, “we did not release it so as not to further inflame an already challenging and emotional situation.”
Kathryne Young, a Warfield Place resident, said on Monday that LaScaleia’s email made her “really sad,” and that the group itself has been the subject of “a nasty whisper campaign.”
“I thought it was a mischaracterization of the extremely large, extremely diverse group of folks who want to work with the DPW,” said Young. “I don’t think that the folks on Warfield are unreasonable. … It seems like (the city is) doubling down on a poor decision that they made.
“For all of us, it’s been really shocking that, instead of being interested in our feedback, the city has shut us down at every turn,” she said.
Brian Steele can be reached at bsteele@gazettenet.com.