Fall Tree Removal
The title of this post is a little misleading. There are some trees around the neighborhood that are dead and others that are dying. We will have to remove some trees as soon as budget allows but we are working on saving the ones that are dying.
It is far more expensive to remove a tree in the long run (even if you don’t replace it) than it is to save the tree. In the short term, it is quite expensive to save dying trees. So we have to balance these long and short term issues and what we’ve decided to do is to take the short term hit to our wallet rather than having to deal with tree removal later on that would be twice as expensive.
If we removed all the dead or dying trees without replacing them it would cost about the same amount as treating our dying trees and we would be left with at least 15 missing trees around the neighborhood.
If we removed and replaced all of the dying or dead trees we currently have it would cost twice as much as treating them.
What we know is that if we do nothing and let these trees die in their own time they will end up being removed but likely never replaced.
With all that said, you may see green ribbons tied around some trees. Those trees are slated for a treatment to kill the insects and parasites that are causing these trees to die. We’ve hired an arborist to do this treatment and we are told that every tree being treated are going to survive.
What you can expect for these trees is for them to start doing better next year. At first, they will look like they did this year with about half the branches missing leaves. If we are lucky we will see more leaves on the tree next year than we did this year. But at the very least we will stop the tree from getting worse. The following year we will definitely begin to see improvement in the health of those trees.
The cost of treating these trees for the year is about $2,000 which is what it costs to remove then replace just one single tree. We are getting 15 trees treated for this price. We will also be considering more treatments to address the fungus and other issues that are affecting a lot of trees in the neighborhood.
To be clear, the trees being treated are in owners’ yards and some in common areas. So we are not just focusing on common areas here. Everyone’s individual trees are going to be treated and we will attempt to save them all. This is a multi year process. We can only take on a certain number of trees per year due to budget constraints and we will be addressing the trees in worst shape first. Some trees are treated in the fall while others get treated in the spring or summer. We have not made any commitments to further stop trees dying beyond the 15 trees being treated this year but we do expect to roll this into our 2022 budget somehow and we will give you more information about it at our quarterly meetings.
So that is the good news. The trees that many of you were expecting to lose in your yards are going to be saved this year.
