We had requests from multiple folks about cleaning up a county-owned parcel of land adjacent to our Innerarity Boat launch in D1 in Escambia County.
We had a number of trees that were identified to be in need of removal by our County Arborist.
Folks park in this area, folks walk in this area and the thought was that some of these trees were dying and could fall on cars or people. Initially, about a dozen were identified for removal.
Then, the arborist identified 5.
For any tree we were going to remove, the county was going to plant 2 6-7 foot replacement trees in the area, on the parcel.
But upon seeing the visceral reaction online to any trees being taken down--we will continue our efforts to clean the scrub brush from this county-owned parcel and to expand and dig-deeper the county-owned stormwater retention pond on this property and level the property with fill material.
But as for cutting ANY trees down----we are at an ALL STOP.
We will NOT be cutting any down in the immediate term until a full assessment can be done that includes myself, county staff, citizens, and stakeholders.
We will only cut trees that need to come down if they pose an iminent safety hazard, are diseased, or otherwise need to be removed in the opinion of ouar professional arborist.
SO GRATEFUL to you for putting the brakes on this to make sure that there aren't healthy trees getting purged for the "clean up" Commissioner Bergosh.
ReplyDeleteYou might not remember, because it wasn't your district, that there was an all out war waged by the residents of Innerarity for two years against the Galvez boat ramp project, which initially included Doug's bright idea of cutting ALL the trees out there down. There were dozens of people who came to the podium over many, many meetings of both the Marine Advisory Committee meetings and BCC meetings whenever Doug would favor his constituents with actually putting action on the agenda, rather than running it in the dark.
Tracy Olson McAdams literally staked things out on the daily for months on end to keep healthy trees from getting cut down.
Are there diseased trees out there that are in imminent danger of coming down? Maybe. But I've seen too many times a too eager desire to just get rid of trees when the opportunity arises. They're such an inconvenience, you know.
Hub Stacy has been agitating to get rid of some trees down there for a long time, although for the most part it's a pretty nice relationship down there between the County, Hub's, boat ramp folks and patrons. Hopefully Hub will also realize that one of the things that makes his establishment so special is that those trees having a cooling effect on a hot summer night. And of course it's not his property, although I love the old-timey relaxed nature out there and hope that parking situation doesn't change.
Very grateful for your oversight. People should remember that if you hadn't reclaimed the Key and Innerarity as commissioner, those trees would already be down (although with a horribly dangerous dock built to satisfy commercial captains on the taxpayer dimes). God knows Doug did his worst on the park next door, including cutting down shoreline pines. He just loved to cut him down some shoreline pines.