New York’s chief fiscal officer on Sunday accused his city of endangering residents by failing to maintain many of the 650,000 trees lining streets.
Comptroller Scott Stringer says contractors hired to care for the urban greenery have pruned trees that didn’t need it and neglected those that required attention. In addition, there are questions about charges and record-keeping.
“Tax dollars are wasted, property is damaged and, worst of all, people are sometimes injured or killed,” said Stringer, who held a news conference on a sidewalk in Chelsea. “Time and time again in four of the five boroughs, the Parks Department failed to properly manage the work done by private contractors.
“I don’t have to go out on a limb to tell you that our city’s performance is unacceptable,” Stringer told reporters, including 1010 WINS’ Glenn Schuck.
He blames the city agency for a mismanaged pruning program that has cost millions of dollars in claims for injuries and property damage.
“Look, you’re pruning the wrong trees,” Stringer said. “And we paid for tree prunings that didn’t happen.”
5 comments:
Those contractors should all be investigated! They butchered the trees at Bowne Park several weekends in a row and actually cut down about 20!
Always on the weekends! Triple time and a half for the Parks employees standing around watching!
Just figuring this out. Crappy has been reporting this for a long time.
Our building has resorted to pruning our own trees because the NYC Forestry Dept is so understaffed and the waiting list for us was 2015!!!!! Outrageous.
Parks workers do not get exta pay on weekends. Park supervisors get time and a half on weekends. Park managers are on a yealy salary and get no overtime.
I saw this story about the poor tree care and really got a laugh when they said that "Queens is the only burough where trees are being properly maintained." Does proprer maintenance equal limbs hangs for over a year after being reported, dead trees left uncut over a year after being reported, cut brances on the street over a month, etc?
Wow, the other boroughs must be really bad.
it's not just the parks
check out the trees on your block,or any block,the effects of climate change that's causing all these monsoon rain storms and higher velocity winds are making them age faster.check them out,they don't even have any bark on them,and the leaves fall earlier now.it's only august and there's tons of brown leaves on the ground.
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