Thursday, August 2, 2007

Tree-planting responsibility is ours

To accomplish Mayor Bloomberg's goal of planting 1 million new trees throughout the five boroughs by 2030, the city is counting on New York residents to do about half the work and foot a large chunk of the bill.

Many Must Pick Up Shovels If Trees Goal Is To Be Met

While the city has earmarked $250 million over the next 10 years to plant more than 15,000 trees yearly on city streets, residents and homeowners must plant and buy 500,000 saplings, officials said, or the city will fail to meet the goal of increasing the number of trees in the city by 20%.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.arborday.org/shopping/memberships/memberships.cfm?trackingid=528

The National Arbor Day Foundation is offering 10 free trees (including shipping and guarantee to grow) with a $10 membership into the foundation. I might be worthwhile for New Yorkers interested in planting trees on their properties considering from the article "Homeowners buying big saplings for their yards could be spending upwards of $1,000 apiece."

Although with most of the crap going up in Queens nowadays you probably won't find any open space in which to plant the trees.

From the website: "If you wish, you can choose to have the 10 free trees sent to another address, such as your place of worship." - Perhaps the people of Maspeth can order a bunch of these for the St. Saviour's site after it was raped of its beautiful trees.

Anonymous said...

That works out to $1666.66 per sappling.

Anonymous said...

What about CB1 where the all but offical policy is to sustain rumors that trees clog drains and dump leaves on the sidewalk in the fall so they are bad.

I guess that is what happens when you have an all but non-existing public education program and a community that regards it as pesky impediment to a developer's construction shed.

Anonymous said...

Meanwhile back at the ranch......
Bloomberg FAILED to intervene in the massacre of over 100 mature trees at the St. Saviour's site !

An ounce of prevention would have saved a lot of tree planting .

But Mayor Iceberg , in his typical stone killer fashion, once again turned his back on Queens just like any other mafia don ordering a hit.

Anonymous said...

Maybe the city should be saving and taking care of the the trees that are still standing rather than plant more trees that they will neglect in the future.

Anonymous said...

Citizen participation and volunteering is great. It's an opportunity for many to understand some details of how things happen.

But, this Commissar is a bald-faced liar: "The tree-planting program is one of 127 goals Mr. Bloomberg outlined in April that could reduce the city's carbon emissions by 30% by 2030. Greener streets could help reduce asthma incidents and improve real estate values in neighborhoods currently dominated by concrete, city officials said."

So, then, why did he join in on the rape of Maspeth's St. Saviour's church site by demolishing nearly 200 trees aged over 150 years?

Is his motto: "Screw the people of Maspeth with asthma, or who own homes and could lose property value with the rape of the neighborhood and its trees"? "We need that neighborhood for our planned development! Eminent domain is our next card! A neighborhood stripped of its trees is blighted!"

"Trees give you the biggest bang for the buck," the executive director of the New York Restoration Project, Drew Becher, said. "They're relatively cheap and make neighborhoods feel different. That's why people love the West Village so much: There are trees." Planting a tree on a Manhattan street costs about $17,000, a Parks Department official said. Homeowners buying big saplings for their yards could be spending upwards of $1,000 apiece."

Ah, yes! The West Village! Screw Maspeth!

And, just why is the price of a tree 17 time higher for the parks department, which has purchasing power, then for a homeowner?

Parks should be able to plant any tree for no more than $200, $300, total. Into whose pocket is the rest of the money going?

Hey, Green Commissar? Do you have an answer we "little people" can understand?

Anonymous said...

Would anybody like to go into the tree growing business with me? With trees retailing for $17,000 and sapplings for a $1000 we could make a fortune. Seriously!

Anonymous said...

I just went to the http://www.arborday.org/shopping/memberships/memberships.cfm?trackingid=528 site and submitted a $25.00 order. With this order you will get 10 trees a year membership and a subscription to a magazine on trees. I have tried several different ways to have a tree planted in front of my house and this seems to be the only way. I have tried 311, http://www.nyc.gov, and also submitted forms on-line to have this done and it appears to me that NYC does not have a proper system in place for residents to plant trees. I will come back in a month or so to let you know about the delivery and planting of the trees.